Author: Ohart

We’re locking down the five most popular songs in the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles chart, for the week ending April 28, 2018.

For the second straight week, we welcome a Hot Shot Debut … this time at No. 1.

Number 5: BlocBoy JB Featuring Drake “Look Alive”

BlocBoy JB and Drake spend another week in fifth place with “Look Alive.”

Drake just delivered on a promise to students at Miami Senior High School. Earlier this year, he donated $25,000 to the school, while also promising the school new uniforms that he designed himself. This week, Drake previewed the new designs on Instagram … and you can see them by going on our Facebook page, VOA1TheHits.

 

Number 4: Post Malone & Ty Dolla $ign “Psycho”

Post Malone dips a notch to No. 4 with “Psycho,” featuring Ty Dolla $ign.

Ty is not the only guest appearing on Post’s “Beerbongs & Bentleys” album, out April 27. The set will feature 18 songs, with other guest stars being Swae Lee, 21 Savage, Nicki Minaj, and G-Eazy and YG.

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Number 3: Bebe Rexha & Florida Georgia Line “Meant To Be”

While Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line slip a slot to third place with “Meant To Be,” it remains the top song on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart for a 20th week. It’s only the third single to last that long at No. 1.

Sam Hunt held the title for 34 weeks with “Body Like A Back Road,” while Florida Georgia Line was in the driver’s seat for 24 weeks with “Cruise.”

 

Number 2: Drake “God’s Plan”

Drake ends his 11-week run at No. 1, as “God’s Plan” slips to second place. It lasted a respectable 11 weeks, but now it’s your runner-up.

Drake is accustomed to dominating chart records, but J Cole just stole some of his thunder. J. Cole racked up 64.5 million streams in the 24 hours after releasing his new album “KOD.” This is the most 24-hour album streams on Apple Music, eclipsing Drake’s previous record with “Views.”

Number 1: Drake “Nice For What”

Drake shouldn’t feel too bad, though, because he just replaced himself atop the Hot 100. “Nice For What” is your Hot Shot Debut in first place. Furthermore, Drake is the only artist to have both songs debut at No. 1 …proving he’s in a class by himself.

What will Drake do next? Join us in seven days and we’ll see for ourselves.
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Mamma Mia! The members of ABBA announced Friday that they have recorded new material for the first time in 35 years.

The Swedish pop supergroup said it had recorded two new songs, including one titled “I Still Have Faith in You.”

The news was announced in an Instagram statement from Benny Andersson, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Faltskog.

ABBA won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest with “Waterloo” and had a sequin-spangled string of hits including “Dancing Queen” and “Take a Chance on Me” before splitting up in 1982.

The band’s statement said the members reunited to plan a virtual tour featuring digital avatars, and decided to go back into the studio.

ABBA said “it was like time had stood still and that we had only been away on a short holiday. An extremely joyous experience!”

“I Still Have Faith in You” is due to be performed by the group’s holograms in a December TV special broadcast by the BBC and NBC. There was no word on when the second track will be released.

Ulvaeus revealed earlier this month that digitally created virtual band members — “Abbatars” — would perform in a television show in 2018, followed by a tour in 2019 or 2020.

The band members have performed together just once since the 1980s, at a private party in 2016, and have long said they will never tour live together again.
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Participants at the Cannes Film Festival will be given fliers warning “Proper Behavior Required” as part of an anti-sexual harassment campaign at the May 8-19 event.

The top women’s rights official for the French government announced Friday that she reached a deal with Cannes organizers for the campaign. It will include written warnings urging appropriate behavior and a hotline for victims and witnesses to report abuse.

Secretary of State for Women’s Affairs Marlene Schiappa noted that Cannes is one of the places where disgraced Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein allegedly raped and harassed women.

Schiappa’s office says the French government is urging other upcoming festivals and events to join the effort.

Film festivals have been soul-searching since the Weinstein scandal, rewriting codes of conduct and redoubling gender equality efforts.
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U.S. comedian Bill Cosby was convicted Thursday of drugging and molesting a one-time friend in 2004, which could send him to prison for the rest of his life.

The 80-year-old Cosby now faces up to 10 years in prison for each of three counts of aggravated assault after a Pennsylvania jury convicted him of an attack on Andrea Constand, now 45. At the time of the assault, she was an administrator for the women’s basketball team at Temple University in Philadelphia, Cosby’s alma mater.

Cosby, best known as the lovable dad on his 1980’s television hit The Cosby Show, was convicted by a jury of seven men and five women after a two-week trial, not quite a year after another jury was unable to reach a verdict on the charges and a mistrial was declared.

Cosby stared straight ahead when the jury announced its verdict after deliberating 14 hours over two days.

But moments later Cosby lashed out at District Attorney Kevin Steele, calling the prosecutor an “asshole” after he asked that Cosby be immediately jailed because he might flee. The judge, however, decided Cosby could remain free pending sentencing.

A Cosby defense attorney said the entertainer continues to believe he did nothing wrong. “The fight is not over,” the lawyer said.

WATCH: Cosby accusers react moments after guilty verdict

In the retrial, unlike in the first trial, prosecutors introduced testimony from five women who said that Cosby, married for 54 years, drugged and violated them.

One of them, through tears, asked him, “You remember, don’t you, Mr. Cosby?”

Constand told jurors that Cosby knocked her out with three blue pills he called “your friends.” She testified that Cosby penetrated her with his fingers as she lay immobilized, unable to resist or say no.

Cosby’s conviction came in one of the first celebrity sexual-assault cases of the MeToo era in the U.S., in which dozens of powerful men in the corporate world, the film industry, media circles and academia have been accused by women of years of repeated behind-the-scenes sexual misconduct.

Cosby’s first trial ended just before women leveled a flood of accusations against the rich and famous, including powerful Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, television anchors Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose, and Senator Al Franken. Many of the men apologized for their misconduct, some resigned from their jobs, and others were fired.

In all, more than 60 women have accused Cosby of sexual assaulting them over several decades.

