Author: Ohart

As a student, Leah Wangari imagined a glamorous life as a globe-trotting flight attendant, not toiling in dirt and manure.

 

Born and raised in Kenya’s skyscraper-filled capital, Nairobi, the 28-year-old said farming had been the last thing on her mind. The decision to drop agriculture classes haunted her later, when her efforts in agribusiness investing while running a fashion venture failed.

 

Clueless, she made her way to an unusual new reality TV show, the first of its kind in Africa. “Don’t Lose the Plot,” backed by the U.S. government, trains contestants from Kenya and neighboring Tanzania and gives them plots to cultivate, with a $10,000 prize for the most productive. The goal: Prove to young people that agriculture can be fun and profitable.

 

“Being in reality TV was like the best feeling ever, like a dream come true for me,” Wangari said. But she found it exhausting. As callouses built up on her hands, her friends made bets that she wouldn’t succeed.

 

“Don’t Lose the Plot” is aimed at inspiring youth in East Africa to pursue agribusiness entrepreneurship. Producers said the show wants to demystify the barriers to starting a small business and challenge the prejudices against farming-related careers, even as many youths flee rural areas for urban ones.

“What we hope to achieve … is first to show people that you can make money out of farming, to change the age profile of farmers in Africa from 60 to the youth. And the next thing we want to do is to show farmers, young farmers, that they can use their mobile and technology in order to farm and achieve their goals,” producer Patricia Gichinga said. The show also offers training via online platforms and text message.

 

Attracting people to agriculture is no small challenge in Africa, where a booming young population is often put off by the image of punishing work and poor, weather-beaten farmers.

 

“Most young Africans think of farming as back-breaking labor that pays peanuts,” former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, the committee chair for the $100,000 annual Africa Food Prize and a farmer himself, wrote in the New African magazine last year. “This view, though largely inaccurate, is to some extent understandable.”

 

If Africa’s youth, who make up about 65 percent of the population, don’t venture into agribusiness, “then there is little chance that agriculture will have a transformative impact on the continent’s fortunes,” Obasanjo wrote.

 

Most experts agree that farming growth can boost African economies by increasing trade, creating more jobs and improving food self-sufficiency on a continent with the highest occurrence of food insecurity in the world.

 

But much of the potential remains untapped. Africa has over 60 percent of the world’s fertile but uncultivated land while importing $35 billion to $50 billion in food per year, the Alliance for the Green Revolution in Africa says . Weak or corrupt land governance is a challenge, as well as conflict.

 

Yields for major crops remain low compared to other regions of the world. Change must come by empowering the smallholder farmers who produce 80 percent of the food consumed on the continent, the organization says.

Now Wangari is one of them. After placing second in “Don’t Lose the Plot,” she became a full-time mushroom farmer.

 

In a damp structure of mud and clay on the outskirts of Nairobi, she has harvested her first crop and is preparing for her second. She had expected to make a $2,500 profit but took in $1,000 instead after mites from a nearby chicken house invaded and lowered her yield.

 

“When I see young men in the village now sitting idle I feel disappointed because there is a lot of idle land and they can use it to make ends meet,” she said. “They don’t require a lot of capital but they don’t have the information.”
…

Keita Horiko glided across the rink at the Ice House, picking up speed as he attempted a jump – and sprawled in a fall as he came back down. 

Unfazed, the 10-year-old U.S. Figure Skating juvenile boys champion got up and started skating again. His older brother, 13-year-old Yuki, also was on the ice, practicing his own moves as they wound down their second practice of the day before heading home to Manhattan and doing it all again the next day.

They’ve got Olympic-size dreams, and when they watch figure skating at the Pyeongchang Games, they’ve got plenty of role models – a history-making U.S. figure skating team where half of the 14 members are Asian-American.

“It’s very inspiring and it makes you think, I want to be like them,” Keita said.

While there have been Asian-American figure skaters representing the United States at past Olympics – the most high-profile being gold medalist Kristi Yamaguchi in 1992 and silver and bronze medalist Michelle Kwan in 1998 and 2002 – there never has been anything like this. 

For the women, there’s 24-year-old Mirai Nagasu and 18-year-old Karen Chen; on the men’s side, 18-year-old Nathan Chen and 17-year-old Vincent Zhou; among the ice dancers, sibling pair Alex Shibutani, 26, and Maia Shibutani, 23, and Madison Chock, 25.

It’s a heady moment, especially because Asian-Americans as a minority group have long faced stereotypes of being more about books and brains than anything else.

“I think it’s supercool and exciting,” said Mei Hoang Parmentier, 35, of Yakima, Washington, who got into watching skating when she saw Yamaguchi compete.

“For me growing up you had the stereotype of oh, Asians are good at math or academia or art or music,” she said. “I just like the idea that my daughter can see that she doesn’t have to be pigeonholed, that she can actually be good at sports.” 

Ryan Morris, 28, of Berkeley, California, agreed. The skating fan planned on making sure his young nieces and nephew watched it with him.

“They’re going to see in the most important sport in the Winter Olympics … people who look like them,” he said. “It’s a good feeling.”

Olympian Scott Hamilton said Yamaguchi’s and Kwan’s not only skating on a world stage but winning was likely an impetus for a younger generation of Asian-Americans, and their parents, even to consider it.

“A lot of it is seeing a sport and seeing others be successful and saying, I want to do that, and that’s what you need,” he said. “Winning really creates interest.”

Prior success

There’s already been some success – skating in the team event, Nagasu became the first American woman to complete a triple axel in the Olympics. That led to some controversy when Bari Weiss, an op-ed writer for The New York Times, tweeted about the fete with the words, “Immigrants: They get the job done.” Nagasu was born in California, and the since-deleted tweet was criticized by some who said it touched on Asian-American concerns about continually being assumed to be foreigners.

Even that has echoes in previous Olympics, as in 1998, when a headline after American Tara Lipinski won the gold medal read, “American beats out Kwan.” Kwan was born and raised in California.

In this year’s games, much of the hoopla around possibly winning has focused on Nathan Chen in particular.

The Salt Lake City, Utah, native, who predicted as a 10-year-old novice champion that he would be at the 2018 Olympics, has been showcased as an athlete to watch at these games because of his athleticism and multiple quadruple jumps. He is considered a front-runner in the individual men’s event, even though he got off to a rough start by finishing fourth in the men’s short program for the team skating event after an uncharacteristic fall during a triple axel.

That Asian-Americans are being represented on the men’s side as well as the women’s is important, said Phil Yu, who writes about pop culture and other subjects on his Angry Asian Man blog.

Chen’s overall presence and success “is a powerful statement for Asian-American men who have generally had this stereotype hang over them of being not athletic, not expressive,” he said.

