Author: Ohart

The Somali musician Hassan-Nour Sayid — known by his stage name, Aar Maanta — and his band, the Urban Nomads, were supposed to be in Minnesota last week, where they were to kick off a monthlong internship of performances and workshops set up through the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis.

Visa delays, however, have led to the cancellation of the event, and Aar told VOA he thinks it is because the Trump administration has delayed his visa to come to the U.S. because he is Muslim and Somali.

“After months of planning these peaceful events, I was expecting only the inevitable reasons could bring them to a disappointing halt, but now I think it is because of being Muslim and Somali. Why I was discriminated and singled out in the visa process,” Aar told VOA Somali. “I blame the current U.S. government.”

Dual citizenship

Aar is a respected and well-known band leader, with dual citizenship in Somalia and Britain, though he says these qualifications did not help him get a U.S. visa “easily and on time.”

“My four other colleagues — musicians in the band — are Italian, French, Nepalese-Scottish and British-Caribbean, and all received their visas with no trouble. Only me. I think it is because I am the band’s sole Somali and Muslim member,” he said.

He said his passport was held by the U.S. consulate, and he was told his application was placed under “additional administrative processing.”

In an email, a State Department official told VOA they were not able to discuss individual visas.

“Since visa records are confidential under the Immigration and Nationality Act, we are not able to discuss individual visa cases. We would also note that visa applications do not include questions pertaining to religious identity/affiliation. U.S. immigration law does not contain visa ineligibilities based on religious identity/affiliation,” the official wrote.

State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert, who on Tuesday addressed a question by VOA on a visa denial to the ousted Venezuela attorney general, said visa applications are confidential under federal law.

“So visa applications — and those are confidential, so no matter who it is or what the cause is, that’s something that we don’t comment on. I think we’ve talked about that before. They’re confidential under a federal law,” Nauert said.

Musician

Aar — a Somali singer, songwriter, actor, composer, instrumentalist and music producer — moved to the United Kingdom in the late 1980s, on the eve of the civil war in Somalia. He has lived there since, and has received his British citizenship. But he says he always realized that holding a Western passport would not change “his true identity.”

“I was always telling my Somali fans that it does not matter whether you have a British passport or American passport or the passport of any other Western country, you will always and forever remain Somali,” he said.

Under a revised travel order signed last month by President Donald Trump, travelers to the United States from eight countries face new restrictions, which take effect Oct. 18. The new executive order will affect citizens from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Chad, North Korea and Venezuela.

The new restrictions ban Somali immigrants from entry to the U.S., according to immigration attorneys. However, non-immigrants who are seeking business or tourist visas, such as Aar, must undergo additional screening measures.

According to tour organizers, the Urban Nomads have worked with the Cedar Cultural Center twice before, where they performed live music, led songwriting and held poetry workshops for young people. During the planned trip, though, the band would have extended its performances outside the metro area, carrying a message of unity for Somali-American communities.

Surprised by visa challenges

In a written statement, Fadumo Ibrahim, the program’s manager at the Cedar Cultural Center, said she was surprised by the visa challenges the musician faced, given his work with the center in the past.

“This case is a concrete example of how travel restrictions and the travel ban limit artistic voices and freedom,” Ibrahim said. “While it’s obviously important for the artists, it’s equally important for the community who had been anticipating this residency.

“Aar Maanta’s visit to Minnesota would have brought hope and positivity to the Somali and larger communities here at a time when we all really need it,” she said.

Midnimo, the Somali word for “unity,” is a program that features Somali artists from Minnesota and around the world in residencies and events that increase understanding of Somali culture through music.

The center said, “Midnimo is reviving and preserving Somalia’s rich musical traditions while fostering social connections between generations and cultures in the heart of the largest Somali diaspora in North America.”

VOA State Department correspondent Nike Ching contributes to the story.
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The Biltmore Estate is the largest privately owned home in the United States. Built near Asheville, North Carolina, it is still owned by the descendants of one of America’s richest families, the Vanderbilts. It is a tourist attraction and a reminder of the so-called Gilded Age of the late 19th century. VOA’s Maria Morton takes us there.
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American director David Lynch will be honored with a lifetime achievement award at the upcoming Rome Film Fest.

The festival opens Oct. 26 with director Scott Cooper’s Hostiles, starring Christian Bale and Rosamund Pike, and runs until Nov. 5.

The 39 official entries include a sport section, with movies including Borg/McEnroe, I, Tonya with Margot Robbie playing figure skater Tonya Harding, and boxing drama A Prayer Before Down by director Jean Stephane Sauvaire.

The festival features onstage discussions with the likes of actors Ian McKellen and Vanessa Redgrave, director Nanni Moretti and composer Michael Nyman.

Lynch is being honored 40 years after the release of his first feature film Eraserhead. The festival cites his films of “surreal atmosphere, hypnotic images and non-linear plots.”
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The last privately owned Leonardo da Vinci painting and one of fewer than 20 by the Renaissance artist known to still exist is hitting the auction block, Christie’s announced Tuesday.

Salvator Mundi, an ethereal portrait of Jesus Christ that dates to about 1500, is expected to sell for about $100 million at Christie’s in November, making it among the most highly valued works ever to be sold at auction.

“This is truly the Holy Grail of art rediscoveries,” said Alan Wintermute, Christie’s senior specialist for Old Master paintings, explaining that the portrait sometimes called “the male Mona Lisa” had long been thought to have been lost or destroyed.

The portrait depicts Christ in vivid blue and crimson robes holding a crystal orb.

First recorded in the private collection of King Charles I, the work was auctioned in 1763 before vanishing until 1900, by which time Christ’s face and hair had been painted over, which Wintermute said was “quite common” practice.

Sold at Sotheby’s to an American collector in 1958 for 45 pounds, it again sold in 2005 as an overpainted copy of the masterwork, he said.

The new owner started the restoration process, and after six years of research it was authenticated as da Vinci’s more than 500-year-old masterpiece, which culminated in a high-profile exhibition at London’s National Gallery in 2011.

The auction house did not identify the seller, a European private collector who acquired the work after its rediscovery in 2005 and lengthy restoration. The painting stands as the first discovery of a da Vinci painting since 1909.

