Author: Ohart

Adele has officially announced she and longtime partner Simon Konecki are married, weeks after hinting at a wedding.

 

Adele casually dropped the news while chatting with the audience at her show in Brisbane, Australia, on Saturday. She was discussing her song, “Someone Like You,” which describes her feelings following a breakup. She told the crowd that she’s “addicted” to the “feeling when you first fall for someone.” She says she can’t have that feeling because she’s “married now.”

 

The announcement follows Adele’s thanking of her “husband” following her big win at last month’s Grammy awards.

 

Adele and Konecki have a 4-year-old son.

 
…

Chinese authorities have shut down activist Ye Haiyan’s blogs and forced her to move from one city to another. Left with few options, she now produces socially conscious paintings to make a living and advocate for the rights of sex workers and people with HIV or AIDS.

Using calligraphy brushes, Ye creates images of naked women and sex workers alongside symbols such as the Chinese characters for equality, or paints roosters, a Chinese homonym for prostitute.

 

“I’ve started to understand that painting is also a form of expression and the natural reflection of my thoughts,” said Ye, who is in her early 40s. She was recently evicted from her last home in an artists’ enclave on Beijing’s outskirts ahead of the annual meeting of China’s ceremonial parliament that opened Sunday.

 

Far from the pomp of the 10-day gathering at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, Ye is among those caught up in an annual roundup of people the ruling Communist Party considers threats to the state, all to ensure the session passes without incident. Known critics are placed under tightened restrictions and ordinary people coming to Beijing with grievances are prevented from traveling or snatched off the streets of the capital.

 

This year’s meetings also come amid China’s broadest and most intense assault on civil society since nongovernmental groups were grudgingly allowed more freedom to operate more than a decade ago.

 

Since coming to power in 2012, President Xi Jinping has shown little tolerance for dissent, and a sustained crackdown launched in July 2015 has seen hundreds of activists and independent legal professionals detained. More than a year and a half later, eight are still in detention or prison.

 

The environment for civil society “has been worsening every year since Xi Jinping came to power and this past year has been no different,” said Frances Eve, researcher at the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

 

Activists estimate that police arrested more than 100 people last year for exercising their right to freedom of expression, including Huang Qi and Liu Feiyue, who ran websites reporting on human rights abuses and critiquing government policies. A series of trials saw some activists convicted under vague laws against subversion and leaking state secrets, with prosecutors blaming unidentified troublemakers abroad for inciting anti-government activity.

 

China last year also passed a law tightening controls over foreign nongovernmental organizations by subjecting them to close police supervision.

 

“Promoting and protecting human rights is now considered a crime,” said Eve. Many of those convicted confess under duress, including torture by police, she said. While China’s high court forbids such practices, they are believed to remain common within a police force with broad powers to arrest, question and detain.

 

China routinely rejects accusations of human rights abuses, pointing to vast improvements in quality of life wrought by three decades of economic development.

 

The U.S. State Department said in its annual human rights report published Friday that repression and coercion of organizations and individuals involved in civil rights advocacy remained “severe” last year.

 

Family members of rights defenders and lawyers are harassed and intimidated in retaliation for their work, the report said. Authorities generally fail to respect the Chinese constitution’s protection of free speech, particularly when it clashes with the interests of the Communist Party, it said.

 

China has protested to the U.S. over the report, foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Monday, calling it “filled with prejudice.”

 

“We urge the U.S. to stop interfering in China’s internal affairs on the pretext of human rights,” Geng added.

 

The authorities rarely comment on activists such as Ye, who used to have thousands of followers online and her own nongovernmental organization advocating for legalized prostitution and offering advice on sexual health.

 

Her efforts, including protests against light sentences given to the abusers of schoolgirls, got her noticed by the public and, more ominously, the police, who she says pressured her to close her NGO and move several times. Worried about the impact on her 17-year-old daughter, she sent her to the U.S. last month to study with help from a U.S.-based filmmaker.

 

Ye says she’s gotten a boost from internationally famous artist and activist Ai Weiwei, who bought one of her paintings “depicting a fat woman, a sex worker wishing to earn a lot of money and go home to build a house.” Ai previously bought up her belongings when she was evicted from an apartment in 2014 and exhibited the household items — an old refrigerator, a washing machine, cardboard boxes — at one of his shows at the Brooklyn Museum.