“To have someone like Nathan Chen excel, not only excel but blow all these other people out of the water, it’s a powerful thing,” Yu said.

It certainly is for Yuki Horiko. Seeing someone Asian-American like him go after Olympic gold “gives me more confidence” for his own hopes, the 13-year-old said.

“If he can do it, maybe I can do it.”
…

Muhammad Ali knew he didn’t have much time left. His career was at stake — but more importantly, so was his freedom — as he awaited the day he would formally refuse to be inducted in the armed forces of the United States.

So he embarked on a grand tour to make some money before his fighting days came to an end.

 

The heavyweight champion fought in a soccer stadium in England, and at an ice rink in Germany. He defended his title twice in the sparkling new Astrodome in Houston, part of a flurry of seven bouts in less than a year.

 

Revered by many at his death, Ali was equally reviled at that time. Like many black athletes who stand — or take a knee — to speak out for political or social change, he paid a price for his actions.

But he never wavered, despite nearly going bankrupt and drawing the wrath of a good portion of a country that viewed him merely as a draft dodger.

 

He had announced after beating Sonny Liston to win the heavyweight title in 1964 that he converted to Islam and was a follower of the Nation of Islam.

 

“He believed 1 million percent,” said Gene Kilroy, Ali’s longtime business manager. “He never wavered because he believed Allah was on his side. People didn’t believe him, but he believed.”

 

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said it was important for black athletes to stand with Ali, to show he had support within his community.

“That was important because America didn’t think black Americans had any voice whatsoever,” the basketball legend said. “We had no political muscle. No legal means to help the brother. But we let him know that we were behind him and eventually he won his case.”

 

But Ali lost the heavyweight title and three years of what would have been the prime of his career during his forced exile from the ring.

 

The 70-year-old Abdul-Jabbar, who has had conversations with Colin Kaepernick , said the former NFL quarterback who sparked league protests by kneeling during the national anthem before games, is paying a similar price.

 

Ali “sacrificed a lot to take that position,” said Abdul-Jabbar, author of “Becoming Kareem: Growing Up On and Off the Court.”  “That was a great sacrifice on his part. That was the height of his career in his mid-20s, the heavyweight champion of the world.

 

“The same thing happened to Colin. Anybody that knows anything about football will tell you that he is a talented athlete and should be on somebody’s team.”

 

Black athletes have a storied history of being sidelined for speaking out , dating as far back to Jack Johnson in the early 1900s.

 

“It’s a testament to their commitment, their courage, their intellect, their understanding of the issues, and their potential role in rectifying some of these challenges that you have people like them in those positions who are willing to pay that price,” said Harry Edwards, longtime civil rights activist and a sociology professor emeritus at University of California, Berkeley.

 

None stand taller than Ali.

 

Ali’s final fight in the ring before taking on the government was at Madison Square Garden, where he punished Zora Folley before stopping him in the seventh round to remain unbeaten.

 

“What’s my name?” he kept asking Folley, who had refused to call him by his adopted Muslim name.

 

Folley wasn’t alone. No one knew what to call this heavyweight champion, or for that matter knew what to think about him.

 

The Associated Press used his birth name, Cassius Clay, in the story that fateful day in April 1967 in Houston. But as he stood with 11 other inductees, the U.S. government called upon Muhammad Ali not once but three times to take a step forward for induction in the U.S. Army.

 

He didn’t take the step. His religion, Ali said, did not allow him to kill in Vietnam in the name of others.

 

“I am going to die a Muslim,” he said the day before. “They don’t think I’m serious. I will show them I am.”

 

The decision never cost Ali a day in prison, even though he would be sentenced to serve five years for draft evasion. The U.S. Supreme Court later overturned his case on a technicality.

 

He didn’t set out to be a game changer. Ali wanted little more than to be the heavyweight champion, and to be free to practice his religion.

 

“I don’t have to be what you want me to be,” Ali said. “I can be what I want.”

 

But with the war raging, the Army needed recruits — and lots of them. Ali had been disqualified for service after failing an intelligence test, but the standards had been changed by the time the government came around to having him take it again — and this time he passed.

 

Ali was not going to go, something cheered by a small group of protesters in Houston but widely criticized by much of mainstream America.

 

“‘Take my tail and put it in jail,’ he would say,” Kilroy recalled. “We would discuss the Vietnam War and how the rich people in Vietnam went to Paris to live and our guys went over there and got killed. It wasn’t fair and Ali knew that.”

 

He spent his time in exile traveling to visit sick kids in hospitals and speak at college campuses. Kilroy was often at his side as Ali tried to make a few bucks with a sometimes confusing message that included his view at the time that the races should be separated.

 

“I know blacks and whites cannot get along,” he told The Boston Globe. “This is nature. It just gets worse every day.”

 

He would later be revered for taking a principled stand. Indeed, Ali would have gone to prison for his beliefs, though during much of the three years in exile he seemed just as concerned with making a living as he did with changing society.

 

Still, he managed to put words together that that perfectly expressed the views of many blacks, who made up a disproportionate percentage of draftees during the war. They came from the teachings of the Black Muslims, but somehow coming from Ali they seemed less threatening to the nation.

 

“Why should they ask me, another so-called Negro, to put on a uniform and travel 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied human rights?” he said.

Ali would eventually fight again — and do so magnificently at times. He stopped George Foreman in Zaire, nearly fought to the death with Joe Frazier in Manilla.

 

But he would never get his three years of exile back, and the many punches he took in his return ended up taking a big toll.

 

He never stopped advocating for his religion up until the time he died at the age of 74, his voice long since muted by the effects of Parkinson’s.

 

“He never had one regret,” Kilroy said. “He was convinced that there was a power above us that takes care of everything. And for Muhammad that was good enough.”

 
…

Babe, I’m gonna feed you, one top North Carolina eatery reassured Led Zeppelin’s famished frontman.

The News & Observer reports that Robert Plant and his backing band, Sensational Space Shifters, made their way to Garland after kicking off their U.S. tour in Raleigh on Friday night. Although the kitchen had closed before their arrival, the owners — James Beard Award-nominated chef Cheetie Kumar and her husband, Paul Siler, who also have a band together — were happy to show the group a whole lotta love.

Kumar whipped up several small plates, including warm hummus, fried cauliflower, and a beet and persimmon salad, free of charge. In return, the band sang her “Happy Birthday” and invited the couple to Sunday’s Charlotte show. It wasn’t actually Kumar’s birthday.
…

Tens of thousands of revelers are expected on New Orleans streets for parades and rowdy fun as Mardi Gras caps the Carnival season in a city with a celebration of its own, its 300th anniversary.