Salvator Mundi will be sold at Christie’s in New York at its November 15 sale of postwar and contemporary art following public exhibitions in Hong Kong, London and San Francisco.

“We felt that offering this painting within that context is a testament to the enduring relevance of this picture,” said Loic Gouzer, chairman of Christie’s postwar and contemporary art.

Speaking to its $100 million estimate, Wintermute said, “There has never been anything like it sold, and so the market will decide.”

The same sale at Christie’s will feature Andy Warhol’s monumental Sixty Last Suppers, a piece from one of the pop artist’s final series before his death in 1987.

The 32-foot, multiple-image work is estimated to fetch $50 million.
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Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein is accused of raping three women in a report published Tuesday by the New Yorker. The accusation comes as Weinstein is engulfed in a scandal involving his decades-long sexual harassment of women in the film industry.

Actresses Asia Argento and Lucia Evans went on-the-record in the New Yorker story to accuse Weinstein of raping them, while another woman chose to remain anonymous.

According to the report, 13 women accused Weinstein of sexually harassing or assaulting them. Several of those accusations were previously reported by the New York Times, which published a story last week detailing eight sexual assault claims against Weinstein. All of those accusations resulted in financial settlements.

The New Yorker story says 16 current and former employees as the Weinstein Co. and Miramax either witnessed of knew of Weinstein’s sexual abuse. According to the report, all of those employees said Weinstein’s sexual deviancy was widely known within the two companies.

Weinstein was fired by the board of the Weinstein Co. on Monday following the explosive Times report.

The 65-year-old Weinstein oversaw production of many popular films over the last 30 years, including “Shakespeare in Love,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Sex, Lies and Videotape,” “The English Patient,” “Good Will Hunting” and “Lee Daniels’ The Butler.” He ran Miramax and later the Weinstein movie companies with his brother Bob Weinstein.

His fall came quickly after Times reported on his unwanted sexual advances on women stretching over nearly three decades. The story said Weinstein, who is known in Hollywood for his demanding control of film productions and angry outbursts, had paid confidential settlements to his female accusers.

In a statement last week, Weinstein said that “the way I’ve behaved with colleagues in the past has caused a lot of pain, and I sincerely apologize for it.” Later, he claimed some of the newspaper’s claims were false and said he would sue for defamation.

Immediate termination

Weinstein took a leave of absence from his company on Friday, but on Sunday the board said that “in light of new information about misconduct by Harvey Weinstein that has emerged in the past few days,” it had told him that “his employment is terminated, effective immediately.”

Weinstein has been big donor in recent years to Democratic politicians in the U.S., including twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. But with the sexual harassment revelations, Democratic political figures scrambled over the weekend to distance themselves from the disgraced filmmaker.

Several Democrat politicians, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Elizabeth Warren have promised to donate money they received from Weinstein to charities supporting women.

Clinton broke her silence on the matter on Tuesday, saying she was “shocked and appalled by the revelations about Harvey Weinstein.”  “The behavior described by women coming forward cannot be tolerated,” she added in a statment.

President Donald Trump said over the weekend he’s “known Harvey Weinstein for a long time” and he is “not at all surprised” by the sexual abuse allegations.
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The Hollywood establishment, slow to react to the initial sexual harassment allegations against Harvey Weinstein, began speaking out against him more forcefully Monday after the powerful studio boss was fired by his own company.

Among those weighing in were his longtime allies and beneficiaries Meryl Streep, Kate Winslet, Kevin Smith and Judi Dench. They spoke up with a combination of disgust over his alleged behavior and remorse or defensiveness over their own business entanglements with him. Even the actors’ labor union SAG-AFTRA joined the chorus in condemning the disgraced movie mogul, calling reports of his alleged conduct “abhorrent and unacceptable.”

Director Kevin Smith, whose movies Clerks and Chasing Amy were produced by Weinstein, noted on Twitter that the producer financed the first 14 years of his career.

“Now I know while I was profiting, others were in terrible pain,” Smith wrote. “It makes me feel ashamed.”

Weinstein, 65, was fired Sunday by the Weinstein Co., the studio he co-founded, three days after a bombshell New York Times expose alleged decades of crude sexual behavior on his part toward female employees and actresses, including Ashley Judd. The Times said at least eight settlements had been reached with women.

Streep, who once called Weinstein “God” while accepting the Golden Globe for The Iron Lady, condemned his alleged conduct as “inexcusable” while also saying she did not know about it before.

“The disgraceful news about Harvey Weinstein has appalled those of us whose work he championed, and those whose good and worthy causes he supported,” Streep said in a statement.

Stories of his behavior, she said, were not universally known in Hollywood.

“Harvey supported the work fiercely, was exasperating but respectful with me in our working relationship, and with many others with whom he worked professionally,” Streep continued. “If everybody knew, I don’t believe that all the investigative reporters in the entertainment and the hard news media would have neglected for decades to write about it.”

Similarly, Dench, whose awards and nominations have been inextricably linked for two decades to Weinstein, first at his company Miramax and then at the Weinstein Co., said in a statement that she was “completely unaware” of the “horrifying” offenses.

“I offer my sympathy to those who have suffered and wholehearted support to those who have spoken out,” she wrote.

Dench won a best supporting actress Oscar for Shakespeare in Love and a nomination for Philomena.

Not all were completely blindsided, however.  

Kate Winslet, who won an Oscar for The Weinstein Co.’s The Reader said in a statement that the alleged behavior is “without question disgraceful and appalling.”

“I had hoped that these kind of stories were just made up rumors, maybe we have all been naïve,” Winslet wrote.

Glenn Close had also heard the “vague rumors” of his inappropriate behavior toward.

“Harvey has always been decent to me, but now that the rumors are being substantiated, I feel angry and darkly sad,” Close said in a statement to the New York Times. “I’m angry, not just at him and the conspiracy of silence around his actions, but also that the `casting couch’ phenomenon, so to speak, is still a reality in our business and in the world: the horrible pressure, the awful expectation put on a woman when a powerful, egotistical, entitled bully expects sexual favors in exchange for a job.”

Close called on everyone to unite on both an institutional and personal level to create a new culture of, “respect, equality and empowerment.”

In ousting him from the company, the Weinstein board of directors said it was reacting to “new information about misconduct by Harvey Weinstein that has emerged in the past few days.” It did not elaborate.