 

Ye reluctantly left her studio in the village of Songzhuang last week on the orders of police. An officer reached at the local Public Security Bureau on Monday declined to comment on the case. Ye said she went to stay with friends in the nearby village of Beisi and within days again ran into pressure to leave.

 

“The Communist Party secretary of the village told local residents not to rent to me because I’ve long been on the blacklist,” Ye said.

 

Beisi party secretary Liu Wenbiao referred a request for comment to the Songzhuang police.

 

“They think that a person like me should be the target for ‘social stabilization,'” Ye said, using government shorthand for suppressing dissent.
…

If there are hooligans planning to crash the 2018 World Cup football (soccer) finals in Russia, a Russian lawmaker thinks he has a solution.

Parliament member Igor Lebedev has even drawn up rules for what he calls “draka” – the Russian word for “fight.” There would be 20 unarmed fighters on each side taking on one another in a stadium at a scheduled hour. He said these fights between different fan groups could attract thousands of spectators.

“If visiting fans, for example, begin picking fights they receive an answer — your challenge is accepted. Let’s meet at the stadium at the set time. You can acquaint yourselves with the rules on our site,” Lebedev wrote on his party’s website. Russia would be a pioneer in a new sport, he said.

Last year, organized groups of Russian football fans, many with martial arts training, fought English fans on the streets of Marseille during the European Championship.

Some fan groups in Russia already hold illicit fights along similar lines of what Lebedev is proposing, typically pre-arranged mass brawls in rural locations, away from police. A Russian Premier League game on Saturday between CSKA Moscow and Zenit St. Petersburg was marred by clashes between groups of rival fans who fought one another and tried to break through a security fence.

Lebedev, who represents the opposition Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, is also on the board of the Russian Football Union.

His comments come only 15 months from the kickoff of football’s 2018 World Cup which will be hosted by Russia with 12 venues in 11 cities.

 
…

On the dusty streets of Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou soldiers searched visitors to the pan-African Fespaco film festival on Thursday night after they’d emptied their pockets and passed through a metal detector. Close by a soldier manned a heavy machinegun mounted to the back of a military pick-up.

Other international events in West Africa, including the Paris-Dakar Rally and Mali’s Festival in the Desert music event, have been relocated or cancelled due to the threat posed by jihadist groups.

Burkina Faso’s government, however, has been insistent that Fespaco, one of Africa’s pre-eminent film festivals, would continue despite security concerns since a deadly raid last year by al-Qaida militants, the first major attack of its kind in the country.

While security in Burkina Faso remains fragile, this year’s festival, which closed on Saturday, drew robust attendance.

Hubert Kabre, a bank employee in Ouagadougou, has attended the festival for the past three decades and wasn’t about to let al-Qaida militants deter him this year.

“We’re not going to allow ourselves be controlled by terrorists,” he said as he waited, ticket in hand, for the second evening screening at the CineBurkina cinema. “This is the best response.”

Until not long ago, landlocked Burkina Faso, an ally of the West against jihadist groups in the arid West African Sahel region, had largely been spared the violence that plagued its neighbors and all but destroyed tourism and cultural events.

That changed in January last year when militants loyal to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) stormed the packed Cappuccino restaurant and the high-end Splendid Hotel in downtown Ouagadougou in a raid that left 30 people dead and dozens more wounded.

The attack struck a blow to the city’s relaxed vibe, and for a time the future of Fespaco, which has been held every two years since 1969, appeared in doubt.

During the week of this year’s festival at least two attacks occurred in Burkina Faso near the border with Mali. The first targeted a police station and the second killed two people at a school.

Edith Ouedraogo, 25, had initially planned not to go to the festival fearing it would be too dangerous, but later changed her mind.

“I had friends who kept inviting me. As soon as they’d say ‘Hey, we’re going to Fespaco’, I’d say no, no, no. I’m not going where there are jihadists,” she said.

Security forces were out checking vehicles and identification papers at roads into the capital a week before the festival started and a heavy security presence was visible at all of the venues. But for those who attended, it was worth it.