The anniversary of this Louisiana port city will feature prominently in Fat Tuesday’s festivities.

Rex, New Orleans’ oldest parading Carnival group, is celebrating the tricentennial with 21 of its 28 floats commemorating its history from those who lived in the area before Europeans settled it in 1718 to the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. Other floats in the Rex parade include one for St. Louis Cathedral, the descendant of a church built the year of the city’s founding, and the yellow fever, which killed more than 41,000 people between 1815 and 1905.

Rex and Zulu are the two major parades in New Orleans on Fat Tuesday, which is a state holiday.

Families jam the sidewalks and camp out in the broad medians to watch with small children often perched in wooden seats atop ladders near the front.

Tuesday’s forecast was for cloudy skies, temperatures in the 60s (15 Celsius), and a 20 percent chance of thunderstorms, which carry the threat of stopping parades.

The holiday climaxes a two-week Carnival season, which draws about 1 million visitors and pumps about $840 million into the city’s economy, according to the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau. It also means two weeks of 12-hour, no-vacation shifts for the city’s police, who are reinforced by 165 state troopers and officers and deputies from half a dozen nearby areas.

Neighborhood organizations are among the first groups out on Mardi Gras. There’s St. Anne’s parade, an eclectic walking parade and the North Side Skull and Bone Gang, which wakes people up and tells children to behave.

The Half-Fast Walking Club, organized by the late clarinetist Pete Fountain, rolls and strolls to the Quarter from the Commander’s Palace restaurant.

Then comes the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, a historically African-American group that parades in blackface and grass skirts. After Zulu comes Rex which is followed by two “truck parades” with floats built on flatbed trailers and decorated by the families, neighborhood groups and other organizations riding in them.

The family party along the parade routes generally ends after the parades, but the French Quarter’s rowdier Mardi Gras continues until midnight, when a wedge of mounted New Orleans police officers clears the streets.
…

Dallas Brown can still see the bullets coming for him 50 years later, smacking into the dirt at his feet as north Vietnamese soldiers fired on his platoon during an ambush deep in the jungle.

 

Minutes later, as the deadly firefight wound down, Brown and his fellow soldiers in the 101st Airborne would be immortalized.

 

In one of the most searing images of the Vietnam War, Brown grimaces as he lies on the ground with a back injury. Not far away, a platoon sergeant raises his arms to the heavens, seemingly seeking divine help.

 

Landing on the front page of The New York Times, the black and white image by Associated Press freelancer Art Greenspon gave Americans back home an unflinching look at the conditions soldiers endured in what would become the war’s deadliest year. Captured on April 1, 1968, it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and appeared prominently in Ken Burns’ recent Vietnam War documentary.

But for the young Americans who have decided to talk about it a half-century later, it was merely a moment in another sweltering day in a Southeast Asian jungle with well-hidden enemies all around. Some of them have spent years putting the experience in perspective.

 

“When I look at that picture now, I say, ‘If I can survive that, I can survive anything,'” said Tim Wintenburg, who in the photo helps carry a wounded soldier over brush hacked away to create a helicopter landing zone.

 

Sgt. Maj. Watson Baldwin has his arms raised to guide in a helicopter that would take away the wounded men, including one shot in the leg by the Vietnamese soldier who was firing at Brown. Baldwin died in 2005, according to Fort Campbell officials who recently tracked down soldiers in the photo.

 

Brown, who lives near Nashville, and Wintenburg, of Indianapolis, met with an Associated Press reporter at Fort Campbell in Kentucky to recount the events surrounding the photo — their first news media interviews ever on the war.

After he received his draft notice in 1965, Wintenburg visited a recruiting office and was told he looked “like Airborne material.”

 

By early 1968, he was 20 years old and on the front lines.

 

Brown, who was 18 when he landed in Vietnam, remembers being inspired by “The Ballad of the Green Berets.” He was encouraged to go through airborne training. Both men ended up at Fort Campbell, home of the 101st Airborne.

 

In the spring of 1968, Brown and Wintenburg’s squad was in the dangerous A Shau Valley on a weekslong “search and destroy” mission, meaning they never took prisoners. Firefights were commonplace.

 

Brown recalls their battalion commander, a lieutenant colonel, telling them before one mission: “You get a body count, you get a prize.”

 

“To my knowledge we might have taken a handful of prisoners the whole time we was in Vietnam,” Brown said.

 

The soldiers were hiking up a slippery mountain trail after a monsoon when they paused to eat lunch.

 

Brown, sitting on his rucksack with his M-16 rifle across his lap, thought he saw a sapling move down a ravine. He didn’t feel any wind. He switched his rifle to full-automatic as an enemy fighter stepped into view.

 

Known in the platoon as “hillbilly” for his Tennessee drawl and proficiency with a rifle, Brown fired on the first north Vietnamese soldier, killing him and then another behind him. He was reloading when a third enemy fighter fired back.

 

“You know you see these movies where you see clods of dirt jumping up? I could see them, I mean they was coming right at me and that’s when I got off that rucksack,” Brown said. “I thought, this guy, he means to kill me as sure as the world.”

 

Brown lunged for cover, and a bullet struck the leg of a soldier who had been behind him. Once the ambush was put down, Brown carried the wounded man up the hill, injuring his back on the way.

 

Brown grimaced as the photo was snapped. Wintenburg, who had lost his helmet, helped the wounded soldier up to the landing spot. He glanced back toward Greenspon.

 

Greenspon now lives in Connecticut. He declined to be interviewed, saying the soldiers should always be the focus of any story about the photograph.

Brown and Wintenburg each spent about a year in Vietnam, and both men struggled with anxiety for years. But now, 50 years later, they relish opportunities to reunite with fellow 101st Airborne members.

 

Brown has a copy of the photo hanging in his home, and he has plenty of stories of how he convinced relatives and friends that he’s in it. A few years ago, Brown’s granddaughter and her boyfriend — now her husband — asked about it. Seeing it through their eyes reminded him of the growing pride he now takes in his piece of history.

 

Wintenburg shares that pride, though he is perhaps more sanguine about what led him to that moment.

 

“We didn’t really have a choice back then,” he said. “We did what we had to do.”
…

Vic Damone, whose mellow baritone once earned praise from Frank Sinatra as “the best pipes in the business,” has died in Florida at the age of 89, his daughter said.

 

Victoria Damone told The Associated Press in a phone interview Monday that her father died Sunday at a Miami Beach hospital from complications of a respiratory illness.

 

Damone’s easy-listening romantic ballads brought him million-selling records and sustained a half-century career in recordings, movies and nightclub, concert and television appearances.