A studio insider who was not authorized to discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity told The Associated Press that the Weinstein Co. plans to change its name.

Also, Weinstein’s name will be stripped from the TV series Waco and Yellowstone, among other projects.

Actress Lena Dunham tweeted Sunday night, “Easy to think Weinstein company took swift action but this has actually been the slowest action because they always always knew.”

Under Weinstein’s leadership, the Weinstein Co. has been a dominant force at the Oscars. It accomplished the rare feat of winning back-to-back best picture Academy Awards with The King’s Speech and The Artist.

In recent years, however, Weinstein’s status has diminished because of money shortages, disappointing box-office returns and executive departures.

His other movie credits over the years include Pulp Fiction and The English Patient.

Since the Times article, more accounts of predatory behavior have followed.

In a HuffPost report, TV anchor Lauren Sivan detailed an alleged 2007 encounter with Weinstein. Sivan, then working at a New York cable channel, said Weinstein cornered her in the hallway of a New York City restaurant closed to the public and masturbated in front of her.

Sivan said she had rejected an attempt by Weinstein to kiss her, and he responded: “Well, can you just stand there and shut up?”

The swift fall of one of Hollywood’s most powerful figures has turned up the pressure on many in the industry to speak out.

“What Harvey Weinstein did was abhorrent. He admits he did it. Why should anyone be silent in their disgust and support for his victims?” director Judd Apatow said on Twitter.

SAG-AFTRA said in its statement Monday said that everyone has the right to work in an environment free of discrimination and harassment. It provided the number for their safety hotline too.

“There is more to be done by all of us to ensure the safety of women in the industry,” the organization said.
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When singer Meghan Linsey first started her country duo Steel Magnolia, a partnership with the National Rifle Association was suggested as a way to grow their audience.

 

The proposal, which she refused, was a commonplace example of how intertwined gun ownership is with country music.

 

The mass shooting on the final day of Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas has emboldened some country musicians to call for gun control, even as many others declined to weigh in. Plenty of artists avoid the issue because there’s a real risk of backlash as gun lobbyists have bolstered a connection between the patriotic themes found in country music to gun ownership in recent years.

 

“I just feel like you’re so censored as a country artist,” said Linsey, an independent musician who took a knee after singing the national anthem at an NFL football game. “I feel like the labels like to keep you that way. They don’t want you to speak out. They don’t want you to say things that would upset country music listeners.”

 

She added: “People worry about being Dixie Chick-ed.”

 

The Dixie Chicks still loom large as a lesson in country music politics. The hugely popular group was boycotted after lead singer Natalie Maines criticized then-President George W. Bush on the eve of the Iraq War in 2003.

 

The National Rifle Association has further strengthened the relationship between guns and country music with its lifestyle and music brand called NRA Country. NRA Country has sought to tie the music to gun-linked activities like hunting or outdoor sports, but without mention of political issues.

 

Since about 2010, the NRA Country brand has been placed on country music tours and concerts, merchandise, an album called “This Is NRA Country,” a music video and more. It features performers such as Hank Williams Jr. and Trace Adkins. It’s unclear how much the NRA has spent on the brand, and representatives of the group did not respond to requests for information from The Associated Press.

Country duo Big & Rich, who have performed at NRA-sponsored events, were at the festival just hours before Stephen Paddock began firing from his room at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino. They said it wasn’t the weapons that were the problem, but the man using them.

 

“I think if a man has ill will in his heart, then there’s weapons everywhere,” Big Kenny said. “I mean he can pick up a — anything — make a bomb, put it in his shoe. We have somebody trying to blow up stuff on trains constantly.”

 

The shooting changed the mind of Caleb Keeter, a guitarist for the Josh Abbott Band, who was among those at the festival during the attack. He wrote in a widely shared tweet that he had been a lifelong Second Amendment supporter: “I cannot express how wrong I was.”

 

Keeter said that a single man laid waste to a city because of “access to an insane amount of firepower.” Paddock had 23 guns in his room, some of which had attachments that allow a semi-automatic rifle to mimic a fully automatic weapon.

 

Others, including Jennifer Nettles of the band Sugarland and Sheryl Crow, have joined the call for gun control.

 

But there are risks.

 

When country artists have in the past tried to wade into gun politics, it can turn into a no-win situation.

 

Tim McGraw had to defend his participation in a benefit concert for victims of a mass shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut after criticism from gun rights advocates. His opening act, Billy Currington, pulled out of the performance over the controversy.

 

“As a gun owner, I support gun ownership, I also believe that with gun ownership comes the responsibility of education and safety — most certainly when it relates to what we value most, our children,” McGraw said in a statement in 2015. “I can’t imagine anyone who disagrees with that.”

Many artists expressed grief over the Las Vegas killings without wading into politics. Alongside her husband Vince Gill, Amy Grant led a prayer at a vigil in Nashville on Monday, a day after the shooting, while Maren Morris released a song called “Dear Hate,” in which she but declares “love conquers all.” Eric Church angrily said “no amount of bullets” was going to take away his memories of those fans killed, before debuting a song written in memory of the victims called “Why Not Me.”

 

John Osborne of the duo Brothers Osborne was in tears on national radio talking about the deaths of fans who they considered family. Keith Urban struggled to talk about the shooting to his 9-year-old daughter.

Jason Aldean, who was on stage at the festival when the shooter opened fire, said, “This world is becoming the kind of place I am afraid to raise my children in.”

Many others have donated to funds set up to help the victims and countless other selfless acts have brought the community even closer to support one another.

 

Singer Rosanne Cash, a longtime gun control advocate, called on the country music community to do more in an op-ed in the New York Times.

 

“It is no longer enough to separate yourself quietly,” Cash wrote. “The laws the N.R.A. would pass are a threat to you, your fans, and to the concerts and festivals we enjoy.”
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Harvey Weinstein has been fired from The Weinstein Co., effective immediately, three days after an expose detailed decades of allegations of sexual abuse against the movie mogul.

 

In a statement, the company’s board of directors announced his termination Sunday night, capping the swift downfall of one of Hollywood’s most powerful producers and expelling him from the company he co-created.

