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Michelle Obama returned to the spotlight as a presenter at The ESPYS, drawing the loudest ovation at the awards show honoring the past year's best athletes and moments in sports.

The former first lady made a rare public appearance since leaving the White House in January. She presented the Arthur Ashe Courage Award posthumously to Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founder of Special Olympics. Shriver's son, Tim, accepted on Wednesday night in Los Angeles.

"I am here tonight to honor a remarkable woman, a woman who believed that everyone has something to contribute and everyone deserves a chance. When we give others the chance to fulfill their greatest potential, we all win," Obama said before being joined onstage by eight Special Olympics athletes. "Through her passionate service, she made our world more welcoming, inclusive and fair."

Shriver accepted the silver trophy from Obama.

"Once a great first lady, still a great first lady," he said as the crowd roared.

Obama smiled with her arm on one of the athletes as Shriver urged that more work needs to be done to achieve equality toward people with intellectual disabilities.

"Our mother would have loved you," he said. "She would have loved your forthrightness, your honesty, your toughness, your commitment also to get everybody on the playing field. She would have been so honored that you are here for her tonight as we all are."

Obama walked off stage sharing a hug with one of the female athletes.

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Michelle Obama earns loud ovation from athletes at The ESPYS - ABC News

by: Rare.us Updated: Jul 12, 2017 - 10:40 PM

Former President Barack Obama will officially step back into the political realm for the first time since leaving office in January when heattends a fundraiser on Thursday to help raise funds for the Democrats efforts to draw new district lines.

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Obama will be the main attraction at a small fundraising event being hosted by former Attorney General Eric Holder, who is leading the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, at a private home in Washington, D.C.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who is also involved with the Democratic redistricting effort, will also be in attendance.

Obama and Holder have spoken about redistricting, which is focused on winning state legislative seats and court battles, numerous times, even before the former president left office.

In 2016, Holder laid out the reason for the redistricting push, saying in an interview, American voters deserve fair maps that represent our diverse communities and we need a coordinated strategy to make that happen. This unprecedented new effort will ensure Democrats have a seat at the table to create fairer maps after 2020.

The former president also released astatement on redistricting through his spokesperson, Kevin Lewis:

Restoring fairness to our democracy by advocating for fairer, more inclusive district maps around the country is a priority for President Obama. [] The President supports NDRC, Holders efforts to address unfair gerrymandering practices that leave too many American voters feeling voiceless in the electoral process.

This is the only political event on Obamas schedule in the near future as he continues to shy away from weighing in on too many political topics. He does, however, want to help balance out the inequities that he sees on political maps. As one top aide toldThe Chicago Tribune, Obama will be supporting efforts that tackle the inequities of our current political system.

2017 Cox Media Group.

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Barack Obama set to attend first post-presidency political event - icFlorida

By Christy Bowe/Corbis/Getty Images.

Back in 2014, President Obama professed his undying love to Meryl Streep while presenting the Oscar-winning actress with the Medal of Freedom. I love Meryl Streep, Obama announced, officially declaring himself Team Meryl. Her husband knows I love her. Michelle knows I love her. There's nothing they can do about it. Since then, Streeps relationship with both Obama and especially his wife, Michelle, has escalatedwith the actress and former First Lady, both fierce equal-rights advocates, teaming up for a joint interview; a trip to Africa; a hug; and a star-studded farewell party at the White House. And now, Streep has officially pledged her allegiance to the Obamas by debuting a snazzy custom accessory emblazoned with their visages.

The accessory: a purse printed with a photo of the Obamas smiling and dancing, superimposed over a graphic of the White House. E!, which has a photo of Streep stepping out with said bag, reports that the opposite side of the bag features Michelle posing with her hand against her head and a smirk on her face.

Streep carried the bag while leaving her trailer on the New York set of her upcoming political drama The Papers, directed by Steven Spielberg, co-starring Tom Hanks, and centering on The Washington Posts handling of the Pentagon papers.

Back in 2009, a journalist told Streep that she is Barack Obamas favorite actress. (You can watch her giddy response below.) I love him. I think hes fantastic, Streep gushed in response. I havent met him. . . but I think hes fantastic. Part of it is, just where weve been, Streep continued. The comparison [between past presidents]. A thoughtful person. A person who actually weighs several arguments before coming to a decision, who admits descent, who welcomes it. Its all the things that weve dreamed of, for too many years.