“We don’t have cinemas. Our films don’t circulate in the commercial distribution circuit in Africa. So missing Fespaco would mean not experiencing the thing we love the most,” said Tunisian filmmaker Mohamed Challouf.

“Felicite” a film about a Congolese nightclub singer’s struggle to care for her son following a motorcycle accident, by Senegalese director Alain Gomis won the top prize this year.

“When you stay at home … [the jihadists] can achieve what they want,” said Tako Daouda, 30, following an encore screening of “Felicite” on Saturday night. “You have to go out and take those people on and say ‘No’.”
…

Strathmore arts and culture center in North Bethesda, Maryland, is best known for its music center. But alongside music concerts and performances the mansion is a venue for showcasing visual arts, including its annual juried exhibition. Mandana Tadayon tells us more
…

Since leaving the White House in 2009, former President George W. Bush has transformed his post-presidential perch into an easel for artwork, which helps him raise awareness and funds to ease soldiers’ transition to civilian life, and to treat the wounds of war. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports.
…

A group of Aboriginal transgender women have traveled more than 3,000 kilometers to take part in Sydney’s world-famous Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. They have spent decades fighting for recognition within the indigenous community on the remote Tiwi Islands.

About 30 transgender women from the islands off the coast of Australia’s Northern Territory will march Saturday for the first time with thousands of other participants in outfits colored with glow-in-the-dark paint emblazoned with traditional patterns and totems.

Known as “sistagirls,” the group’s trip has been financed through various fundraising campaigns. They bring to Sydney a story of struggle and defiance. It has taken the women many years to gain acceptance in their remote Indigenous communities, where attitudes have shifted slowly. Several of the women have committed suicide in the past.

Born a male, Simon Miller now identifies as a woman.

“[I] did not know about sistagirls until I was, like, 22. When I am [a] sistagirl, I feel like 100 percent true to me and I feel happy, you know, and when I am, like, dressing like a boy and that I feel, like, depressed and feels really awkward and uncomfortable,” Simon said.

Sydney’s gay and lesbian Mardi Gras began as a civil rights rally in the late 1970s. It was born out of solidarity for New York’s Stonewall movement, and called for an end to discrimination against gays and lesbians.

The group has a loud political voice, as campaigners continue their efforts to persuade Australia’s leaders to legalize same-sex marriage.

Opponents of the march, including some Christian groups, have in the past described it as a “public parade of immorality and blasphemy.”
…

Paula Fox, a prize-winning author who created high art out of imagined chaos in such novels as Poor George and Desperate Characters and out of the real-life upheavals in her memoir Borrowed Finery, has died at age 93.

 

Her daughter, Linda Carroll, told The Associated Press that Fox died Wednesday at Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. She had been in failing health. 

 

Abandoned as a girl by her parents, a single mother before age 20, Fox used finely crafted prose to write again and again about breakdown and disruption, what happens under the “surface of things.” In Poor George, her debut novel, Fox told of a bored schoolteacher and the teen vagrant who upends his life. Desperate Characters, her most highly regarded work of fiction, is a portrait of New York City’s civic and domestic decline in the 1960s, a plague symbolized by the bite of a stray cat.

 

“It seems to me that in life, behind all these names and things and people and forces, there’s a dark energy,” Fox told The Associated Press in 2011.

Late-life revival

 

Her work was out of print for years, but she enjoyed a late-life revival thanks to the admiration of such younger authors as Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Lethem. She lived for decades in Brooklyn and was a revered figure in the New York City borough’s thriving literary community.

 

Her other books included the novels A Servant’s Tale, The Western Coast and a memoir about living in Europe after World War II, The Coldest Winter. Fox also wrote more than a dozen children’s books, including The Slave Dancer, winner of the Newbery medal in 1974. Borrowed Finery, published in 2001, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle award.

 

She might have written more novels, but a head injury sustained from a mugging in Jerusalem in the 1990s left her unable to write long fiction. She instead began working on memoirs and shorter pieces.