 

“In light of new information about misconduct by Harvey Weinstein that has emerged in the past few days, the directors of The Weinstein Company – Robert Weinstein, Lance Maerov, Richard Koenigsberg and Tarak Ben Ammar – have determined, and have informed Harvey Weinstein, that his employment with The Weinstein Company is terminated, effective immediately,” the company’s board said in a statement on Sunday night.

 

Weinstein had previously voluntarily taken a leave of absence following eight allegations of sexual harassment allegations uncovered in an expose by The New York Times. The board on Friday endorsed that decision and announced an investigation into the allegations.

 

But the Weinstein Co. board, which includes Weinstein’s brother, went further on Sunday. Weinstein, co-chairman of the film company, has also been its face and prime operator, making the Weinstein Co. an independent film leader and near annual presence at the Academy Awards.

 

An attorney for Weinstein didn’t immediately return messages Sunday.

 

A spokesperson for The Weinstein Co. declined to provide further details on Weinstein’s firing. Messages left for attorney John Keirnan of the firm Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, who had been appointed to lead an investigation, weren’t immediately returned Sunday.

Harvey Weinstein on Thursday issued a lengthy statement that acknowledged causing “a lot of pain.” He also asked for “a second chance.” But Weinstein and his lawyers have criticized The New York Times’ report in statements and interviews.

 

The New York Times article chronicled allegations against Weinstein from film star Ashley Judd and former employees at both The Weinstein Co. and Weinstein’s former company, Miramax.

 

“We are confident in the accuracy of our reporting,” said a New York Times spokesperson in a statement. “Mr. Weinstein was aware and able to respond to specific allegations in our story before publication. In fact, we published his response in full.”

 

The allegations triggered cascading chaos at the Weinstein Co. Numerous members of its all-male board have stepped down since Thursday. The prominent attorney Lisa Bloom, daughter of well-known Los Angeles women’s rights attorney Gloria Allred, on Saturday withdrew from representing Weinstein, as did another adviser, Lanny Davis.
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“Last Flag Flying”, a comedy-drama about Vietnam war veterans, will resonate with Trump’s America, despite, or perhaps because of, its period setting, actor Bryan Cranston said on Sunday after a screening at the London Film Festival.

Set in the United States in December 2003 — when U.S. forces in Iraq were dragging Saddam Hussein out of a “spider hole” — it is the story of three ageing former servicemen who reunite to bury the son of one of them who has been killed in action.

With President Donald Trump saying he could “totally destroy” North Korea and characterizing a dinner with military commanders as “the calm before the storm,” Cranston said “Last Flag Flying” was a timely reminder of the effect on normal Americans of ill-advised military campaigns.

“I think it has a lot of relevance today in the sense that [today] it’s not clear cut as far as the [what are the] intentions of the government or military,” Cranston, acclaimed for his lead role in the TV drama “Breaking Bad”, told Reuters. “In World War II, it was the ‘good war’, it was clear and present danger, we had to stop this mad man. Since then, with Vietnam and Iraq, [there are] a lot of questions … among the troops and the citizens as to if we are doing the right thing and what is the purpose of our being there.”

“Last Flag Flying” was produced by Amazon Studios and directed and co-written by Richard Linklater, whose greatest critical acclaim has been for the naturalistic “Before Sunset” trilogy and the 2014 “Boyhood” which won a slew of Oscar nominations.

Linklater also made comedies including “School of Rock” and “Everybody Wants Some!!,” about skirt-chasing undergraduates.

“Last Flag Flying” falls somewhere between the two genres.

The drama and comedy stem from the chemistry between the three leads, each played by a big Hollywood name.

Steve Carell is the awkward shy one who, we assume, was quiet and withdrawn even before the loss of his son. Cranston plays a foul-mouthed, hard-drinking bar owner who is his own best customer, and Laurence Fishburne, is a man who has found God and become an evangelical preacher, preferring to forget the sex and drugs they all indulged in back in ‘Nam.

Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson said the film’s ability to honor the foot soldiers while being critical of the wars they are sent to fight, could hit “an Academy sweet spot, satisfying both the more conservative oldsters and the younger, leftier types.”

Other critics said “Last Flag Flying” lacked the light touch of Linklater’s best work. The Guardian’s Benjamin Lee called it “a half-baked TV movie masquerading as Oscarbait, a curious misstep for the Oscar-nominated indie auteur.”
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According to the American Medical Association, a big anti-smoking effort launched more than 50 years ago saved more than 8 million lives in the US. Before 1964, when the official data on smoking and its link to cancer was published, 42 percent of American adults smoked a cigarette on a regular basis. Now, just 18 percent do. VOA Russian correspondent Masha Morton traveled down America’s Tobacco Road to see how the area is transforming.
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Batman, Superman and Spiderman aren’t the only superheroes of the comic book world. At New York Comic Con, plenty of women were on hand to remind the industry of their own hero status. VOA’s Tina Trinh reports.
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The Chinese Basketball Association is on tour in the US, with teams playing against US professional squads. Calla Yu from VOA’s Mandarin Service was at a recent game in the Washington area.
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Mick Fleetwood was 16 when he left school, told his parents he wanted to pursue a career in rock ‘n’ roll, and went to London in search of gigs.

A common tale, true, but this one has a happy ending. Fleetwood fell in with some talented blues enthusiasts, paid [barely] his dues, and soared to stardom with the first incarnation of Fleetwood Mac — and then into the rock ‘n’ roll stratosphere with the second, more pop-oriented version of the band.

“School was not a good thing for me,” said Fleetwood. “I had a learning disability, no doubt, and no one understood what those things were. I was sort of drowning at school academically. My parents were like, ‘Go and do it.’ They were picking up on the fact that I had found something. They saw the one thing that I loved with a passion was teaching myself how to play drums at home. So they sent me off with a little drum kit to London, and the whole thing unfolded.”

Fleetwood didn’t really have to rebel, though rebellion was in the air, and he had the good fortune to make friends early with Peter Green, the supremely talented guitarist whose blues sound shaped the band’s early years.

Green receives the lion’s share of the credit, and the dedication, in Fleetwood’s memoir of the band’s formative period, Love That Burns: A Chronicle of Fleetwood Mac, Volume One: 1967-1974. It has been published in a limited signed edition by Genesis Publications.