 

Damone’s career began climbing in the 1940s after he won a tie on the radio show “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Hunt.” His hit singles included “Again,” “You’re Breaking My Heart,” “My Heart Cries for You,” “On the Street Where You Live” and, in 1957, the title song of the Cary Grant film “An Affair to Remember.”

 

Damone’s style as a lounge singer remained constant through the years: straightforward, concentrated on melody and lyrics without resorting to vocal gimmicks. Like many young singers of his era, he idolized Sinatra.

 

“I tried to mimic him,” Damone said in a 1992 interview with Newsday. “I decided that if I could sound like Frank maybe I did have a chance. I was singing his words, breathing his breaths, (doing) his interpretation, with the high notes, the synergy.”

Sinatra and Damone, along with Tony Bennett, Perry Como, Dean Martin and others, formed a group of Italian Americans who dominated the postwar pop music field. And far from resenting the mimicry, Sinatra praised Damone’s singing ability.

 

Born Vito Farinola in Brooklyn, New York, on June 12, 1928 to immigrants from Bari, Italy, Damone dropped out of high school after his father, an electrician, was injured on the job.

 

Damone adopted his mother’s maiden name when he began his career, after catching an early break while working as an usher at the Paramount Theater in New York City, according to a family statement.

 

The 14-year-old bumped into Perry Como in an elevator at the theater, stopped it between floors, and started singing. Then he asked Como whether he should continue voice lessons, and Como said simply, “Keep singing!” and referred him to a local bandleader.

 

Damone still drew crowds in nightclubs and concerts into his 70s, before illness prompted his retirement to Palm Beach with his fifth wife, fashion designer Rena Rowan.

 

Damone appeared in several MGM musicals and he was originally cast in “The Godfather,” but the role of a budding singer seeking mob help in a Hollywood career eventually went to Al Martino.

 

He wrote in his memoir, “Singing Was the Easy Part,” that he never considered himself a showman like Milton Berle or Sammy Davis Jr.

 

“That wasn’t my particular gift,” he wrote. “My gift was singing.”

 

In 1954, Damone married the Italian actress Pier Angeli, after her mother refused to allow her to marry James Dean. The couple had a son and named him Perry before divorcing in 1959.

 

Marriages to actress Judy Rawlins, with whom he had three daughters, and Houston socialite Becky Ann Jones also ended in divorce. In 1987, Damone and actress-singer Diahann Carroll married after a long romance, and they paired for night club and concert tours. They divorced in 1996.

 

Rowan died in November 2016.

 

Damone is survived by two sisters, his three daughters and six grandchildren.
…

A drag queen is headlining the parade of one of Rio de Janeiro’s most storied samba schools Monday night as Carnival celebrations across the country continue the tradition of ridiculing cultural icons and pushing social boundaries.

Pabllo Vittar will perform with Beija-Flor de Nilopolis, whose theme is promoting tolerance. Last year’s champions, Portela, are to portray the story of Jews who fled persecution in Europe for Brazil.

Vittar is a sensation in the Brazilian pop scene, and Carnival has long been a place to celebrate sexuality and diversity. But Brazil also has some of Latin America’s highest rates of violence against gay and transgender people, and Beija-Flor will tackle intolerance against the LGBT community and others.

“It will be a parade that highlights such an important theme … because we see a lot of scenes of homophobia and transphobia in the streets,” Vittar told Epoca magazine in a recent interview. “It’s very important to address this theme at Carnival so we can disseminate this message [of tolerance] every day.”

Later Monday, the gay rights organization Gay Group of Bahia will host its annual LGBT Costume Contest in Salvador. Performances at the event will highlight Brazil’s high rates of violence against women as well as homophobia and transphobia.

In the northeastern city of Olinda, meanwhile, revelers began the annual parade of puppets. The giant blow-up dolls depicted political figures like U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, as well as celebrities from around the globe, including Michael Jackson, the Beatles and Brazilian sports and pop stars.

At Carnival, everything is up for ridicule, and many Brazilians have seized the moment to criticize their leaders at a time of intense dissatisfaction with the political class. On Sunday, a float in Rio’s samba parade featured a plastic butt with Mayor Marcelo Crivella’s name on it. At parties across the country, revelers have denounced President Michel Temer, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and other politicians.

Adding to the air of unease, Rio is experiencing a crime wave as drug gangs battle it out in the streets. Authorities promised 17,000 security forces would patrol every day during Carnival celebrations, but Brazilian media reported several muggings over the weekend in the upscale, beachside neighborhoods of Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon that are popular with tourists.
…

The frigid weather at the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang is causing some schedule changes. 

On Monday, the below freezing temperatures caused the postponement of the women’s giant slalom less than three hours before it was supposed to start. That followed Sunday’s postponement of the men’s down hill. 

Both races will be held Thursday, but on different slopes. 

The U.S., meanwhile, won its second gold medal and it was in snowboarding, again. 

Jamie Anderson defended her title in Olympic women’s slopestyle snowboarding. She was one of the few able to navigate the tricky series of rails and jumps safely as the wind wreaked havoc on the field. 

She is the first woman to win multiple Olympic gold medals in snowboarding. 

Laurie Blouin of Canada came in second, Ennie Rukajarvi won third. 

Seventeen-year-old Red Gerard, from Silverthorne, Colorado won the gold in men’s slopestyle snowboarding in his debut Olympics.

Mirai Nagasu, of Montebello,California, became the first American woman – and the third overall – to land a triple axel in the women’s free skate in the team competition. 

She accomplished the feat 21 seconds into her routine and the crowd gave her a standing ovation. 

In team figure skating, Canada took home the gold medal, with the Russians earning the silver and the Americans taking the bronze.

In the men’s luge, Austria’s David Gleirscher took the gold while Chris Mazder won the silver to give the U.S. its first men’s singles medal in the event. Germany’s Johannes Ludwig took the bronze.

Signs are everywhere around the Olympics reminding people to wash their hands in the fight against the norovirus that has broken out. 

Another 19 cases of norovirus have been reported, bringing the total to 177 since February 1. 

The Centers for Disease Control says the norovirus is a very contagious virus that can be transmitted from an infected person, contaminated food or water, or by touching contaminated surfaces. The agency says the virus can lead to stomach pain, nausea, diarrhea and vomiting. 
…

Ziad Doueiri’s film ‘The Insult’ is one of this year’s Oscar nominees in the Foreign Film category. The film, largely a courtroom drama, tackles the cultural, religious and political rifts that exist in Lebanon since 1948. Doueiri spoke with VOA’s Penelope Poulou about the film’s hard-hitting elements and its message of reconciliation between Moslems and Christians.
…

A teenager has won the first U.S. medal at the Pyeongchang Olympics, and it’s gold.