Difficult childhood

 

Born in New York City in 1923, Fox was the daughter of novelist-screenwriter Paul Fox and fellow screenwriter Elsie Fox. Paula Fox remembered her father as a drunk given to “interminable, stumbling descriptions of the ways in which he and fellow writers tried to elude domesticity.” Her mother was a “sociopath” who kicked her out of the house as a young girl. Fox lived everywhere from a plantation in Cuba to a boarding school in Montreal.

 

Living in Hollywood in the 1930s and ’40s, she danced with John Wayne and encountered John Barrymore, “yellowing with age like the ivory keys of a very old piano.” Marlon Brando was a friend, and Courtney Love is her granddaughter, born to Carroll, whom a 19-year-old Fox gave up for adoption. Her brother-in-law, Clement Greenberg, was among the 20th century’s most influential art critics.

 

Although a devoted reader since childhood, she didn’t publish until past 40. She worked for years as a teacher and as a tutor for troubled children and was married briefly for a second time, to Richard Sigerson, with whom she had two sons. She finally settled down with her third husband, translator and Commentary editor Martin Greenberg, whom she met after he had rejected a story she submitted for the magazine. 
…

National parks traveler Mikah Meyer says visiting Everglades National Park in southern Florida was like stepping back in time.

Time standing still

 

“It’s this huge section of [protected] land … it takes up the entire southwestern corner of Florida and essentially before human interaction, everything south of Orlando looked like the Everglades.”

Join Mikah in the Everglades

That huge expanse of land includes more than half a million hectares of wetland, the largest subtropical wilderness in the U.S. It’s known throughout the world for its unparalleled land and waterscapes, which support a wide variety of plant and animal life.

Mikah immersed himself in the wetlands adventure with treks through mud-filled swamps and close encounters with some of the parks’ avian and reptilian residents.

Teeming with wildlife

On the raised boardwalk of the Anhinga Trail on the east side of the park, Mikah had unparalleled views of some of the area’s lush landscape and unique wildlife.

“It’s a marshland with a bunch of trees, and so there’s all these birds everywhere that make it their home. We saw Terrapin turtles; there’s gators sunning themselves on the banks … we saw one alligator here, and one alligator there, and at one point we walked up and there were like 25 alligators all lying together, on top of each other, next to each other sunning, and it was just like more gators than I’d ever seen in my life,” he said.

In fact, in that one area of the park alone, he said he easily saw “the most amount of wildlife I’ve seen in one place at one time.”

Slough slog

Another highlight for Mikah and his travel companion Andy Waldron was wading through knee-deep water and mud, on a hike called a slough slog.

“So you start out and you slog through the mud and then eventually you get to the water and in that water there’re a bunch of fish, alligators, snakes, all sorts of things that you would not want to come at you,” he recounted.

“Fortunately the park service gives you a giant stick … whose primary function is to step it in front of you to see how deep the water is,” the idea being not to fall into the “fish, possibly gator, possibly snake-infested water.”

“It sounds gross, it sounds horrible but it was one of the most fun things I’ve done at a national park yet,” Mikah admitted. Being in the muddy waters surrounded by exotic trees and plant life “feels like you’re on another planet, like you’re in an episode of Star Trek,” he said.

He credits much of that surreal but awesome experience to their National Park ranger guide, Lori Mobbs.

 

“Lori was probably one of the most fun people I’ve met this entire trip,” Mikah said. He says she told him how she was from “the hillbilly mountains of Alabama,” and after finishing her service with the U.S. Army, decided to join the National Park Service.

“I spent time protecting America, wearing a green uniform, and now I’m going to get another green uniform and go protect America’s wildlife,” he quoted her saying.

Everglades on steroids

In another part of the park, near the Shark Valley Visitor Center, Mikah and his travel companion were fortunate to find another wonderful guide … Ozzie Gonzalez, from Everglades Nature Tours.

He took the young men on an exclusive and exhilarating ride through the famous southern Florida wetlands on an airboat.

“I think what made this so special is that our guide has grown up in this area and he knew it like the back of his hands,” Mikah said. “So he took us out on this airboat into the middle of the River of Grass and right away he takes us to the spot where there’s always a mama gator.”

Close encounters of the reptilian kind

The female alligator made puffy, hissing noises as the boat drew near.