At 70, Fleetwood is eager to acknowledge his debt to Green, who left the band in 1970.

 

Fleetwood and bassist John McVie were later joined by Christine McVie, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham for a new lineup that hit the jackpot with Rumours, one of the best-selling albums of all time.

Green’s generosity

Fleetwood said the band’s very name reflects Green’s self-effacing approach.

“Peter was asked why did he call the band Fleetwood Mac. He said, ‘Well, you know, I thought maybe I’d move on at some point and I wanted Mick and John to have a band.’ End of story, explaining how generous he was.”

The photos and text of Love That Burns are really the celebration of an era, capturing the explosion of British music at a time when bands like The Who and The Beatles were vying for the top spots on the charts — and competing with semi-forgotten bands like Freddie and the Dreamers, who actually got top billing over the Rolling Stones on a least one concert poster.

Once Fleetwood Mac made its name as a blues band, the group was able to go to Chicago’s famous Chess Studios to record with some of the great American bluesmen, including a few of the pioneers who had helped perfect the driving Chicago sound.

Fleetwood remembers — with relief — that the longhaired crew of young Brits was able to at least play in the same room as Buddy Guy and Willie Dixon without sounding foolish.

“These are major, major players for anyone who knows anything about blues,” Fleetwood said. “Having that take place, I don’t know what they must have really thought with us funny little English kids walking into their world. … I feel good about it to this day that we held our own dignity, even with these guys.”

He said the whole experience was “like going to their church and not just being in the congregation but actually doing our version of preaching with them.”

Salute to first band

While some fans swear the early Fleetwood Mac was better than the later, far more commercial version, Fleetwood knows the group is identified more with its string of hits, including Bill Clinton’s favorite song, Don’t Stop, which earned the band a headlining gig at his inaugural celebration.

This is one reason the book focuses on the first band. Fleetwood doesn’t want it to be forgotten.

“Even as we were doing it [the book], we realized that the band was 50 years old,” he said. “So it’s really about drawing a line in the sand to say that this happened and what caused this. And it’s generally fair to say, especially in the United States, this section of the formation of Fleetwood Mac is not really known about.”
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“Hamilton” musical creator Lin-Manuel Miranda on Friday released a new song for hurricane relief charity efforts in Puerto Rico featuring many of the music industry’s biggest Latin stars.

Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony, Gloria Estefan, Rita Moreno Luis Fonsi and many others sing on the English- and Spanish-language song “Almost Like Praying.”

The song, a riff on the tune “Maria” from the Broadway musical “West Side Story,” lists the names of all 78 of Puerto Rico’s towns in its lyrics.

Hurricane Maria, the worst hurricane to hit the U.S. territory in more than 90 years, killed at least 34 people last month and left most of the island without power or access to clean running water.

Miranda, 37, whose parents migrated to the United States from Puerto Rico, said the song was inspired by his own desperate attempts to contact family members after Hurricane Maria, and his frustrations about the pace of aid reaching the island.

“I thought I could work all 78 towns in Puerto Rico into the lyrics of this song and if we did our job right, these towns will never be forgotten again,” the musician told Billboard.

The success of the Tony Award-winning musical “Hamilton” has made Miranda one of America’s most influential Latin celebrities.

He made headlines last week for saying on Twitter that U.S. President Donald Trump was “going straight to hell” for criticizing Puerto Ricans for not doing enough to help themselves.

Miranda on Friday said he had no regrets about his comments.

“I’ve never seen the president of the United States attack the victims of a natural disaster,” he told “CBS This Morning” in an interview. “That has no precedent for me and so those words coming out of me also have no precedent.”

“Almost Like Praying” will benefit the Hispanic Federation’s UNIDOS Disaster Relief Fund for Puerto Rico.
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In 1982, iconic filmmaker Ridley Scott imagined the dystopian world of 2019 as overcrowded, cynical, polluted and inhabited not only by humans but also by their genetically engineered look-alikes — a disposable workforce, called replicants.

Almost at the doorstep of 2019, filmmaker Denis Villeneuve creates Blade Runner 2049, a sequel to the original. As the lines between humanity and artificial intelligence are blurred, once again, both films probe the nature of life and its moral implications.

In the new film, 30 years have passed since replicant revolts were quelled by humans, and bioengineers redesigned replicants to obey them unconditionally. However, life overturns human designs and replicants are again surprising their creators. Lieutenant Joshi of the Los Angeles Police sends Blade Runner “K” to deal with the problem.

Joshi, played by Robin Wright, will do anything to keep order because without it, she tells K, there will be chaos. “The world is built on a wall that separates kind. Tell either side there is no wall, you got a war,” she says in a key moment.

Today’s realities

Joshi’s words resonate with today’s political realities, where walls and fences built across the planet aim to restrict the flow of humanity, to divide the “privileged” from the “undesired.”

“It really is a story trying to seek your identity in this near future world. What does it mean to be human anymore, and try and maintain love and connection as we know it today?” said Wright.

Ryan Gosling interprets Blade Runner K, a police officer and a replicant himself, programmed to exterminate his own kind. But along the way, he comes face to face with his own humanity.

“When you meet the character,” Gosling said, “he is sort of at odds with his station in life and he’s looking for some kind of connection, love and happiness in amongst this sort of nightmare that they are all living.”

K, an introvert, lives with Joi, played by Ana de Armas, a beautiful, loving companion but a digital application. Their intangible relationship highlights the isolation and artificiality around them.

The dystopian world is ruled by a genius villain, bioengineer-tycoon Niander Wallace, played by Jared Leto, and his obedient synthetics.

Harrison Ford reprises his original Blade Runner character, Officer Rick Deckard, to team up with K on his mission.

Challenges advance

“The original film proposed a future in which humanity had reached a point where cities were overpopulated, there was a lot of suffering, a challenge between classes, and this story continues on most of those themes in an interesting way,” Ford said.

“The challenges with the environment have progressed where there are life-and-death issues, and science has loosened its moral constraints and is willing to develop a biological creature identical to a human being,” he said. “But because they are owned, because they are manufactured, they are denied the potentials of human beings.”