Fast-forward eight years later to 2016, when Streep and the Obamas had not only met, but collaborated, so much so that Michelle Obama paid tribute to her friend and fellow equal-rights advocate at a screening of the CNN documentary We Will Rise.

The great Meryl Streep has just devoted her not-a-lot-of time to this project, Obama said, referring to Streeps commitment to Obamas Let Girls Learn initiative. And she is a delightfulshe is delightful and is intelligent and is focused and engagedas you would imagine Meryl Streep to be. Thats what I tell everybody. Meryl Streep is exactly as awesome as you would imagine Meryl Streep to be.

When presenting Streep with the presidential medal of freedom, Barack Obama similarly praised the actress, saying, Shes done it all for her craft. Shes sung Abba, which you know, thats something. She learned violin. She wore a nuns habit, faced down a charging lion, mastered every accent under the sun. She inhabits her characters so fully and compassionately.

While it is unclear where Streep got this pursedid she design it herself?!we hope that somewhere, deep in the Obamas closet, there is some sort of Streep apparelperhaps a graphic teewith her face and name literally on it.

This is not the first explicitly patriotic article of clothing Streep has worn, for those keeping track at home. Last July, Streep wore a a gauzy, Catherine Malandrino American flag-style dress at the Democratic National Convention. Certainly the Obama bag wont endear Streep in the heart of sitting president Donald Trump, who called the actress overrated in Januarynot that she cares.

Meryl Streep in New York Citys Theater District,1978.

John Cazale and Streep during the filming of The Deer Hunter, 1977.

Justin Henry and Dustin Hoffman in 1979.

Streep in the films climactic courtroom sequence.

Hoffman, Streep, director-screenwriter Robert Benton, and producer Stanley Jaffe with their Academy Awards, 1980

Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman while filming 1979s Kramer vs. Kramer.

Streep in New York City, 1979.

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Meryl Streep in New York Citys Theater District,1978.

Photograph by Duane Michals; From the DC Moore Gallery, New York.

John Cazale and Streep during the filming of The Deer Hunter, 1977.

From the Core Collection Production Files of The Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Justin Henry and Dustin Hoffman in 1979.

Photograph by Brigitte Lacombe.

Streep in the films climactic courtroom sequence.

Columbia Pictures/Photofest.

Hoffman and Henry in the film.

Columbia Pictures/Photofest.

Hoffman, Streep, director-screenwriter Robert Benton, and producer Stanley Jaffe with their Academy Awards, 1980

Columbia Pictures/Photofest.

Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman while filming 1979s Kramer vs. Kramer.

Columbia Pictures/Photofest.

Streep in New York City, 1979.

By Theo Westenberger/Theo Westenberger Archives, 1974-2008, Autry Museum, Los Angeles.

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Here's How Much Meryl Streep Loves the Obamas - Vanity Fair

The researchers used 14 hours of Obama's weekly address videos to train a neural network. Once trained, their system was then able to take an audio clip from the former president, create mouth shapes that synced with the audio and then synthesize a realistic looking mouth that matched Obama's. The mouth synced to the audio was then superimposed and blended onto a video of Obama that was different from the audio source. To make it look more natural, the system corrected for head placement and movement, timing and details like how the jaw looked. The whole process is automated save for one manual step that requires a person to select two frames in the video where the subject's upper and lower teeth are front-facing and highly visible. Those images are then used by the system to make the resulting video's teeth look more realistic.

The program isn't perfect yet, but in the video below you can see how much better it gets after three minutes, one hour, seven hours and 14 hours of training data. Some limitations the team has pointed out include occasional mistakes in mouth and facial alignment -- sometimes it gave Obama two chins -- an inability to match emotion and issues arising with sounds that require a particular placement of the tongue, like "th," which isn't currently covered by their program.

But, overall this artificial lip-syncing program creates a much more realistic image than others have. The work will be published in ACM Transactions on Graphics and you can see the researchers' process in the video below.

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Researchers make a surprisingly smooth artificial video of Obama - Engadget

The Trump administration took a step toward blocking stricter enforcement of estate and gift taxes Friday, describing a set of proposed rules as overly burdensome.