“She was warning us that my babies are here,” Mikah said, interpreting her warnings as, “’Don’t mess with me or I’m going to be really angry!’ And then sure enough, we look around and we saw like eight different baby alligators.”

And that wasn’t the only close encounter with gators. … Ozzie then took Mikah and Andy to meet another reptilian resident he had come to recognize.

“He parks the air boat and he calls the gator over like a dog and the thing comes swimming right up to the side of the boat,” Mikah marveled. “And it was just so incredible.”

Ozzie also took the time to show off some of the area’s plant life. Parking the airboat near some tall, reed-like plants, he took one in his hands to give them a closer look.

“They call it sawgrass because if you pull your arm against it one way it won’t hurt you at all, but if you go the other way it’ll cut your skin because it’s got these saw ridges on it,” Mikah explained.

Ozzie went on to describe how the plant has all the nutrients one would need to survive for a while out in the wild, and how Native American tribes in the area used to use sawgrass to cut the umbilical cords from babies.

Mikah, who’s on a mission to visit all of the more than 400 sites within the National Park Service, says his final adventure, on a sunset boat tour at the western edge of the Everglades, captured the wonder of his wetlands experience.

“We had heard that oftentimes you can see dolphins on this tour and it delivered!  It was so cool. … It’s such a rare treat to see something in the wild and not in a zoo or not on TV or not in a National Geographic magazine. This was real. It was real life.”

Mikah invites you to learn more about his travels in Florida and all across America by visiting his website, Facebook and Instagram.
…

When Johnnie Yellock enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, he knew his job as a combat controller would frequently put him in harm’s way.

 

“We volunteered in a time of war, we knew exactly what we were up against,” he told VOA. “A lot of our job titles were putting us right on the battlefield. We were ready for that. I was prepared to die for my country.”

 

Although he was prepared, war has a way of changing the best-laid plans. Even Johnnie Yellock’s.  

 

During a deployment to eastern Afghanistan, on July 6, 2011, the vehicle he was traveling in struck an improvised explosive device, or IED.

 

The force of the blast tore through his body. Although he had to apply a tourniquet to both of his own legs to stop the bleeding, he continued to help his team by calling in the evacuation flight that would lift them to safety and desperately needed medical assistance.  

Helpless, but not hopeless

 

But instead of being relieved, Yellock was frustrated he couldn’t stay in the fight.

 

“I went from being the tip of the spear on the battlefield to being loaded on a stretcher and carted off the battlefield, completely helpless.”

“The whole family was blown up with Johnnie,” explains his mother, Reagan Yellock, also a U.S. Air Force veteran, “because it is such a traumatic experience for the whole family. I knew it was a process. My first priority was: My son was alive. What do we do? What do we do to get him help? To get him back to us and what the process is going to be.”

 

Yellock’s encounter with the IED that July day in Afghanistan ultimately ended his military career, and began a rehabilitation effort that continues today.

 

“My recovery was extensive for sure,” he admits. “I’ve had about 30 surgeries on my legs, in a process called limb salvage, so it’s a huge effort to maintain and keep my legs from amputation. I now have adaptive braces, but aside from all the physical trials of recovery and changing your lifestyle, your life took a detour. The transition of being an active-duty service member to then retiring from the military, it’s a pretty humbling journey.”

 

While that journey might have taken him off the battlefield, it has put him in an art gallery at the George W. Bush Presidential Museum in Dallas, Texas, where Yellock isn’t just visiting the exhibits. He’s a featured subject.

A salute from Team 43

 

“That is a very unique email to receive to find out that your prior commander-in-chief has taken and dedicated a lot of his time painting several of us wounded warriors.”

 

Yellock is a member of Team 43, as in the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush, who has focused much of his post-presidential work to helping wounded “warriors” like Johnnie Yellock adjust to civilian life.

In an exclusive interview with VOA, the former president spoke about Yellock and other veterans who are the inspiration behind his yearlong effort to paint their portraits for an exhibit and book, titled Portraits of Courage: A Commander-in-Chief’s Tribute to America’s Warriors.  

 

“I know them all,” Bush told VOA. “I’ve ridden bikes with them. I’ve played golf with them. I knew their stories.”