Screenwriters Hampton Fancher and Michael Green created a streamlined story that does not match the original’s inception. But it is the visual storytelling by director Villeneuve, the cinematography by Roger Deakins and the music by Hans Zimmer that add texture to the story. Blade Runner 2049 is ruled by visual precision, unnerving music and muted colors that evoke loneliness.

Villeneuve’s precise and orderly future is more impressionistic than Scott’s chaotic and more linear story. It is anchored in the original but finds its own vision reflecting our social and political anxieties, 30 years later.
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In 1982’s ‘Blade Runner,’ filmmaker Ridley Scott imagined the dystopian world of 2019 as overcrowded, polluted and inhabited by humans and their genetically engineered look-alikes. As 2019 nears, filmmaker Denis Villeneuve creates ‘Blade Runner 2049.’ As the lines between humanity and artificial intelligence are blurred again, both films probe the nature of life and its moral implications. VOA’s Penelope Poulou looks at what sets Denis Villeneuve’s sequel apart from Scott’s classic.
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The saga of two families pitted against a barbaric social hierarchy in the Mississippi Delta after World War II explores a racial divide that is relevant even today, the filmmaker of new movie Mudbound said.

“I feel like Mudbound kind of comments on who we are now,” director and co-writer Dee Rees told Reuters at the Mudbound premiere in London Thursday.

“It’s about family, it’s about what it means to not be able to come home, it’s about citizenship, who’s an American, who’s not and so like those things would be, like timeless,” she added.

Mudbound, based on Hillary Jordan’s novel of the same name, stars Jason Mitchell, Garrett Hedlund, Carey Mulligan and Jason Clarke and follows the struggles of two farming families, one black, one white, in the heart of the American South in the 1940s.

Mudbound, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival for independent movies, is garnering strong reviews and Oscar buzz, and will debut on Netflix on Nov. 17.

The film explores the friendship of two men, one from each family, as they return from war and find common ground while their families face an unending struggle for and against the unforgiving land.

“What this film does so cleverly is it creates empathy,” Mulligan said.

“It gets you in the mind of all the different characters. It makes you look at so many people’s different perspectives and it asks you to ask the right questions, but it’s not prescriptive. It’s not telling you what to think.”
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A leading Iranian chess player, barred from her homeland’s team after she refused to wear a headscarf, will now compete as a player for the United States, the US Chess Federation said.

Dorsa Derakhshani, 19, who was born in Tehran, was forbidden from playing by the Iranian Chess Federation following the Gibraltar Chess Festival in January, US Chess said on its website. She did not wear a hijab during the event.

Since then, she has moved to the United States where she attends Saint Louis University and plays for the school’s team.

Derakhshani will now compete as an official United States chess player, US Chess posted on its website this week. US Chess is the national governing body for chess competition, sanctioning championships and overseeing player rankings.

​’Welcomed and supported’

“It feels good and … peaceful to play for a federation where I am welcomed and supported,” the website quoted Derakhshani as saying.

On a U.S. radio broadcast last week, she said: “I’m looking forward to finally having a stable trainer and a team, and I really wish to become grandmaster.”

She also said she hopes to become a dentist.

Derakhshani holds the titles of International Master and Woman Grandmaster with the World Chess Federation (FIDE).

A few weeks after the Gibraltar competition, the Iranian Chess Federation announced it was banning Derakhshani for not wearing a hijab. It also banned her brother, who had played an Israeli player in Gibraltar, US Chess said.

Ban may be a distraction

Derakhshani said on the National Public Radio broadcast that she had competed before without a headscarf and thought the ban was issued for other reasons.

The announcement was made during the Women’s World Chess Championship in Tehran, and all three Iranian competitors had lost in the opening round.

“So in the middle of all this, they needed another distraction … which worked perfectly,” she said in the broadcast. “Everybody started talking about us.”

Several top players including the U.S. women’s champion Nazi Paikidze boycotted the Tehran competition because players were required to wear a headscarf, US Chess said.

 
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The long-awaited sequel to the cult classic “Blade Runner,” a 1982 sci-fi thriller, finally hits movie theaters on Friday.

But there is not much that stars Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling can say about “Blade Runner 2049,” for fear of revealing major plot spoilers.

Ford, who reprises his role as an older Rick Deckard, and Gosling as a new ‘blade runner’ Officer K, told Reuters that the film offers a glimpse into the potential impact of a rapidly changing climate and an increasingly isolated society reliant on technology.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: The first film touched upon the future or what they envisaged the world to be. Now we’re 30 years on, what elements does this film address which you think will resonate with audiences today?

Gosling: “Overpopulation, global warming, being isolated by technology.”

Ford: “Social inequity.”

Gosling: “The false narratives we create about large groups of people in order to make ourselves feel better about how awful their circumstances are.”

Ford: “The necessity to have a moral structure into which to pour what’s possible and to make judgments about what we use and what we don’t use.”

Q: How would you say this film pushes forward messages about humanity that weren’t covered in the first one?

Ford: Well I would just quibble with the word ‘message’ because it’s an experiential opportunity because you discover your relationship to the ideas in the context of an emotional geography so I think as an audience, it has an opportunity to engage you in a way that is pretty rare.

Q: How did you go about playing your character with ambiguity as it is not always known who is a human and who is a Replicant?

Ford: I don’t think there’s a style to the acting necessarily. There is so much new information coming at you as a character and as an audience that you just want to be still and make sure that you’re reading this right, that you really know what’s going on so the characters are constantly in the midst of a dilemma that is like drinking out of a gardening hose. There is so much happening to them that it’s close to overwhelming for them.
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Country star Jason Aldean said Tuesday that he would cancel three shows this week to honor victims of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, in which a gunman opened fire on a crowd at a Las Vegas music festival during the singer’s Sunday show.

Aldean canceled stops in Los Angeles, San Diego and Anaheim, California, as part of his “They Don’t Know Tour.” The tour will resume in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on October 12 and refunds will be offered for the canceled shows.

“I feel like out of respect for the victims, their families and our fans, it is the right thing to do. It has been an emotional time for everyone involved this week, so we plan to take some time to mourn the ones we have lost and be close with our family and friends,” Aldean said in a statement.

The singer added: “Our first time back onstage will be a very tough and emotional thing for us, but we will all get through it together and honor the people we lost by doing the only thing we know how to do — play our songs for them.”