Gloria Allred, a lawyer who represented one of the women who testified against Cosby, said, “We’re very, very happy and proud of the result. Women were finally believed. And we thank the jury for that.”
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The freedom to wear whatever you want is taken for granted here in the U.S. But some people’s idea of fashion options is being viewed by others as condoning the repression of women.  In her first television interview, a U.S. designer of Muslim clothing explains her why she designed her line. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti has our story.
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An American German-Catholic woman who converted to Islam decided to design modest clothes after she couldn’t find them in stores. Macy’s, the nationwide department store, is now carrying her designs on its website. But some people’s idea of fashion options is being viewed by others as condoning the repression of women. In her first television interview, designer Lisa Vogl talks about why she designed her fashion line. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti has our story.
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Tennis faces “very significant” integrity problems, particularly at the lower levels of the sport, caused by the sharp increase in internet betting, an independent report concluded in its interim finding on Wednesday.

The Interim Report of the Independent Review of Integrity said that its two-year investigation had not revealed widespread corruption at the highest levels of the professional game globally although “there is nonetheless evidence of some issues at these levels”.

Among its recommendations are a review of appearance fees and the ranking system and a halt to the sale of sporting data by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) at the low-level Futures events.

It also recommended greater monitoring of the lower levels where one investigator said there were a “tsunami” of problems.

The Review was commissioned by tennis’ major bodies (ATP, WTA, ITF and Grand Slam Board) in 2016 following a report by the BBC and BuzzFeed News which claimed 16 players ranked in the world’s top 50 had been flagged to the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) over suspicions that matches had been thrown.

The panel said: “the integrity problems are greatest where prize money relative to costs, prospects of advancement, pubic interest and attention, and financial resources of tournaments are lowest”.

It also said the advent of online betting and the sale of official live scoring date have greatly exacerbated the problem and recommends that the ITF ends its date sale agreement at Futures events.

It added that there are no simple solutions but called on the sport “to address and limit the betting markets that ultimately drive, and give expression to, the problem; and to improve the systems of preventing and disrupting breaches of integrity, and for detecting and sanctioning them when they occur.”

The report paints a picture of financial privation among many of the sport’s 15,000 professionals, with many at the lowest level struggling to cover the costs of competing. This, the report said, made betting on matches more attractive to players, many of whom admitted knowledge of match-fixing.

A survey of 3,200 players found that 16 percent indicated they had first-hand knowledge of players betting on matches, 11 percent knew of inside information being provided and 14.5 percent of match-fixing. Of these, 35 percent said they had knowledge of more than one instance.

Tennis’ governing bodies have committed to implementing the report’s final findings after a period of consultation.

The panel, which was chaired by Adam Lewis QC, took statements from 200 key stakeholders, conducted more than 100 interviews and collected more than 3,200 survey responses.
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The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy 50 years ago this June fractured the nation just two months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and five years after his brother John F. Kennedy was killed.

But RFK’s funeral, particularly the train that took his body from New York City, following a funeral Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, to Washington, D.C., brought the country together. An estimated 2 million ordinary Americans gathered beside railroad tracks to honor him as the train passed by.

An exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, “The Train: RFK’s Last Journey,” displays 21 of the 1,000 unique color slides made by photographer Paul Fusco on June 8, 1968. The images captured America’s grief in a way that was unusual in photography, by seeing the events through the eyes of ordinary people.

The photos show Americans of all colors and classes. Catholic schoolgirls, field hands, firefighters, blue-collar workers and housewives in their bonnets create a tableau of those who came to say farewell to the man many knew simply as “Bobby.”

Some climbed fence posts to get a better view. Some saluted. Others stood rock-ribbed straight. Some waved American flags or handmade posters: “So Long Bobby.” Others turned from work to see what was happening as the maroon train car holding his coffin rolled by en route to Washington, and from there to his final resting place at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

Fusco, at the time a staffer for Look magazine, made the images from his unique position aboard the funeral train. He said he was astonished when the train emerged from a New York City tunnel to see hundreds of people gathering beside the tracks. At times he used a panning motion to isolate certain people and scenes, creating a blur around the edges of the images.

The exhibit also shows the importance of the day for those who were there, through a collection of personal images sought out by Dutch artist Rein Jelle Terpstra, who became fascinated with Fusco’s photos and launched a research project in 2014 to collect pictures and films from the observers who watched the funeral procession go by. Among the most striking is a carefully labeled page from a photo album collage decorated with red, white and blue construction paper.

The moving exhibit also includes a 70 mm film reconstruction of the day by French artist Philippe Parreno, complete with the haunting sound of a train clacking through fields and cities.

So many people came to say goodbye to Bobby Kennedy on June 8, 1968, that the train slowed and the journey took nearly twice as long as usual, nearly eight hours to travel a typically four-hour route.

The RFK funeral train echoed a similar journey more than 100 years earlier when Abraham Lincoln’s body was transported by train from Washington to his home state of Illinois in 1865, with scheduled stops along the way where crowds of people turned out to pay their respects. The trip took nearly two weeks.

Kennedy, a U.S. senator from New York, was running for president and had just won the California primary when he was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles by Sirhan Sirhan. Kennedy died June 6, 1968.

“The Train: RFK’s Last Journey” is on display at the museum through June 10.
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Deep inside mountains along the China-Myanmar border, a 26-year-old ethnic Lisu villager, surnamed Zhang, sharpens his crossbow arrows to prepare for a hunt.

For Zhang and many other Lisu, a mostly Christian minority who inhabit the border region, the crossbow is an indispensable part of their culture dating back to 200 BC.

In a country that often bans the sale of kitchen knives during political summits, it’s still normal to see ethnic Lisu openly carrying the weapon in public.

Despite a decades-old hunting ban, law enforcement remains lax and Zhang and his friends still hunt birds and rodents for sport. Before the ban, Lisu hunters traditionally went for larger game such as bears and wild boar.

Lisu technically must have a crossbow license, which are regulated by district crossbow associations.

As more young people move to urban areas for work, Cha Hairong, head of the Liuku Township Crossbow Association of Lushui city, fears the crossbow is dying out.