 

But engaging in sports is one thing.  Painting their portraits is quite another.

 

“How is a person who is agnostic on art for most of his life become a painter?” the former president asked himself.

 

The answer? The pastime of war-time British prime minister Winston Churchill.

 

“I happened to read Churchill’s essay, ‘Painting as a Pastime.’ I’m a big admirer of Winston Churchill, and in essence, I said if this guy can paint, I can paint,” Bush said.

Personal tribute

 

At first, Bush painted simple objects. Then he transitioned to pets, and moved on to world leaders, until his idea for Portraits of Courage began to take shape more than a year ago.

 

It’s a tribute to those who Bush, as commander-in-chief of the United States military, was ultimately responsible for sending into harm’s way.

“Rarely do I run into a vet who says, ‘You caused this to happen to me,’” Bush told VOA. “These are all volunteers, and I made it perfectly clear we were going to defend the country. And they knew exactly what the stakes were. They go out of their way to make sure that their ole commander-in-chief understands that they understand the sacrifices they made.”

 

“The trials [Bush] was thrust into … the decisions he had to make, were difficult ones,” Yellock says. “The humility he shows in recognizing the impact that his decisions made on the lives of so many of us soldiers and our family members – those of my friends that didn’t come home from war, and me coming home wounded. I can speak for all those wounded that we don’t regret going and doing what we did. We would do it again if we had the opportunity.”

 

It’s that kind of sentiment that kept Bush motivated to take a brush to canvas, day after day.

 

“So when I’m painting these portraits,” Bush explained, “I’m thinking, what kind of character is it that rather than complain or be full of self-pity, they say, ‘Sir, I’d do it again.’”

 

Of the 98 veterans portrayed in Bush’s artwork for the project, Yellock is featured on a four-panel mural, next to several of his friends.

 

“About 10 minutes ago was the first time I saw my portrait,” he told VOA. “I was just blown away.”

Raising funds to help vets

 

Bush says he hopes the art speaks for itself, but Portraits of Courage is more than just an exhibit. It’s a fundraiser to help other veterans.

 

All proceeds from the sale of the Portraits of Courage book, including a more expensive, limited edition signed by the former president, will help fund programs of the George W. Bush Institute’s Military Service Initiative, which aims to help military members transition to civilian life, help veterans find employment if needed, and address ways to treat both the visible and invisible injuries of war.

Johnnie Yellock has both.

 

He is the recipient of the Bronze Star and Purple Heart, among other military decorations.  While he is honored to be a part of the exhibit, just don’t call him a hero.

 

“Those that don’t come home … those are the heroes of our time,” he told VOA.

 

Four of Yellock’s personal heroes have their names engraved on a bracelet he seldom takes off.  They were with him when he stood by Bush to announce the opening of the exhibit, and serve as a lasting reminder to Yellock of the ultimate sacrifice from a war that still continues today.

 

“We knew the risks. We knew that being wounded or dying was a possibility. But we get to come home, we get to catch up with our families, and we’ll forever regard those who have paid this nation’s ultimate sacrifice, as this nation’s true heroes.”

 

The original paintings of Portraits of Courage: A commander-in-chief’s Tribute to America’s Warriors are on display at the Bush Presidential Museum through October.
…

This is the Top Five Countdown! We’re raising the curtain on the five most popular songs in the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles chart, for the week ending March 4, 2017.

Break out the popcorn, movie fans, because we have a blockbuster debut for you.

Number 5: The Chainsmokers Featuring Halsey “Closer”

The action starts in fifth place, where the Chainsmokers and Halsey rebound two slots with “Closer.” This song is now a record-setter – it has spent 26 total weeks – six months – in the Top Five. That’s the longest Top Five run in the Hot 100’s 58-year history. The previous record was 25 weeks, jointly held by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars with “Uptown Funk,” and LeAnn Rimes with “How Do I Live.”

That’s pretty spectacular, but the real fireworks arrive in fourth place.

 

Number 4: Katy Perry Featuring Skip Marley “Chained To The Rhythm”

One of our most dependable hit makers returns this week, as Katy Perry opens in fourth place with “Chained To The Rhythm.”