Aldean was on stage on Sunday night at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival when Stephen Paddock, a retiree armed with multiple assault rifles, strafed the crowd at the concert from a high-rise hotel window, killing 59 people and wounding 527.

Jennifer Lopez, currently in her “Jennifer Lopez: All I Have” residency at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas, also canceled her scheduled shows this week. The performances will be rescheduled for later dates.

“Jennifer is heartbroken that such a senseless tragedy occurred. Her thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families,” the singer’s representatives said in a statement Tuesday.

Organizers of the Austin City Limits Music Festival in Texas said on Tuesday they would offer refunds to people who no longer want to attend for security concerns after the Las Vegas shooting.

Earlier this week, Warner Brothers said it would scale back Tuesday’s world premiere of sci-fi film Blade Runner 2049 after the Las Vegas tragedy, canceling the red carpet, where stars chat to reporters and pose for photos.

ESPN’s Monday Night Football and ABC’s Monday episode of Dancing With the Stars both opened with a moment of silence for the victims of the tragedy.
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After visiting the diverse landscapes of Dinosaur National Monument once, national parks traveler Mikah Meyer knew he had to come back.

In addition to the site’s ancient land formations and dinosaur fossils, the massive park — which spreads across the states of Utah and Colorado — is also home to a river canyon made up of unique rock formations. 

During his first visit this past summer, Mikah hiked along “some of the most diverse and expansive views of my entire journey so far,” he said.

“It was incredible. I have never seen a river canyon this close to massive valleys that were shifted upward that looked like giant ski slopes of lush green grass that are also right next to white snowcapped mountains.” 

After a year, traveling to 160 national parks around the country, that landscape was just one of the reasons he found the site so compelling.

Wall of bones

Another reason was the area’s vast deposits of fossilized dinosaur bones, many of which are still visible, embedded in the rocks.

Through a series of exhibits, visitors like Mikah get to see — and feel — just how massive the giant animals were. Examining a huge dinosaur claw, Mikah noted how sharp it felt to the touch.

“That would not feel good if that ripped into you,” he said.

“They found tons and tons of dinosaur bones that are now in museums from New York to D.C. to my hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska,” he added.

A river runs through it

After his experiences on land, where he had a bird’s eye view of the panoramic vistas, Mikah returned to the park a couple of months later, to see it from a different angle… rafting on the Green River.

“What really struck me the first time I came to Dinosaur National Monument was these impressive unique rock features. And now to be able to see them up close from the water was incredible,” he said.

“You’ll be rafting along and suddenly you see these layers, and they’re vertical. It looks like something that nature couldn’t have created because it’s perpendicular to what we’re used to seeing the earth layers look like,” he described.

Over the course of several days, he discovered a wide variety of formations to explore. He describes the geology at the intersection of the Green and Yampa Rivers for example, as “particularly awesome.”

Waves of rock

“You can see these kind of pancake-like features where these large maroon and brown boulders are all smashed together,” he noted. But as he continued on his river journey he noticed “a lot more varied geology,” with lighter sandstone formations.

Mikah was particularly intrigued by a series of rock ripples that he saw along the shoreline. He described the sedimentary structures as “deposits of rock that were upturned and now make this curve shape that we see shooting up from the river to the sky.”

Loosey goosey

In addition to the park’s natural beauty and historic artifacts, there was a surprising highlight to Mikah’s river adventure. From the beginning of his journey, he and his tour group were joined by an unlikely fellow traveler… a wild goose that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere…

“I noticed there was this little goose that was hanging out on the beach… and then we got in the boat and we started floating down the river and this goose was swimming right up next to the boat,” Mikah explained.

“About five or 10 minutes later, the goose was still with us,” he said. “So my buddy Tom jokingly said, ‘I think he’s just going to come along for the journey. We should name him. Let’s call him George.’”

George continued to hang out with Mikah and his group for several days. He followed them on water, on hikes, and even settled in with them at their campsite overnight.

“It became very apparent that George the Goose had attached himself to us; thought he was either one of our group or we were his new flock,” Mikah noted. “Wherever we went, George the Goose was going.”

Right up until the very end.

“We loaded up in the van, and we start driving away, and poor George the Goose starts to run after us. And eventually I saw him stop and just kinda look around and I think at that point he realized we had left him.”

“Without a doubt, all of us were touched and moved by George the Goose,” he added.

Dinosaur National Monument is now among Mikah’s top five favorite parks. He wishes the site had an official national park designation so it would attract more visitors.

“It is a National Park Service site, but its official name is Dinosaur National Monument which I’m guessing people see the name and it doesn’t sound as incredible as Rocky Mountain National Park nearby, or Arches National Park that are those big 59 ones that are recognized,” he said.

“It really is a special place that seems to be a hidden gem that I hope other people will get a chance to explore.”

With, or without a goose.

Mikah invites you to follow him on his epic journey by visiting him on his website MikahMeyer.com, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
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Country star Jason Aldean says he’s praying for the victims of the Las Vegas shootings, saying his “heart aches” and issuing a rallying cry for Americans to come together.

The singer writes something has “changed” in the world, making it “the kind of place I am afraid to raise my children in.”

“At the end of the day we aren’t Democrats or Republicans, whites or blacks, men or women. We are all humans and we are all Americans and it’s time to start acting like it and stand together as one!”

Aldean was onstage Sunday when a gunman shot at a crowded music festival.

“My heart aches for the victims and their families of this senseless act,” Aldean wrote on Instagram, adding: “Time to come together and stop the hate!”
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An American television channel plans to air a film about Oscar Pistorius and how he murdered girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, drawing criticism from the family of the former South African track star.

 

Lifetime says “Oscar Pistorius: Blade Runner Killer,” which is to premiere on Nov. 11, is told from “the point of view” of Steenkamp and her mother and tells “what allegedly happened” in 2013 when Pistorius shot her.

 

Carl Pistorius, the double-amputee Olympian’s brother, said Tuesday that the film is a “gross misrepresentation of the truth” that reflects the arguments of prosecutors. He said the Pistorius family will take legal action.

 

South Africa’s top appeals court convenes Nov. 3 to hear prosecutors’ arguments that the six-year prison sentence for Pistorius, who was convicted of murder, should be increased.