Cha wants to preserve the tradition by promoting crossbow shooting as a sport and attract new enthusiasts far beyond the Nu River Valley.

“Our people’s crossbow culture must enter the National Games of China. It must enter the Asian Games. It must enter the Olympic Games! So that people all over world will understand our people’s culture,” said Cha.

The Lushui government has said it is committed to the preservation of the crossbow culture.

Crossbow tournaments offering cash prizes have been held in recent years in a bid to boost interest in the sport.

Some competitors simply enjoy the camaraderie at these events.

“This is just a time where we come here to chat and tell stories,” said Zuo Zhenfu, 27, who attended a crossbow tournament in late March.
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Fired FBI director James Comey’s memoir that details his private meetings with U.S. President Donald Trump sold some 600,000 copies in all formats in its first week, its publisher said on Tuesday, the latest in a series of best-selling political books.

Comey’s “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership,” has so far outpaced Hillary Clinton’s campaign memoir “What Happened” and journalist Michael Wolff’s behind-the-scenes White House expose “Fire and Fury” in opening week sales, according to industry figures.

Publisher Flatiron Books, a division of privately-owned Macmillan, said it has printed more than 1 million copies of Comey’s book, which has made national headlines.

Flatiron did not say whether the first week sales were global or limited to the United States.

Comey has been on a media blitz, sitting for numerous television and radio interviews, while also on a book tour that has seen him appear before sold-out audiences of more than a thousand.

The book has drawn Trump’s ire as Comey compared the president to a mob boss who stresses personal loyalty over the law and has little regard for morality or truth.

Trump dismissed Comey in May last year while the FBI was investigating allegations Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion between Russians and Trump’s campaign.

Trump has repeatedly denied any collusion.

“A Higher Loyalty,” which is billed as Comey’s thoughts on leadership, was atop Amazon.com’s bestseller list for several weeks before its release.

Clinton’s “What Happened” sold more than 300,000 copies, including hardcover, e-book, CD and digital audio, in its first week after publication in September 2017, according to CBS Corp-owned publisher Simon & Schuster.

Wolff’s portrayal of a disorganized West Wing filled with strife and aides questioning the president’s fitness to lead debuted in January with some 28,000 in sales.

Higher-than-expected demand led Macmillan imprint Henry Holt & Co to order up 2.1 million copies in its first week.

Wolff’s book has sold nearly 975,000 print copies, and Clinton’s memoir has sold some 511,000 total print copies, according to NPD BookScan.
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Summer starts early this year in Hollywood with the potentially record-breaking release Thursday of Avengers: Infinity War, and the marquee Marvel superheroes couldn’t be coming at a better time.

The box office for the year is down nearly three percent, and the industry is looking to redeem itself after last summer, which, despite hits like Wonder Woman, had its worst performance in more than a decade. Although all studios are embracing the year-round blockbuster schedule and massive hits can emerge in any month, like Black Panther in February, It in September and Star Wars in December, with work and school vacations, nothing can beat the summer’s potential.

This summer movie-going season, which typically runs from the first weekend in May through Labor Day, could get things back on track. Two of the most profitable franchises have major films on the slate. The Walt Disney Company and Marvel have Avengers: Infinity War (April 27) which some experts are predicting will score the biggest opening of all time, and Universal Pictures is releasing the sequel to the fifth-highest domestic earner of all time, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, on June 22.

And as with every summer, there are more than a handful of sequels and familiar brands coming to theaters, including: Deadpool 2 (May 18); Solo: A Star Wars Story (May 25); The Incredibles 2 (June 15); Sicario: Day of the Soldado (June 29); The First Purge (July 4); Ant-Man and the Wasp (July 6); Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (July 13); The Equalizer 2 (July 20); Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again! (July 20); and Mission: Impossible — Fallout (July 27).

But Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Fritz whose new book The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies, examines the current state of the industry, notes that while the big, franchise, tent-pole films are always the highest-grossing and that films like Jurassic World 2 and Avengers: Infinity War will be sure-fire hits, oversaturation is possible too. 

“People do like to see the big franchise tent-pole films,” Fritz said. “But even if the studios make more of them, people are not going to more movies. The more of them there are, the more they are competing for the same box office dollars and as a result you see more flops.”

According to Box Office Mojo, in 2017, movie ticket sales were at a 25-year low, and competition for audience attention is only intensifying. Netflix has a whole slate of summer films too, from an Adam Sandler and Chris Rock comedy (The Week Of, April 27) to the WWII-set adaptation of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. This year, too, has shown a concentration of box office dollars on just a few films — Black Panther, Fritz noted, accounted for 23 percent of the ticket sales in the first three months of the year.

And it is at least part of the reason why many studios are touting the diversity of their slates beyond the spectacle of superheroes and blockbusters.

“Today, it’s even more important that there is a wide variety of films out there, films that are provocative, that are thrilling, that obviously are entertaining and that you’re presenting them in new and exciting ways,” said Jim Orr, Universal Pictures’ president of domestic theatrical distribution. “We have right now a theater-going audience who is discerning and I think we need to keep that in mind with everything we put forth.”

Universal has Jurassic World and Mamma Mia! sequels, sure, but it is also releasing Dwayne Johnson’s action-thriller Skyscraper and its indie arm Focus Features has films like the dark dramedy Tully (May 4), with Charlize Theron, Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman (Aug. 10) and documentaries about Mr. Rogers (Won’t You Be My Neighbor, June 8) and Pope Francis (May 18).

Warner Bros., home of Wonder Woman, Batman and the other DC Comics superheroes, doesn’t even have a major DC film on the slate this summer (aside from the animated Teen Titans GO! To the Movies, July 27). Instead, its slate boasts films like the star (and female)-driven Ocean’s 8, with Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Rihanna and others, comedies like Tag (June 15) and Life of the Party (May 11), and an adaptation of the popular book Crazy Rich Asians (Aug. 17).

“The business just gets spread out over 12 months,” said Warner Bros. domestic distribution president Jeff Goldstein. “It’s not about one particular season and for a studio, it’s about opportunistically dating your movies in a way to maximize your box office on any given film.”

