Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Names and faces
■ Norwegian grandmaster Magnus Carlsen has defended his chess world championship title by beating American challenger Fabiano Caruana 3-0 in rapid tiebreaker games. After their threeweek match ended in 12 draws, Carlsen wrapped up the victory quickly Wednesday with three straight wins to build an unassailable lead in the best-of-four rapid format. “I felt like I had a really good day at work today,” Carlsen said. “Everything kind of went perfectly.” The tiebreakers were played with 25 minutes for each player per game, while the 12 previous classical-style games, which took place behind soundproof glass on a stage in London, lasted up to seven hours each. It’s the third time the 27-year-old Carlsen has successfully defended his title after winning it from Viswanathan Anand of India in 2013. Caruana, 26, was trying to become the first American since Bobby Fischer in 1972 to become the chess world champion. Carlsen pocketed $621,000 for the win while Caruana got $508,000.
■ It was the kiss heard around the galaxy. Fifty years ago — and only a year after the U.S. Supreme Court declared interracial marriage was legal — two of science fiction’s most enduring characters, Capt. James T. Kirk and Lt. Nyota Uhura, kissed each other on Star Trek. It wasn’t romantic. Sadistic, humanlike aliens forced the white captain to lock lips with the black communications officer. But the kiss between actors William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols in “Plato’s Stepchildren,” which first aired on Nov. 22, 1968, would help change attitudes in America about what was allowed to be shown on TV. The kiss “suggested that there was a future where these issues were not such a big deal,” said Eric Deggans, a television critic for National Public Radio. “The characters themselves were not freaking out because a black woman was kissing a white man,” which he described as “a wonderful message to send.” Star Trek’s producers at the time were concerned, though, about reaction from Southern television stations, and the kiss between Shatner and Nichols was mostly obscured by the back of Nichols’ head. The episode aired without blowback and eventually got the most “fan mail that Paramount had ever gotten on Star Trek for one episode,” Nichols said in a 2010 interview. Officials at Paramount, the show’s producer, “were just simply amazed, and people have talked about it ever since,” Nichols said.