Seventeen-year-old Red Gerard, from Silverthorne, Colorado, in his debut Olympics, won the men’s slopestyle snowboarding competition.

“My emotions are crazy,” he said after winning. “I was just so happy to land the run and to make it to the podium … I’m so excited.”

In his final run Sunday, Gerard triumphed over Canadians Max Parrot, who won the silver and Mark McMorris, who won a second bronze after Sochi four years ago.

When asked how the Canadians felt about the youngster’s win, Gerard said, “They were all so excited. It was awesome. We are all friends … they were just happy that we all landed runs.”

High winds have led Pyeongchang Olympic officials to postpone the men’s downhill skiing event planned for Sunday.

Winds were gusting to 72 kph at the Jeongseon Alpine Center. The event has been rescheduled for Thursday. The men’s super-G and other speed racing events will be moved back a day, to Friday, the International Ski Federation (FIS) said.

“We kind of expected this downhill to be postponed due to wind, but at the same time the guys were charged up and ready to go,” said Sasha Rearick, the U.S. men’s alpine head coach. “With this being an outdoor sport, it is not abnormal.”

On Saturday, Norway’s Marit Bjoergen entered the history books at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. She became the most decorated female winter Olympian of all time when she won a silver medal in the 15 K skiathlon. It was her 11th medal — six gold, four silver and a bronze.

Charlotte Kalla of Sweden won this year’s first gold medal when she won the skiathlon. She won the race by more than 7 seconds, breaking away from the pack in the final two kilometers to avenge her loss to Bjoergen in the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

Krista Parmakoski of Finland won the bronze. U.S. skier Jessie Diggens finished fifth, the best-ever cross-country finish by an American woman.

The winter games run through Feb. 25.

Rafael Saakov of VOA’s Russian Service contributed to this report.
…

High winds have led Pyeongchang Olympic officials to postpone the men’s downhill skiing event planned for Sunday.

Winds were gusting to 72 kph (45 mph) at the Jeongseon Alpine Center. The event will now be held Thursday. The men’s super-G and other speed racing events will be moved back a day, to Friday, the International Ski Federation (FIS) said.

Sasha Rearick, the U.S. men’s alpine head coach, said, “We kind of expected this downhill to be postponed due to wind, but at the same time the guys were charged up and ready to go. With this being an outdoor sport, it is not abnormal.”

On Saturday, Norway’s Marit Bjoergen entered the history books at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. She became the most decorated female winter Olympian of all time when she won a silver medal in the 15K skiathlon. It was her 11th medal — six gold, four silver and a bronze. 

Charlotte Kalla of Sweden won this year’s first gold medal when she took top honors in the skiathlon. She won the race by more than 7 seconds, breaking away from the pack in the final two kilometers to avenge her loss to Bjoergen in the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

Krista Parmakoski of Finland won the bronze. U.S. skier Jessie Diggens finished fifth, the best cross-country finish ever by an American woman.

Medals will also be awarded Sunday in the women’s giant slalom, men’s 10K sprint biathlon, men’s skiathlon, team figure skating, women’s freestyle skiing, men’s luge, men’s and women’s snowboarding, and men’s speedskating. 

The winter games run through February 25.
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We’re soaring with the five most popular songs in the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles chart, for the week ending February 10, 2018.

This is a rare week. Not only do we get a new No. 1 single, it’s also the Hot Shot Debut.

Number 5: Bruno Mars Featuring Cardi B “Finesse”

Number 5: Let’s open in fifth place, where Bruno Mars and Cardi B slip a slot with “Finesse.”

Bruno has a message for the National Football League: Pick a hip-hop artist to be the halftime entertainer at the 2019 Super Bowl. Justin Timberlake was the headliner at the February 4 game. Bruno’s opinion carries a lot of weight: He performed at the 2014 Super Bowl with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and again in 2016 with Beyonce and Coldplay.

Number 4: Post Malone Featuring 21 Savage “Rockstar”

Post Malone and 21 Savage also dip a notch in fourth place with their former champ “Rockstar.” 

Post still hasn’t set a release date for his Beerbongs & Bentleys album, but when it arrives, it should be interesting. Post says he’s been listening to the blues, Nirvana, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Fleet Foxes for inspiration, and Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee reportedly appears on one track.

Number 3: Camila Cabello Featuring Young Thug “Havana”

Camila Cabello and Young Thug lose their Hot 100 crown this week, as “Havana” sinks to third place. 

Camila has been confirmed as a guest performer on an upcoming episode of the popular UK TV series “Dancing On Ice.” The big night happens on February 18. We’re guessing that Camila will not actually sing on the ice.

Number 2: Ed Sheeran “Perfect”

Ed Sheeran holds in the runner-up slot with “Perfect.” Ed wrote this song for his then-girlfriend, Cherry Seaborn. The pair are now engaged. Ed is friends with footballer Wayne Rooney — who says he will sing at Ed’s wedding … whether he likes it or not.

Number 1: Drake “God’s Plan”

We always like a new singles champion, and this one’s huge: Drake debuts in the top slot with “God’s Plan.” It’s a record-breaker, too.

The song broke an on-demand streaming record, with 68 million streams coming out of the gate. Drake has two debuts in this week’s Top 10, with “Diplomatic Immunity” opening in seventh place. This is the second time he’s done this …”Passionfruit” and “Portland” both debuted in the Top 10 last April. Drake is the only artist to accomplish this chart feat.

What will happen next week? Join us in seven days to find out!

 
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The 2018 Winter Olympic Games have officially begun in Pyeongchang, South Korea, with a spectacular light show and the traditional parade of athletes entering the Olympic stadium.

This year, Nigeria has its first team in the Winter Games — a women’s bobsled team. They’ll be hurtling down the ice at speeds of 150 kilometers an hour.

Other athletes originally from Africa will be making history at the games.

Akwasi Frimpong will represent Ghana on the skeleton, a small sled that rockets down the icy course. Simidele Adeagbo will be Nigeria’s first female skeleton competitor. Eritrea has its first competitor, skier Shannon Ogbani Abeda, who was born in Canada to Eritrean immigrants.

And Maame Biney, who was born in Ghana, has become a darling of the U.S. speed skating team.

The Winter Games run through February 25.
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It’s not every day that a professional athlete goes back to school.

World champion and Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles has 19 medals to her name, but one accolade was out of her reach, until now.

Starting this month, the most decorated American gymnast of all time will be pursuing a college degree.

Before the Rio Summer Games in 2016, Biles committed to the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). But her demanding schedule made studying full time next to impossible.