Beyond Ocean’s 8 there are a number of gender-flipped reboots and bawdy female-led comedies, like Overboard (May 4) with Anna Faris, the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels remake The Hustle (June 29) with Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson, Book Club (May 18) with Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen, and The Spy Who Dumped Me (Aug. 3) with Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon.

And action fans can look forward to Mark Wahlberg as an intelligence officer trying to smuggle a police officer out of the country in Mile 22 (Aug. 3) and Jason Statham fighting a shark in The Meg (Aug. 10).

Audiences thirsting for more unconventional fare may just have to look a little deeper for the potential hidden gems, like Uncle Drew (June 29), a comedy about an aging basketball team competing in a street tournament, with Lil Rel Howery, Kyrie Irving and Shaquille O’Neal, and Hereditary (June 8), a trippy horror about the strange things that start happening when a family’s matriarch dies.

Sundance breakouts coming this summer include Eighth Grade (July 13) from comedian Bo Burnham, which follows an eighth-grade girl around her last week of middle school, Blindspotting (July 20) about a police shooting in Oakland, and Sorry to Bother You (July 6) also Oakland-set, but with a quirkier sci-fi edge.

There’s the almost too-strange-to-be-true The Happytime Murders (Aug. 17) from Brian Henson and starring Melissa McCarthy, where puppets and humans co-exist and a private eye takes on the case of a puppet on puppet murder.

And then there’s Hotel Artemis, the directorial debut of Iron Man 3 screenwriter Drew Pearce. It’s an original action-thriller about a hospital for criminals set in a dystopian, near-future Los Angeles with a star-studded cast including Jodie Foster, Sterling K. Brown and Jeff Goldblum that Global Road Entertainment is releasing on June 8. Pearce said there was no way he could have gotten it made in the studio system.

“Hopefully this is a rallying cry. It’s not a sequel, it’s not based on a comic. It’s not a reboot. It’s its own eccentric and hopefully loveable beast of a movie,” Pearce said.

“I think what we’ve seen in the last year is movies with real personality are actually what an audience is crying out for, whether that’s tiny movies that made good like Get Out or taking the superhero blockbuster like Thor: Ragnarok and essentially making a quirky New Zealand comedy out of it,” he said. “I think there’s a real appetite for something that’s just a little different and a little less cookie-cutter.”
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Online streaming services such Spotify and Apple Music have become the recording industry’s single biggest revenue source, overtaking physical sales of CDs and digital downloads for the first time, a trade group said on Tuesday.

The rapid growth in streaming music services in recent years has led to a recovery in the fortunes of the global recorded music industry, which enjoyed its third year of positive revenue growth, according to a report by industry body IFPI.

Figures released in IFPIs Global Music Report 2018 show total recording music revenues for 2017 rose to $17.3 billion, up 8.1 percent from the previous year.

Improving finances have led to a tentative re-evaluation of the music industry by stock market investors, who had shied away from the struggling media category for much of the past decade due to a wave of piracy by users and major technology shifts.

Just in the past month, streaming music subscription leader Spotify of Sweden held a record-setting public stock offering. France’s Vivendi, the owner of Universal Music Group, the world’s biggest music label, said last week it was mulling an IPO.

Tencent Music Entertainment (TME), which attracts three-quarters of China’s booming music streaming market, has been reported by The Wall Street Journal to be eyeing a listing later in 2018. TME is controlled by internet giant Tencent .

Industry leaders say the growing adoption of paid music streaming services is enabling the market to reach new regions of the world while helping weaning a generation of music fans away from free or pirated music.

“We estimate that only half the worlds population lives in a thriving music environment and we want to bring the streaming revolution to all of it,” Stu Bergen, from Warner Music Group, told reporters in London.

During the 15 years ending in 2014, music sales plunged by 40 percent to $14.3 billion after music file-sharing services such as Napster ravaged sales of CDs while the rise of download services like Apple iTunes failed to offset those declines.

IFPI – The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry – charts the recent recovery to the rise of streaming music. It said there were 176 million users of paid streaming subscription services in 2017.

Streaming subscriptions in 2017 accounted for 38 percent of recorded music revenue, up from 29 percent in 2016. The streaming business expanded 41 percent, offsetting a 5 percent decline in physical sales and a 20 percent drop in download revenue.

Despite these improving finances, revenues for 2017 are still only 68.4 percent of the markets peak in 1999, IFPI said.

Latin America and China saw the biggest market growth, with a rise in overall music revenue of 17.7 percent and 35.3 percent respectively. The United States, Japan, Germany, Britain and France are the world’s top five music markets by revenue. Brazil ranked No.9 and China was No.10 in 2017, IFPI said.

IFPI renewed calls for governments to tackle the “value gap” between the value created by some digital platforms such as Google’s YouTube for their use of music and what they pay those creating and investing in it. Rival Facebook has been gearing to launch its own music video sharing service.

“Things are looking good but there’s a structural fault in the system. Until we fix it, it will always be a struggle, said IFPI Chief Executive Frances Moore.

Ed Sheeran ranked as the top global recording artist overtaking Drake, who slipped to No. 2 and Taylor Swift who ranked third, according to the IFPI.
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Tibetan exiles marking the 60th year of the Dalai Lama’s arrival in India after fleeing his homeland say they have successfully safeguarded Tibetan culture and preserved Tibetan identity, which Tibetan leaders warn is threatened by Chinese rule in their homeland. Some 70 schools run by the Tibetan exile administration in India, which is home to the largest Tibetan refugee community in the world, are at the heart of those efforts.
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A rare 6th century mosaic depicting the St. Andrew that was taken from a looted church in the Cyprus’ breakaway north has been returned after four decades, the head of the island nation’s Orthodox Christian Church said Monday.

 

Archbishop Chrysostomos II said that the artistry that went into the mosaic coupled with its rarity made the work a symbol of Cyprus’ “stolen heritage.”

 

It is among only a handful of mosaics to have survived a period during the 8th and 9th centuries when many Orthodox icons were destroyed.