 
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U.S. rock legend Tom Petty has died after a cardiac arrest at his Malibu California home. He was 66-years-old.

Petty’s family said he was taken to the hospital early Monday, but could not be revived. They said he died Monday evening “surrounded by family, his bandmates and friends.”

The rock star wrapped his most recent tour last week at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. In December, Petty told Rolling Stone that he thought this would be the group’s last tour together. He said, “It’s very likely we’ll keep playing, but will we take on 50 shows in one tour? I don’t think so. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was thinking this might be the last big one.”

“It’s shocking, crushing news,” Petty’s friend and Traveling Wilburys bandmate Bob Dylan told Rolling Stone magazine in a statement. “I thought the world of Tom. He was great performer, full of the light, a friend, and I’ll never forget him.”

Petty rose to fame in the 1970s with his band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. They were known for hits such as “American Girl,” “Free Fallin” and “Listen to Her Heart.” The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.
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For several hours Monday, music lovers believed Tom Petty was dead.

Courtney Love, Talib Kweli, Kid Rock, Cyndi Lauper, Paul Stanley and Lin-Manuel Miranda were among scores of fans posting remembrances on Twitter, where Petty was the top worldwide trending topic Monday afternoon. A memorial was scheduled for his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

But the 66-year-old entertainer is still alive, and news outlets that announced his death Monday retracted their stories later Monday. The Walk of Fame tribute was canceled.

The confusion started with CBS News and the Los Angeles Police Department. CBS published Petty’s obituary after tweeting that the LAPD had confirmed his death. The trade paper Variety followed, citing an unnamed source confirming the rocker’s death.

Then the LAPD issued a statement saying it has no information on Petty’s condition and that “initial information was inadvertently provided to some media sources.”

“We apologize for any inconvenience in this reporting,” the department said.

CBS and Variety amended their stories. CBS News also released a statement maintaining that it “reported information obtained officially from the LAPD about Tom Petty.”

“The LAPD later said it was not in a position to confirm information about the singer,” the statement said.

Both CBS and Variety now cite TMZ reporting that says Petty is “clinging to life” after suffering cardiac arrest.

An LAPD spokesman said in an interview Monday that its spokespeople did not respond to any incident involving Petty. Officer Tony Im said he could not rule out that someone in the department spoke to reporters, but said the LAPD has no investigative role in the matter.

Coroner’s officials said Monday they have not received a report of Petty’s death. Fire officials have said they responded to an emergency call for a man experiencing cardiac arrest on the block where Petty lives in Malibu on Sunday night, but could not confirm it was the rocker who was taken to a local hospital.

Petty’s manager did not respond to emails and phone calls seeking comment Monday.
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When Alfred Nobel established the literature prize in his name, he perhaps could have benefited from an editor. The terms of his will leave the prize’s exact intentions tantalizingly vague – making the literature award one of the most debated and entertaining of the Nobel Prizes.

The Swedish industrialist said he wanted the prize to recognize “the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.”

 

On Thursday, the Swedish Academy will announce whom it considers to have met the criterion of “ideal” for the 2017 laurels.

 

A look at some aspects of the Nobel Prize in Literature:

What is ‘Ideal Direction?’

 

The Swedish Academy hasn’t ever had a consistent view of this, but appears to cycle through concepts.

 

In an article on the Nobel Prize website, academy member Kjell Espmark traced at least seven distinct periods in the 20th century interpretations, ranging from the early years’ “conservative idealism” honoring church and family, through an Everyman period in the 1930s when Sinclair Lewis and Pearl Buck won, and more recently, a determination to award the prize to writers outside Western traditions.

 

Just five countries have accounted for nearly half the literature prizes since 1901: France, the United States, Britain, Germany and Sweden.

 

What counts as literature?

 

In 2015 and 2016, the award went to writers outside the conventional conception of “literature” as novels and poetry. Svetlana Alexievich’s books are artistic sociopolitical reportage, and Bob Dylan’s lyrics arguably have more power as song than on the page.

 

If the academy is determined to be adventurous, it could find other forms of art to consider as literature.

 

Graphic novels, for example, arguably have built up the moral weight and imaginative power to be considered literature that goes beyond entertainment.

 

A Nobel prize for graphic novels “doesn’t seem unreasonable at all,” Gabriel Winslow-Yost, an editor at the New York Review of Books, told The Associated Press.

 

Like Alexievich, “some of the best of the past couple of generations of American cartoonists have been especially concerned with the effects of large-scale political forces on particular individual lives; that’s true of Art Spielgelman, true of (Chris) Ware, true of Dan Clowes,” he said.

 

And if Dylan’s song lyrics count as literature, is there a case to be made for opera librettos?

 

Stephen Wadsworth, director of opera studies at the Juilliard School and author of one libretto, said he could envision the prize going to an author whose work had been adapted for opera, noting laureate Maurice Maeterlinck’s play, “Pelléas and Mélisande,” was the basis for Debussy’s famous opera.

 

Aside from that “there are probably a few librettists who would tell you that they should get Nobel prizes. But they would be wrong,” he said.

 

The presumed favorites

 

Kenyan novelist, playwright and essayist Ngugi wa Thiong’o leads the speculation at many bookmakers, with perennial favorite Haruki Murakami behind by a nose.

 

Another name that surfaces year after year may find her chances marred by popularity. “We’ve had to cut Margaret Atwood’s odds … following ‘The Handmaid’s Tale”s Emmy win last week,” Alex Apati, a spokesman for Britain’s Ladbroke’s betting house, said in an email.

 

In any case, setting Nobel odds appears to be less rigorous than assessing sports teams’ prospects, relying on the wisdom of the crowd rather than deep reading.

 

“While we don’t employ someone specifically to work on pricing up this market, between them the traders keep a close eye on things,” Apati said.

 

Amos Oz, Ismail Kadare, Adonis and Don de Lillo also are regarded as strong contenders, according to the odds.

Outliers: Trump?

Bookmakers are offering potentially lucrative bets upwards of 1000-to-1 on Kanye West and President Donald Trump. One might make a credible argument for West – metrical complexity and inventive rhymes constitute a kind of poetry.

 

But Trump’s prose rarely rises above the entertainingly pedestrian – and it’s unclear whether the books are his work or the production of ghostwriters.
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