The new rules, put forward last year by the Obama administration, would increase the taxes owed by some wealthy families. Lawyers and experts on the estate tax say that taxpayers have substantial leeway in determining how much their estates are worth and, as a result, how much they have to pay.

The Obama administration's rules were intended to enforce the tax more strictly, but the new administration might prevent them from going into effect. The rules were among eight regulations put forward under Obama that Trump'sTreasury Department will try to modify or rescind, according to an interim report published last week.

Wealthy Americans pay estate and gift taxes when they die or when they pass wealth on to their heirs. The tax is primarily paid by the very richest families. Just 0.18 percent of people who died last year paid estate taxes, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. The center also estimates that 88 percent of the total estate taxes that are paid comes from people in the richest 10 percent of the income distribution.

Very few Americans are rich enough to pay the estate tax, but the tax could affect many of Trump's wealthy advisers. The majority of Trump's Cabinet, including 13 of the 24 members, are potentially subject to the estate tax, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.

Republicans have long argued that the estate tax creates unacceptable burdens on middle-class taxpayers who have substantial assets, such as farmers or owners of small businesses. Trump has also proposed eliminating the tax entirely, although doing so would require an act of Congress.

"This hurts a lot of farmers. It hurts a lot of people who have businesses that they want to pass on," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told CNBC in May. "Many people have to sell their family business. Many people have to sell their family farm."

Mnuchin's reported net worth of $621 million would make his estate liable for the tax if he were to pass away. Whether the Obama administration's new rules would increase his estate's bill if his department allowed them to take effect depends on whether he is using a certain legal strategy to save money. That information is not publicly available.

The maneuver in question relates to how small businesses and similar entities are appraised for purposes of the estate tax. When a person dies and divides up a business to give each heir a stake, authorities allow the heirs to mark down the value of their share in the business, because each stake might be difficult to sell individually.

Yet some wealthy taxpayers have exploited this rule by putting stocks, bonds or other securities under the control of a legal entity and then claiming that the entity represents a family-owned business in order to bring down the value. When the heirs take control of the entity, they can easily sell off their individual stakes in the assets.

"This is a pretty common technique for the very wealthy," said attorney Beth Shapiro Kaufman, the president of Caplin and Drysdale in Washington.

Kaufman said that the rules the Obama administration proposed were overly broad and could negatively affect legitimate businesses as well, but she also said that the loophole will be costly if it is not closed. Taxpayers using this approach could reduce the value of their estates by roughly one-third, she said.

"If you think that the estate tax is evil, then anything that pokes giant holes in it is a good thing," Kaufman said.

Last week's report is a response to an order from Trump, who instructed his deputies to identify regulations proposed or implemented under Obama that were excessively costly or beyond the authority of the executive branch. The Treasury Department will issue proposals for scaling back or throwing out the regulations in a final report to Trump in September.

That process could be complicated by the fact that the Treasury Department is severely understaffed, said Mark Mazur, who served as assistant treasury secretary for tax policy under Obama.

The posts for the officials who would ordinarily be responsible for writing the rules in this area are still vacant. For instance, Trump has nominated David Kautter, an attorney, to serve in Mazur's position as assistant secretary, but Kautter has not yet been confirmed. The delays are part of a pattern of unusually slow confirmations across Trump's new administration.

Among the other regulations slated to be modified or eliminated is a rule designed to prevent foreign companies from stripping the earnings out of their U.S. subsidiaries to avoid federal taxes.

A common practice among foreign firms that own U.S. subsidiaries is to make loans to the subsidiaries just so that the subsidiaries can pay the owners back. The interest paid is not subject to tax in the United States, reducing the subsidiary's tax bill. While that interest counts as income for the foreign owner, foreign companies often pay taxes at lower rates than they would in the United States.

The Obama administration hoped the rule would prevent companies from using this technique to shift income abroad, out of the reach of U.S. tax authorities.

The rule was scheduled to take effect next year, which would make buying U.S. firms less attractive to foreign investors, said Mazur, who now directs the Tax Policy Center. "We all knew that there was a lot of angst about this from the business community, especially some of the groups that lobby for offshore companies, and so not surprised to see it on the list," he said.

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The Obama administration had a plan to crack down on estate tax dodgers. Trump's team is looking to block it. - Washington Post