 

The mosaic showing a bearded St. Andrew — among Christ’s first Apostles — was one of several that went missing from the Church of Panayia Kanakaria after Cyprus split into ethnic Greek and Turkish sides in 1974.

 

A Turkish art dealer, Aydin Dikmen, was arrested a quarter-century later for selling that piece and others from Kanakaria Church, as well as artworks from other churches.

 

Most of the Kanakaria Church mosaics have now been repatriated with the exception of one of St. Luke.

 

London-based Greek Cypriot art dealer Maria Paphiti located the St. Andrew mosaic in 2014 after another dealer asked her to verify the origin. When the dealer was informed that the mosaic belonged to the Cyprus Church, he agreed to return it as long as his expenses were covered.

 

Paphiti reached out to Greek Cypriot businessmen Roys Poyiadjis and Andreas Pittas for help covering the cost of the mosaic’s repatriation, which came to 50,000 euros ($61,200.)

 

Archbishop Chrysostomos honored the three of them Monday during a ceremony at Cyprus Church headquarters.

 

Cyprus hosts a second mosaic of the same rarity and time period depicting the Virgin Mary. A third resides in the Orthodox monastery of Saint Catherine at the foot of Mount Sinai.
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The United Arab Emirates will finance a $50.4 million project to rebuild Mosul’s Grand al-Nuri Mosque, famous for its eight-century-old leaning minaret, that was blown up by Islamic State militants last year, the United Nations said Monday.

Reconstruction and restoration of the mosque and al-Hadba minaret will be in partnership with the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO, Iraq’s culture ministry and the International Center for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), Dubai’s media office said in a Twitter post.

Islamic State demolished the Grand al-Nuri Mosque, which dated to the 12th century, in the final weeks of the U.S.-backed Iraqi campaign that ousted the jihadists from Mosul, their de facto capital in Iraq, last July.

The protracted and fierce urban warfare largely reduced the historic landmarks of Iraq’s second city to rubble.

Paris-based UNESCO said the project would take at least five years, with the first 12 months focused on clearing districts of debris. Other sites including historic gardens will be rebuilt, and the plan includes the building of a memorial and museum.

Mosul needs at least $2 billion of reconstruction aid, which would unblock streets and rebuild destroyed homes among other things, according to Iraqi government estimates. About 700,000 of Mosul’s population, estimated at 2 million before Islamic State seized the city in 2014, is displaced.

It was from the medieval mosque in mid-2014 that Islamic State’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a self-styled “caliphate” spanning parts of Syria and Iraq that the jihadists had overrun in a shock offensive.

The mosque was named after Nuruddin al Zanki, a noble who fought the early crusaders from a fiefdom that covered territory in modern-day Turkey, Syria and Iraq. It was built in 1172-73, shortly before his death, and housed an Islamic school.

By the time renowned mediaeval traveler and scholar Ibn Battuta visited two centuries later, the minaret was leaning.

The tilt gave the landmark its popular name — the Hunchback.

The minaret was composed of seven bands of decorative brickwork in complex geometric patterns that have also been found in Iran and Central Asia.
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Mel Brooks is just two months shy of his 92nd birthday and he still carves out time for movie nights with his pal Carl Reiner. The two just recently got together to watch a restoration of the 1938 Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland classic “The Adventures of Robin Hood.”

Classic film and proper presentation are important to the legendary comedian and filmmaker, especially in the age of streaming. This week, Brooks will be on hand to kick off the ninth annual TCM Classic Film Festival at the TCL Chinese Theater Thursday night in Hollywood with a special screening of the first film he ever directed: “The Producers.”

Brooks spoke to The Associated Press about the film, streaming and even “The Last Jedi.” Remarks have been edited for clarity and brevity.

AP: Congratulations on this new restoration of “The Producers.”

BROOKS: I’m very thrilled. TCM, these are people I really admire and I love them and God bless them for keeping all the movies that I grew up with still alive, still available. I don’t think anybody else does it, or does it as well. When they said they wanted to open their festival with the 50th anniversary of “The Producers,” I got very excited.

AP: The film has only grown in esteem too. Why do you think it’s endured?

BROOKS: Oh it’s very simple and it sounds a little egotistical, but it’s because it’s very good. The only test — real test — it’s not critics. It’s never critics. The only test is whether a movie is still around after 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years and in this case 50 years. So, you know, I know, it must be a good movie or no one would care about it 50 years later.

AP: And Martin Scorsese will be there on opening night too to get the Robert Osborne Award.

BROOKS: He was gracious enough to give me my lifetime achievement trophy at the American Film Institute. I love Marty Scorsese. As a matter of fact, this is a true story, when I was in pre-production on “The Producers,” this is a true story and he will never admit it but he and Harvey Keitel were two little ragamuffins who for some reason followed me around when we were in pre-production 50 years ago. I think they were putting together a movie called “Mean Streets” or something. It was pretty weird. But I really admire him. I admire not only his outrageous talent, “Raging Bull” is magnificent, but I admire his love and dedication to the art of movies. He’s really one of the great moviemakers of our time.

AP: Like Scorsese, you also have an encyclopedic knowledge of cinema.

BROOKS: Yeah well I’m old, that’s the secret. The secret is I’ve lived a long time. There’s a lot of people who love film. I’ve been around, so there isn’t a movie you could name that either I or Carl Reiner couldn’t give you a chapter or verse on.

AP: Do you keep up with current movies? Do you get out to the theater or watch them at home?

BROOKS: I don’t like to watch movies at home. I don’t like to watch movies on TV. I really like going to the theater. I like the community experience, especially if it’s a comedy. I like being in the dark and being transported into different worlds, it’s very important to me. And now there’s a thing that’s replaced it. It’s called streaming. I’m afraid to make another movie because I don’t want it to be seen by millions of people on a telephone. Comedies must be seen by at least 100 people in some kind of theater. It’s really heartbreaking to me. You know, movies are still good. Acting is still good. Directing is still good. Writing is still good. It’s where they’re seen that just really gets me.