 

WATCH: Olympic Gymnast Simone Biles Takes On New Role: College Student

The University of the People, a nonprofit, tuition-free online university, seems to be a better fit. Biles has become a global ambassador for the 9-year-old institution and is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration.

“I think it’s a good time to start, so that you don’t wait too-too long to start. So that you won’t want to go back,” Biles told VOA News. “I could have picked any time, but this was the perfect opportunity.”

The accredited online university also offers an MBA (master’s of business administration) degree, as well as undergraduate degrees in computer science and health science.

Its tuition-free classification is reliant on private and public donations. More than 6,000 administrators and educators from the likes of Yale University, New York University and the University of California Berkeley volunteer their time and expertise. Class materials are open source, specifically, Open Educational Resources (OER) that live in the public domain and are licensed for public use.

Students do pay assessment fees of $100 per exam. The university estimates an associate degree costs $2,060, while a bachelor’s degree is approximately $4,060.

Biles has established a scholarship fund in her name, to help incoming students with these costs. The fund targets those who have been in foster care, like Biles herself.

“A lot of them age out of the system and they don’t feel like they have the same opportunity as other kids,” Biles said.

The school’s unconventional approach is perfect for its latest student, whose journey thus far has been anything but ordinary.

“I haven’t had a traditional school experience for a while, actually going into a classroom and sitting down,” said Biles, who left public school to be homeschooled during her high school years.

“The traditional way won’t work for me and I understand that. So it’s OK … online it is,” Biles said, laughing.

Perhaps it’s a bid for a bit of normalcy, after the recent sex abuse scandal involving Larry Nassar rocked the gymnastics world. Biles’ name was one of the biggest on the list of victims. But she’s ready to move on.

“I didn’t want the headlines, once I go out and compete again, to be, you know, that be the title of me, rather than what I have to offer for this sport,” Biles said.

Her dreams also go beyond gymnastics, into the corporate world.

“I’ve always wanted to work in the business industry,” Biles said. “My mom’s always worked in business and my brothers, too, and they’ve been very good at what they’ve done so hopefully I will, too.”

Biles said the same drive that shaped her athletic career will help her academic pursuits.

“I feel like I’ve always been dedicated, and I never stopped until I got what I wanted. So being driven helps,” Biles said.
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Salt Lake City, Utah, which hosted the Winter Olympics in 2002, is considering making a bid for the Winter Games in 2026 or 2030. Rafael Saakov from VOA’s Russian Service recently visited the Salt Lake City venues to see what they look like 16 years after the Olympics.
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It will be lights out on part of the Statue of Liberty as work is done on the monument’s electrical system.

 

The National Park Service says the lights that illuminate the exterior of the statue will be turned off Thursday night. But the lights on the statue’s torch, crown and pedestal will still be on.

 

The park service says the exterior lighting shutdown is necessary to complete work on Liberty Island’s electrical system. The work is being conducted at night to avoid daytime electrical outages that would affect visitors.

 

 
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When she emerged from obscurity in the rock formations of South Dakota in the early 1990s, the world’s largest Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton was only beginning a long legal and physical journey. Known as Sue, named for the paleontologist Sue Hendrickson who discovered her, she eventually arrived as the star attraction at Chicago’s Field Museum in 2000. As VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports, nearly twenty years later Sue is once again… on the move.
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An Egyptian startup is designing video games in which the object is not just to win, but to become aware of social issues. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Bollywood’s first film on menstrual hygiene, due for release on Friday, has boosted business for entrepreneurs providing affordable sanitary pads to women in India, manufacturers said.

Even the trailer for “Padman” – which depicts one of Hindi cinema’s most popular action heroes, Akshay Kumar, wearing a sanitary pad – has generated debate over the taboo subject of menstrual hygiene in India, they said.

“We used to get six to seven calls a day earlier, but now we get around 20 calls from people inquiring about our machines after the ”Padman“ trailer was released,” said Suhani Mohan, co-founder of Saral Designs, a Mumbai-based startup.

“Padman” is inspired by the story of Arunachalam Muruganantham, who wanted to “please his wife” by replacing her rag cloth with a sanitary pad.

When she said that buying pads would cut into their milk budget, Muruganantham set off on a mission to provide low-cost pads to women across India.

For many Indian women, especially adolescent girls, menstruation is shameful and uncomfortable.

From being barred from religious shrines to dietary restrictions to a lack of toilets and sanitary products, they face many challenges when they have their periods, campaigners say.

One of the machine orders Mohan received was from 52-year-old Sivasankar Ramamoorthy, a resident of the southern city Madurai, about 1,400 km (870 miles) southeast of Mumbai.

“The pads available in the market are very expensive,” Ramamoorthy told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

“I am doing this for my wife and daughter, and I hope to make pads accessible to more women.”

Other manufacturers have improved on Muruganantham’s model while keeping costs down.

Subhankar Bhattacharya designed a machine making pads with wings in 2016, based on feedback from rural women and girls around the eastern city of Kolkata.

“We sold four machines in the last two years, but we got 10 orders in the last two months,” he said, adding that eight pads sell for 22 Indian rupees ($0.34).

“(The film) is giving a boost to social enterprises.”
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Female musicians in Nashville have long complained about the lack of representation on country radio, but now a collective of female songwriters are singing “Time’s Up.”

The Song Suffragettes were formed in 2014 in response to a growing concern that women were being excluded by labels and radio and spurred by comments by a radio consultant that compared women to tomatoes in a salad. Only 18 out of the top 100 country singles of 2017 had a female artist featured, a percentage that has been stagnating in the genre for years. 

Kalie Shorr is one of the original members of the collective that plays in a writer’s round every Monday night at the Listening Room Cafe, just a couple of miles away from Music Row. 

“We had all individually gone into a stuffy Music Row office and had someone say, ‘No,’ followed by ‘because you’re a woman,”’ said Shorr. “I have even had label executives say, ‘I am just really burned out on women right now.”’

But Shorr and her fellow singers said the (hash)MeToo and Time’s Up movements that started in Hollywood and spread to other industries is a critical step forward in a conversation that has always been a secret in many industries. Shorr, along with another Suffragette singer Lacy Green, were inspired to write “Time’s Up” after watching the scores of actresses dressed in black at the Golden Globes. 

The music video for “Time’s Up” features the 23 singers dressed all in black, linked arm in arm, singing lyrics like “The scales are tipping, the veil is ripping and the clock is ticking `cause the time’s up.” Proceeds from the sale of the song will go to the Time’s Up organization, which has established a legal defense fund. 

It’s one of the few signs that more artists in country music are willing to address sexual harassment. Keith Urban played a song “Female” on the Country Music Association Awards last November that seemed to address the (hash)MeToo movement. The Country Radio Seminar, an annual gathering of the top country radio stations in the country held this week in Nashville, will have a panel on sexual harassment. 