This is not only Katy’s 14th Top 10 single, it’s also her third-highest Hot 100 debut. “Part Of Me” opened at number one in 2012, while “California Gurls” hit second place in 2010. The featured artist on this song is Skip Marley, the grandson of reggae great Bob Marley.

Number 3: Migos & Lil Uzi Vert “Bad And Boujee”

Migos and Lil Uzi Vert slip a slot to third place with “Bad And Boujee,” and Migos are already planning new chart conquests.

On February 24, Calvin Harris dropped his latest single “Slide,” featuring Frank Ocean, along with Migos members Quavo and Offset. Three days later on February 27, DJ Khaled sent out a series of Instagram photos featuring Migos, Justin Bieber, and Chance The Rapper…and it just so happens DJ Khaled is dropping a new album, Grateful, on March 22.

 

Number 2: Zayn & Taylor Swift “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever”

Zayn and Taylor Swift jump a notch to second place with “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever.”

On February 22, Zayn faced off against his former One Direction groupmates in the BRIT Awards…and lost. 1D took the Video Of The Year crown for “History,” while Zayn was an also-ran with his “Pillowtalk” clip.

 

Number 1: Ed Sheeran “Shape of You”

Ed Sheeran extends his run at the top to four weeks with “Shape Of You,” and it sounds like Ed has a new friend. 

Last week, Katy Perry stopped by the BBC for a pre-BRIT Awards interview…and Ed crashed the conversation. He recalled their first meeting after a gig in Toronto in which Ed was covered in sweat…things didn’t go so smoothly then but they’re good pals now.

Will Ed Sheeran’s run at the top continue? Join us next week for the answers!
…

A Cuban singer and music producer has filed a plagiarism lawsuit against pop stars Shakira and Carlos Vives for allegedly copying his work in the Colombian duo’s award-winning music hit “La Bicicleta .”

 

Livan Rafael Castellanos, also known as Livam, said he wants a court to decide whether parts of his 1997 song “Yo te quiero tanto ” were plagiarized in the vallenato-style hit that won last year*s Grammy Latino award.

 

“I have nothing against Shakira, Vives or anybody else,” he told The Associated Press. “It*s the law that needs to decide whether changing a song’s key is enough to make it different.”

 

The lyrics in Livam’s original chorus are “I love you, I love you so much” while Vives and Shakira sing “I’m dreaming and I love you so much” with a rhythm and melody that the musician argues are similar. His complaint notes that both songs use accordions.

 

Livam, who works in Madrid as a composer and producer, said his 3 year-old daughter identified her dad’s melody in “La Bicicleta” when the family heard the hit coming from a radio during a beach holiday last summer.

 

The musician consulted musical experts and contacted the labels representing Carlos Vives, Shakira and Andres Eduardo Castro, a producer who appears registered as the author of “La Bicicleta.” No agreements were reached, according to Livam.

 

A judge in the Spanish capital on Thursday accepted the lawsuit filed by MDRB Music Publishing, the label holding the copyright for Livam”s work, and has given 20 days for the plaintiffs to present further evidence, judicial authorities said.

 

SGAE, the main society managing the rights of authors and publishers in Spain, said it had suspended the rights of the song following the association’s usual procedure when one of its members lodges a complaint.

 

A legal representative for Sony ATV Music Publishing in Spain, which represents Shakira and Castro, said Friday the company couldn’t comment because it had not received notice of the lawsuit.

 

“La Bicicleta” – which means “The Bike” in English – was also recognized last month by the Billboard Awards as best 2016 Hot Latin Song.

 

Livam said he’s happy for the success of the hit no matter what the judge eventually rules about whether his creation was or not part of the hit.

 

” I’m just a musician, but I don’t want to be robbed,” he said.

 
…

Nearly four decades after Elvis sang his last tune, his legacy got a $45 million boost with the Thursday opening of a major new attraction at his Graceland estate — an entertainment complex that Priscilla Presley says gives “the full gamut” of the King of rock ‘n’ roll.

About 200 people streamed into “Elvis Presley’s Memphis” after the late singer’s wife cut a ribbon and allowed fans to see the $45 million complex for the first time.