AP: Is it a little bittersweet to be celebrating the 50th anniversary of “The Producers” without Gene Wilder and (composer) John Morris?

BROOKS: Yeah. It’s heart-rending but it’s what it is. And I’m glad that there will be a lot of young people in the audience who will actually understand it. I kind of understand “The Last Jedi.” I kind of understand it. There were two or three battle scenes, two big fights where I don’t really know who’s fighting and why they’re fighting, you know? But thank God for “The Empire Strikes Back” because I have something I can refer to. So I know some of the names. I know Han Solo. I know some of the names. But I don’t know why they’re fighting, I don’t really know.

I have a grandson, he’s 13 and he knows all the names. He says to me things like, “If you’ve gone to Jakku you’ve gone too far.” And I say well, “What is Jakku?” and he said, “Well it’s a planet.” I really don’t know these planets anymore. Jakku. Ok. But it’s all right. I’m catching up. Young people like big wild future fights. Fighting in the future. I kind of like it too. It’s better than fighting at 47th and Broadway, you know? Two guys get out of a car? Yeah, future fights are much better than two guys in a car. Anyway, you’ve got to ask me two more questions because I’ve got more things I’ve got to get done today.

AP: Well, I’ll keep it to one big one. What sort of impact do you think you’ve had on American comedy?

BROOKS: One never really sees themselves in relationship to the wide world. It’s rather impossible to judge your impact on moviegoers, your impact on people who like your films or who like your television. It’s serious. When they tell me, I’m glad to hear it, but frankly I’ve got to tell you honestly, I walk past the mirror and I say that’s a cute old guy. I don’t think it’s me! I’m not a cute old guy. I’m still 35, you know? We really can’t see ourselves and judge ourselves in relation to other people.
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The National Museum of American History recently celebrated one of the most iconic American filmmakers of the past 25 years: Wes Anderson. From life-sized movie-scene backdrops to organized discussions, live music and drinks, the festival had something to offer for faithful fans and newcomers alike. Masha Morton filed this report.
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A new church in South Africa celebrates drinking, and not just the communion wine. Worshippers at the Gabola church attend services in bars and taverns, where a pastor blesses their alcoholic beverages. From Washington, VOA’s Jill Craig has more on this unorthodox church.
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President Donald Trump said Saturday that he was considering “a Full Pardon!” for boxing’s first black heavyweight champion, more than 100 years after Jack Johnson was convicted by an all-white jury of “immorality” in connection with one of his relationships.

Trump tweeted that actor Sylvester Stallone had called him to share Johnson’s story. The president said Johnson’s “trials and tribulations were great, his life complex and controversial.” 

The president added: “Others have looked at this over the years, most thought it would be done, but yes, I am considering a Full Pardon!”

Johnson was convicted in 1913 of violating the Mann Act, which made it illegal to transport women across state lines for “immoral” purposes. 

The boxer died in 1946. His great-great-niece has pressed Trump for a posthumous pardon.
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Elmore Bolling defied the odds against black men and built several successful businesses during the harsh era of Jim Crow segregation in the South. He had more money than a lot of whites, which his descendants believe was all it took to get him lynched in 1947.

He was shot to death by a white neighbor, according to news accounts at the time, and the shooter was never prosecuted.

But Bolling’s name is now listed among thousands on a new memorial for victims of hate-inspired lynchings that terrorized generations of U.S. blacks. Daughter Josephine Bolling McCall is anxious to see the monument, located about 20 miles from where her father was killed in rural Lowndes County.

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, opening Thursday, is a project of the nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative, a legal advocacy group in Montgomery. The organization says the combined museum and memorial will be the nation’s first site to document racial inequality in America from slavery through Jim Crow to the issues of today.

“In the American South, we don’t talk about slavery. We don’t have monuments and memorials that confront the legacy of lynching. We haven’t really confronted the difficulties of segregation. And because of that, I think we are still burdened by that history,” said EJI executive director Bryan Stevenson.

The site includes a memorial to the victims of 4,400 “terror lynchings” of black people in 800 U.S. counties from 1877 through 1950. All but about 300 were in the South, and prosecutions were rare in any of the cases. Stevenson said they emphasized the lynching era because he believes it’s an aspect of the nation’s racial history that’s discussed the least.

“Most people In this country can’t name a single African-American who was lynched between 1877 and 1950 even though thousands of African Americans were subjected to this violence,” Stevenson said.

The organization said a common theme ran through the slayings, which it differentiates from extrajudicial killings in places that simply lacked courts: A desire to impose fear on minorities and maintain strict white control. Some lynchings drew huge crowds and were even photographed, yet authorities routinely ruled they were committed by “persons unknown.”

McCall, 75, said her father’s killing still hangs over her family. The memorial could help heal individual families and the nation by acknowledging the painful legacy of racial murders, she said.

“It’s important that the people to whom the injustices have been given are actually being recognized and at least some measure – some measure – of relief is sought through discussion,” said McCall.

Combined, the memorial and an accompanying museum a few miles away at the Equal Justice Initiative headquarters tell a story spanning slavery, racial segregation, violence and today’s era of swollen prison populations. With nearly 7 million people behind bars or on parole or probation nationwide – a disproportionate number of them minorities – the NAACP says blacks are incarcerated at a rate five times that of whites.

E.M. Beck, who studied lynching for 30 years and has written books on the subject, said the memorial might actually understate the scope of lynching even though it lists thousands of victims.

“I think it’s an underestimate because the number and amount of violence in early Reconstruction in the 1870s will probably never be known. There was just an incredible amount of violence taking place during that period of time,” said Beck, sociology professor emeritus at the University of Georgia.

The memorial’s design evokes the image of a racist hanging, featuring scores of dark metal columns suspended in the air from above. The rectangular structures, some of which lie flat on the ground and resemble graves, include the names of counties where lynchings occurred, plus dates and the names of the victims. The goal is for individual counties to claim the columns on the ground and erect their own memorials.