But other signs suggest that the genre still has a long way to go. For example, a radio host who was fired after he lost a groping lawsuit to superstar Taylor Swift got a new gig at a Mississippi country station this year. And a country singer named Katie Armiger is in the midst of an ongoing lawsuit with her former label Cold River Records, in which she has alleged sexual harassment by unnamed radio personnel. Cold River Records has denied they were aware of the harassment.

The movement has affected some of the Song Suffragettes personally and directly. 

“It’s one thing to see artists come out about it, but actually a few weeks ago, one of my family members came out and said that she had been sexually assaulted,” said Tiera, who goes by her first name as an artist.

Shorr said that those women who have shared their stories about harassment or assault have helped to change the attitude about what was once a very secretive topic. 

“I 100 percent understand why no one would want to share their story, but now it’s like we’re creating this culture where it’s OK to speak about it,” Shorr said. “That’s why I really love this movement, because everybody is just sticking together.”

Candi Carpenter, a new artist on the Sony Music Nashville label, said that the national statistics for sexual assault are staggering, but support is available. 

“Letting victims of this kind of behavior know that when they come forward, they will be believed and they will be supported by a community,” Carpenter said. “That’s what our community does for each other and that’s what we need to do for each other as a country.”

They agreed that the recent Grammy Awards last month missed an opportunity to highlight the work of female musicians. The Recording Academy came under fire for comments made by President Neil Portnow that women needed to “step up” after only two women won awards during the telecast. 

Shorr said while she loved Kesha’s performance of “Praying,” she said the Recording Academy should have given Lorde, the only woman nominated for album of the year, a performance slot.

She said the academy “missed the mark a little bit” and urged members to “look at the bigger picture” and ask: How can we help? “Not to anticipate that kind of backlash is a little bit surprising to me.”
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Billionaire casino mogul Steve Wynn has resigned as head of Wynn Resorts, less than two weeks after the Wall Street Journal published a report about decades of allegations of sexual misconduct.

The Journal article detailed several incidents in which Wynn allegedly pressured staff to perform sex acts. The allegations include those from a manicurist who claims she was forced to have sex with Wynn in 2005, shortly after he opened his flagship Wynn Las Vegas. The paper said she was later paid a $7.5 million settlement.

Wynn has denied the accusations, including again in a statement issued Tuesday announcing he was stepping down.

“In the last couple of weeks, I have found myself the focus of an avalanche of negative publicity. As I have reflected upon the environment this has created — one in which a rush to judgment takes precedence over everything else, including the facts — I have reached the conclusion I cannot continue to be effective in my current roles,” he said.

Wynn is a towering figure in the gambling world who helped revitalize Las Vegas with resorts such as The Bellagio, The Mirage and Treasure Island.

In addition to being a business mogul, Wynn also served as the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee before resigning from that post last month, and has been a large contributor to the Republican Party.
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Will Disney’s upcoming streaming services be the mouse that roared … or squeaked?

Disney already owns enviable entertainment properties including Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars. Now, it’s looking to add Fox’s TV and movie studios as it prepares to launch two streaming services, one for sports and another focused on entertainment.

In announcing first-quarter earnings Tuesday, CEO Bob Iger said he was “excited about what lies ahead” including the sports streaming service and the pending deal for Fox. Adjusted income of $1.89 per share beat analyst expectations, as did revenue of $15.35 billion, a 4 percent increase.

But the same financial report hints at trouble with the lucrative ESPN cable channel. Revenue in the cable networks business fell 1 percent to $4.5 billion, hurt by an ESPN revenue decline. The ESPN decline resulted from lower ad revenue, though that was partly offset by growth in fees from cable distributors and lower programming costs.

Disney announced a $5-a-month price for the ESPN Plus streaming service, which is coming this spring.

The services represent Disney’s big bet on what the next generation of entertainment will look like: more streaming and more choices. A streaming business is critical for Disney because the ESPN channel has been losing subscribers as more people ditch cable and satellite TV services and stream video on Netflix, Amazon and Hulu instead.

While Disney is trying to brace for the future with the streaming services, questions remain about whether they will offer enough to take on well-established services such as Netflix.

Rich Greenfield of BTIG Research said the ESPN streaming service seems more like a niche offering because it won’t have any content from the ESPN channel.

Stuck in the past?

And while the Disney-branded entertainment service could be a hit, with classic and upcoming movies from the studio, shows from Disney Channel, and the Star Wars, Marvel and Pixar movies, that service isn’t launching until late 2019.

“Our fear is that they’re just not all in on streaming,” Greenfield said. “If they want to be successful, they have to bring all their content to streaming.”

Instead, he said, Disney is dipping its toes in streaming while trying to preserve its traditional business models.

To boost revenue from theatrical screenings, studios such as Disney typically wait months to sell or rent movies on DVDs and a year to make them available through subscription services such as HBO. But such a timeline is quickly becoming a relic of the past. People now expect things immediately, like being able to watch a Disney movie on an Xbox right after it is released in the theater.

“That’s very hard to balance and be successful,” Greenfield said.

The Fox factor

The Fox content could help give viewers more reason to subscribe to yet another streaming service. Disney has offered $52.4 billion to buy the bulk of 21st Century Fox in a deal expected to close in the next 12 to 18 months. When that happens, Disney will own the Fox movie and television studios, cable TV networks such as FX and National Geographic, and 22 regional sports networks.

But many of the movies and shows from those businesses are already licensed out in the short term; for example, HBO gets Fox movies until 2022.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Steven Cahall is more positive about the prospects. Notably, Disney gets Fox’s share in Hulu, giving it a controlling stake. Cahall said the Fox video will help both Hulu and the upcoming Disney-branded streaming service.

“Disney is likely to be a global player in streaming in the coming years given the breadth and depth of its content,” he said.

In a call with investors, CEO Iger offered some details on what Disney’s streaming service might look like once it launches in late 2019.

He said Disney will “have an opportunity to spend more” on original programs for the service, but won’t have to be as aggressive as Netflix because Disney already has popular brands like Marvel and Pixar. He said the company is developing original shows around Star Wars, High School Musical and Pixar’s Monsters Inc.
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The clothes, the hair, the confidence — the look of Korean pop music can feel like high fashion or just plain quirky. But that’s what draws fans to South Korea’s most famous musical export.

As much as the music and lyrics themselves, the perfectly symmetrical stars and the meticulous choreography define K-pop for a country obsessed with image and beauty.

And if you’ve managed to elude the beats and flash of its music and videos until now, rest assured it will be hard to bypass this cultural phenomenon during the Winter Olympics.