Not all lynchings were by hanging. The Equal Justice Initiative says it scoured old newspapers, archives and court documents to find the stories of victims who were gunned down, drowned, beaten and burned alive. The monument is a memorial to all of them, with room for names to be added as additional victims are identified.

The monument’s April 26 opening will be marked by a two-day summit focusing on racial and social justice, to be followed by an April 27 concert featuring top acts including Common, Usher, the Dave Matthews Band and The Roots.

McCall plans to view the memorial with her five living siblings. She says they suffered more than she did, since she was only 5 when their father was slain.

A newspaper account from the time said the 39-year-old Bolling, who owned a store and trucking company and farmed, was shot seven times on a road near his store by a white man, Clarke Luckie, who claimed Bolling had insulted his wife during a phone call.

McCall, who researched the slaying extensively for a book about her father, said it’s more likely that Luckie, a stockyard employee, resented her father, who had thousands of dollars in the bank, three tractor-trailer rigs and employed about 40 people.

“He was jealous and he filled him with bullets,” she said.

Luckie was arrested, but a grand jury issued no indictment and no one was ever prosecuted. McCall believes the white people who controlled the county at the time purposely covered for the killer, who died decades ago.

One of Alabama’s oldest black congregations, Old Ship A.M.E. Zion Church, sits across the street from the memorial. Its pastor plans to offer prayer and conversation to help visitors who are shaken by the experience of visiting the site.

Church members have mixed feelings about the memorial, she said. They want to acknowledge and honor the past, McFadden said, but some are wondering how they’ll personally react to visiting the memorial the first time.

“It’s something that needs to be talked about, that people need to explore. But it’s also something that has the potential to shake people to the core,” said Rev. Kathy Thomas McFadden.
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We’re firing up the five most popular songs in the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles chart, for the week ending April 21, 2018.

Things really jump on this week’s lineup as we welcome two new tracks — including the Hot Shot Debut.

Number 5: BlocBoy JB Featuring Drake “Look Alive”

BlocBoy JB crashes the Top Five party in fifth place, as “Look Alive” featuring Drake rises one slot. BlocBoy JB is James Baker, a 21-year-old rapper from Memphis, Tennessee. He started loading music on his SoundCloud page in 2012, and dropped his first mix tape in 2016. Last year, his song “Shoot” touched off a viral dance craze, and another single, “Rover,” caught Drake’s ear … leading to this collaboration.

Number 4: The Weeknd “Call Out My Name”

Things really heat up in fourth place, where The Weeknd opens with “Call Out My Name.” 

It’s a huge week for the Canadian artist: His EP “My Dear Melancholy” becomes his third chart-topping album, while all six songs open on the Hot 100. “Call Out My Name” is his eighth Top 10 hit, and his highest debut.

 

Number 3: Post Malone Featuring Ty Dolla $ign “Psycho”

While the new music is behind us, the news is still good for Post Malone and Ty Dolla $ign: “Psycho” jumps a slot to third place. Post had an unenviable task at last weekend’s Coachella Festival.

On April 14, Post performed at the Coachella Festival in Southern California … in an unenviable time slot. He essentially opened for Beyonce, who dominated the evening with a headline-making performance. Post returns to Coachella on April 21 … as will Beyonce.

Number 2: Bebe Rexha & Florida Georgia Line “Meant To Be”

Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line spend yet another week in the runner-up slot with “Meant To Be.” Speaking with Billboard at last weekend’s Academy Of Country Music Awards, Bebe says the song’s success has changed her approach to her upcoming full-length album, “Expectations.” Bebe said the new album will be more stripped-down, with honest songs and more guitar than she originally planned. Bebe cited such early influences as Alanis Morissette, No Doubt, and Lauryn Hill. “Expectations” drops on June 22.

That’s not the only new album coming our way.

Number 1: Drake “God’s Plan”

Drake bookends this week’s Top Five lineup, as “God’s Plan” spends an 11th week at No. 1. It’s now Drake’s longest-lasting countdown champ. On April 16, Drake went on Instagram wearing a jacket bearing the words “Scorpion, June Twenty Eighteen, by Drake.” Rolling Stone confirms that “Scorpion” is the title of his next album.

So … there’s something to look forward to. We’re looking forward to seeing you next week on an all-new Top Five!
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The Swedish-born producer and DJ known as Avicii has been found dead in Oman.

 

Publicist Diana Baron said in a statement that the 28-year-old DJ, born Tim Bergling, was in Muscat, Oman.

 

Avicii was a pioneer of the contemporary Electronic Dance Movement and a rare DJ capable of worldwide arena tour. He won two MTV Music Awards, one Billboard Music Award and earned two Grammy nominations. His biggest hit was “Le7els.”

 

His death comes just days after he was nominated for a Billboard Music Award for top dance/electronic album for his EP “Avicii (01).”

His hits include “Wake Me Up!”, “The Days'” and “You Make Me.”
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Bill Cosby’s lawyers are scrambling to make sure jurors at his sexual assault retrial hear from accuser Andrea Constand’s confidante before deliberations get under way next week — but they’re having trouble getting the woman to cooperate.

Sheri Williams isn’t responding to subpoena attempts, Cosby’s lawyers said. Now they’re seeking a judge’s permission to read parts of her deposition into the record just as prosecutors did with Cosby’s old testimony.

The TV star entered the courthouse Friday for Day 10 of the retrial, which is expected to go to the jury next week.

Judge Steven O’Neill was expected to rule Friday on his lawyers’ request to use Williams’ deposition.

Constand testified at Cosby’s first trial last year that she and Williams were good friends and would speak “at all hours of the day: morning, noon, and night” and were in touch as she went to police in January 2005 with allegations Cosby drugged and molested her about a year earlier.

Cosby’s lawyers said they expected Williams’ testimony to refute Constand’s claims that she was unaware he was romantically interested in her. They said she’d show that Constand “could not have been the unwitting victim” prosecutors have portrayed.

Williams’ deposition was part of Constand’s 2005 lawsuit against Cosby, who wound up settling for nearly $3.4 million.

Two weeks in, Cosby’s case is rapidly winding down.

O’Neill told jurors that there are only a few more days of testimony. Cosby lawyer Tom Mesereau went into the case predicting it would last about a month.

Drug experts

A pair of drug experts — one for the prosecution and one for the defense — spent Thursday debating one of the case’s enduring mysteries: What drug did he give his chief accuser on the night she says he molested her?

Cosby has insisted he handed 1 ½ tablets of the over-the-counter cold and allergy medicine Benadryl to Andrea Constand to help her relax before their sexual encounter at his mansion outside Philadelphia. Constand testified he gave her three small blue pills that left her incapacitated and unable to resist as he molested her.

The experts agreed that paralysis isn’t known to be a side effect of Benadryl, though its active ingredient can cause drowsiness and muscle weakness, among other side effects.

Cosby’s expert, Harry Milman, said he didn’t know of any small blue pill that could produce the symptoms Constand described.

The Cosby Show star has previously acknowledged under oath he gave quaaludes — a powerful sedative and 1970s-era party drug that’s been banned in the U.S. for more than 35 years — to women he wanted to have sex with, but denied having them by the time he met Constand in the early 2000s.

Dr. Timothy Rohrig, a forensic toxicologist called by prosecutors, testified Thursday that quaaludes can make people sleepy. But he and Milman said the drug came in large white pills — not small and blue.

Prosecutors rested their case after Rohrig got off the witness stand.

The defense immediately asked Judge Steven O’Neill to acquit Cosby and send jurors home, arguing prosecutors hadn’t proved aggravated indecent assault charges. O’Neill refused.

Upcoming testimony

Cosby’s lawyers are expected to call several people who worked for him, including an executive assistant and employees of his talent agency and publicity firm. It’s likely part of a bid to challenge the prosecution’s contention that the alleged assault happened within the 12-year statute of limitations.

Williams’ deposition testimony could have insights into what led Constand to accuse Cosby and whether the encounter was a factor in her leaving her job a few months later as the director of women’s basketball operations at Temple University.

A private investigator working for the defense said he attempted to serve Williams at least six times at her North Carolina home before sending her a FedEx package containing a subpoena and instructions to call Cosby’s legal team.

Williams’ name already has come up several times at the retrial.

Constand testified that Williams was the friend she cut and pasted emails from for a business that Cosby’s lawyers described as a Ponzi scheme.

Cosby lawyer Kathleen Bliss questioned Constand’s mother about her daughter’s friendship with Williams and suggested that they were on the outs about a month before Constand went to police.

“What has Sheri got to do with this?” Gianna Constand replied.

Charles Kipps, a writer who worked with Cosby, testified he met Constand and Williams for dinner in New York as Constand was moving back to Canada in March 2004.

The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission, which Constand has done.
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Comedy is a field still dominated by men, but that’s changing. Among the trendsetters is Suzie Afridi, a Palestinian-American stand-up comedian. Afridi says she’s probably not living the life her parents had wanted for her when she was growing up in the West Bank. But she says how else would a feminist Palestinian, married to a Muslim man, trying to raise a cross-cultural 9-year-old express herself, except by making people laugh? VOA’s Samina Ahsan takes a look at Afridi’s unlikely journey.
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No criminal charges will be filed in the 2016 death of pop star Prince from an opioid overdose, a Minnesota prosecutor said on Thursday.

“We simply do not have sufficient evidence to charge anyone with a crime related to Prince’s death,” Carver County Attorney Mark Metz told a news conference following a two-year inquiry.

Prince, 57, was found dead at his Paisley Park home and recording studio complex near Minneapolis on April 21, 2016. The official cause of death was a self-administered overdose of the painkiller fentanyl, which is 50 times stronger than heroin.

Metz said the musician died after taking a counterfeit Vicodin pill laced with fentanyl.

“Nothing in the evidence suggests Prince knowingly ingested fentanyl,” Metz said, adding that there was “no evidence that the pills that killed Prince were prescribed by a doctor.”

“There is no reliable evidence showing how Prince obtained the counterfeit Vicodin laced with fentanyl or who else may had a role in delivering the counterfeit Vicodin to Prince,” Metz said.

Investigators found evidence that Prince suffered from severe pain for a number of years and that hundreds of various sorts of painkillers were found in his residence, according to Metz.

The probe included searches of Prince’s computer, mobile phone records of his friends and interviews with associates. Some of the pills were prescribed to his bodyguard, Metz said, to protect the singer’s privacy.

Prince, known for his androgynous style and sexually charged songs, crafted a public image of living a clean and healthy vegan lifestyle.
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It’s the closest thing yet to an ABBA reunion: computerized avatars of Sweden’s legendary disco group will perform during a televised tribute to the quartet to be broadcast this autumn, ABBA member Bjorn Ulvaeus said Thursday.

Agnetha Faltskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson split up in 1982 after dominating the disco scene for more than a decade with hits like “Waterloo”, “Dancing Queen”, “Mamma Mia” and “Super Trouper”.

The group, which has sold more than 400 million albums, has not sung together on stage since 1986.

The avatars will perform an as yet unnamed ABBA song during the tribute show, produced by British broadcaster BBC and US network NBC. Other top musical artists are also expected to perform.

“It’s a kind of ABBA tribute show, but the centerpiece … will be something I call ‘Abbatars’. It is digital versions of ABBA, from 1979,” Ulvaeus told AFP.

“It’s the first time it’s ever been done.”

In order to create the avatars, “techno artists” from Silicon Valley measured the heads of the four ABBA members and photographed them from all angles.

“With videos and lipsynching, they’ll create digital copies of us from 1979,” he said, referring to the year the album “Voulez-vous” was released.

Ulvaeus was in Brussels on Thursday to try to persuade European Broadcasting Union (EBU) member networks to sign on to the show.

The EBU is the broadcaster of the Eurovision Song Contest, the competition that launched ABBA on the international scene when it won in 1974 with the hit “Waterloo”.

“I hope that some of them (European broadcasters) will join us and make this … a global program at the end of this autumn,” Ulvaeus said.

The show is expected to go on tour the following year.
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