Among the most viewed YouTube videos of all time with more than 3 billion hits is Psy’s 2012 earworm Gangnam Style. But that is hardly representative of the genre. It’s actually a parody of K-pop drawing on its own absurdities, which experts say was fully embraced locally when it became a global touchstone of Korean culture.

Though the multibillion-dollar industry hasn’t yet become truly mainstream in the U.S. and other Western countries, there’s fanatical interest among millions of people old and young across Asia and in pockets of the rest of the world.

The South Korean people and government are proud of their infectious brand of music and music videos, which feature Korean lyrics dashed with catchy English phrases, vibrant fashion and elaborate dance moves. Its fans are famous for their devotion to their favorite bands, which has created a spin-off hobby involving a sizable number of Koreans gathering to re-create the complicated routines with seriousness and accuracy.

And in the U.S., American youth have driven demand for formal programs catering to their obsession. Clark Sorensen, Korea history professor and the director of the University of Washington’s Center for Korea Studies in Seattle, said he developed official course material about three years ago because his students showed up to his Modern Korean Society class asking: Where’s the K-pop?

“I just started doing it,” the longtime anthropologist said. “They’re interested in Korea because they’re interested in K-pop.”

The K-pop industry began in the 1990s as the country was growing as a democracy and its profile rising on the world stage. It was thought to be used to harness its rich history of highly trained musicians and artists with the emergence of its homegrown high-tech expertise, said Keith Howard, a music history expert and National Humanities Center fellow. But what began as a movement to develop cultural entertainment for its own people gave way to a massive, rabid fan base beyond its borders.

The past decade saw another wave of K-pop that is far more commercial, as talent agencies develop rigorous training programs that capitalize on both the genre’s appeal as an export and as a vessel for mass-market advertising and product marketing.

 

“It was very well placed to move very, very quickly to assimilating and appropriating Western music,” Howard said.

What started as innocent bubblegum pop has lately taken an edgier turn. Nods to the mainstream American taste have produced Korean hits swept up in rap, hip-hop, R&B and reggae influences, as well as those that are more explicit and sexual. But that move hasn’t been without criticism as observers have called it out as cultural appropriation that can be downright racist.

Here’s a sample of some kinds of K-pop:

Bubblegum Pop 

Gee by Girls’ Generation is a reassuring taste of mainstream K-pop hit music, featuring simple but abundant dance moves performed by more than a half dozen females in matching casual and colorful outfits while they dance in a store, a nod to South Korea’s other beloved pastime: mall shopping.

K-Hip-Hop 

AEAO by Dynamic Duo sounds right at home as a hip-hop classic with melodic raps and hooks, moody lighting, break dancing and turntable scratching.

More Explicit 

Hello Bitches by CL is a more sexualized, explicit form in this edgier evolution of K-pop, taking black leather and twerking to a new level for the genre.

Parody 

Gangnam Style by Psy is a parody by a pudgy Korean entertainer with a signature horse-gallop dance move. But he registers as an “anti-Korean” archetype among the very image-conscious, plastic surgery-embracing native population.
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When he paraded during Carnival at age 14 for the first time with a Rio de Janeiro samba group, Wagner Carvalho did not recognize himself in the mirror.

Today, after 16 years, four plastic surgeries and a long process of self-discovery, Wagner, now Kamilla, will become the first transgender woman to be one of the star dancers leading the top-tier Acadêmicos do Salgueiro samba group during Rio’s glittering Carnival parades, which begin Sunday.

While Brazil has a reputation as a free-for-all and tolerant nation, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community faces significant numbers of hate crimes and killings. In 2017, over 170 transgender people were slain in Brazil, compared with 56 in Mexico and 25 in the United States, according to Transgender Europe, an advocacy group.

“Adversity for trans people is everywhere,” Carvalho said. “If you go into a bakery with me, people are going to look. If I go to a nightclub that is not used to people like me, everything that is different is going to generate resistance.”

Born in the Rio favela of Providencia, Carvalho always loved Carnival. After debuting with a small neighborhood group at age 14, she began parading on floats with the Salgueiro samba group in 2008.

Her big break came last year, when she met the head of Salgueiro, Regina Celi, who invited her to parade in a prominent position.

Ten years after dancing with Salgueiro for the first time, Carvalho will play a queen as part of this year’s Women of the World’s Womb theme, which celebrates the strength of black women.

“The story is about … women warriors … those who made it possible for women to be empowered today. I think the story is perfect for me,” Carvalho said.

Celi said Carvalho’s prominent role this year was good for Salgueiro, which will compete against 12 other groups for the coveted title of Rio’s Carnival champions, a hotly contested event that tens of millions of Brazilians watch live on TV.

“It is only natural for us to have this beautiful transgender woman representing us,” Celi said.

Despite the danger transgender people face in Brazil, Kamilla sees Carnival as an opportunity to promote tolerance.

“People should use the street carnival to enjoy themselves peacefully … without segregating any kind of person, any race, to embrace people,” she said.
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The president of the group that hands out the annual Oscars declared on Monday that some of the worst abuses in the movie industry were finally being “jack-hammered into oblivion.”

John Bailey, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, told more than 200 Oscar nominees that the Academy was working hard toward a greater diversity.

The Oscars, the highest honors in the movie business, have been criticized in recent years for excluding people of color from nominations. In response to the #OscarsSoWhite social media campaign, it has broadened its white, old and male-dominated membership to invite more women and people of color into its 8,000-strong ranks.

Addressing the class of 2018 nominees at an annual luncheon, Bailey said the 90-year-old Academy was reinventing itself with programs committed to inclusion and diversity “in today’s era of a greater awareness and responsibility in balancing gender, race, ethnicity and religion.’

As a 75-year old white man, Bailey said he was gratified that “the fossilized bedrock of many of Hollywood’s worst abuses are being jack-hammered into oblivion.”

Nominees for this year’s Oscars, to be handed out in March, include female director Greta Gerwig and African-American director Jordan Peele, Rachel Morrison as the first Oscar-nominated female cinematographer, four black actors, and movies that range from female-driven stories to romantic fantasy, war films and contemporary reflections on race.

Bailey did not directly refer to the sexual misconduct scandal that has jolted Hollywood and led to dozens of actors, directors, producers and agents being fired, forced to step down or dropped from creative projects.

The Hollywood awards season has consequently been dominated by passionate speeches about female empowerment, calls for equal pay and better opportunities for women in front of and behind the camera, and solidarity with victims of sexual harassment.

The Oscar winners are voted on by the 8,000 members of the Academy of Motion Pictures and will be handed out at a ceremony in Hollywood on March 4.
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