Resembling an outdoor mall, the 200,000-square-foot campus sits across the street from Graceland, Presley’s longtime home-turned-museum. The complex features a comprehensive Presley exhibit with clothing he wore on stage and guitars he played; a showcase of the cars he owned and used; a soundstage; a theater; two restaurants and retail stores.

“You’re getting the full gamut of who Elvis Presley was,” Priscilla Presley said during an interview after the grand opening. “You’re getting to see and participate a bit in his life and what he enjoyed and what he loved to collect.” 

It’s part of a $140 million expansion, which also includes a $90 million, 450-room hotel that opened last year. The complex replaces the aging buildings that have housed Presley-related exhibits for years. An old, gray, strip-mall style visitor center will be torn down to make room for a greenspace along Elvis Presley Boulevard, the street that runs in front of the house.

Graceland has been updating its tourist experience. Visitors now use iPads for self-guided tours of the house. The new Guest House at Graceland, with modern amenities like glass-encased showers with wall-mounted body sprays and in-room Keurig coffeemakers, has replaced the crumbling Heartbreak Hotel, which is scheduled for demolition.

“We want to keep updating. … If you don’t keep up with what’s going on in the times, you get left out,” Priscilla Presley said. She was joined at the ribbon-cutting by Elvis Presley Enterprises CEO Jack Soden and Joel Weinshanker, managing partner of Graceland Holdings.

The opening comes just before the 40th anniversary of Presley’s death on Aug. 16, 1977, at age 42.

Adults pay $57.50 for a standard tour of the house and access to the complex. Visitors can also choose to tour just the house for a lower price. Discounts are offered for seniors and children. A self-guided tour of two airplanes owned by Presley is $5 more. 

From the ticketing area, people line up to wait for buses that take visitors to the museum, or they can move through the entertainment complex’s large, high-ceilinged buildings.

Gladys’ Diner — named after the singer’s mother — has the feel of a 1950’s eatery, complete with pictures of Presley, aqua-colored chairs and stations where patrons can order hot dogs, burgers and ice cream.

There’s also Presley’s favorite: Gladys’ World Famous Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwich, fried in bacon grease. Another PB&B sandwich is cooked in butter.

Across a wide walkway lies the automobile museum, filled with some of Presley’s favorite toys. Among them is a pink 1955 Cadillac Fleetwood — a custom painted model that he gave to his mother — and a sleek, black 1973 Stutz Blackhawk that he drove the day he died.

The walkway leads to the 20,000-square foot museum called “Elvis: The Entertainer,” which features white and purple jumpsuits he wore during concerts and gold-colored guitars he played on stage.

 Several retail stores line the complex. A second restaurant, a barbecue joint called Vernon’s Smokehouse — named after Presley’s father — will also open. So will an exhibition focused on Sam Phillips, the Sun Records producer and rock ‘n’ roll pioneer who recorded Presley for the first time.

The complex is still being finished. Priscilla Presley said there’s a warehouse full of artifacts, ready for display.

During the interview with The Associated Press, Priscilla Presley declined to comment about a court battle in Los Angeles between Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter she had with Elvis, and Lisa Marie’s estranged husband.

Among the fans eager to get a glimpse at the new exhibits Thursday was Carol Carey, a retiree who made the short trip across the state line from Southaven, Mississippi, with her son.

Wearing a pink shirt with the words “Wild About Graceland” on it, Carey beamed a wide smile as she talked about the complex.

“We couldn’t wait to see it,” she said. “We’ve been here every other day, checking it out. Getting used to saying goodbye to the old, and seeing friends who are all taking pictures of everything.”
…

U.S. first lady Melania Trump read to a group of children at a New York hospital Thursday to celebrate National Read Across America Day.

In one of her first outings in a traditional first lady role, Trump read to children at the pediatrics ward from the Dr. Seuss favorite, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

She told the children, “I came here to encourage everyone to read and to just think about the books and what you want to achieve in life.”

Trump also brought a box full of children’s books by American author Theodor Geisel, who is better known as Dr. Seuss, to leave for the children.

“Dr. Seuss has brought so much joy, laughter and enchantment into children’s lives all around the globe for generations,” she said. “Through his captivating rhymes, Dr. Seuss has delighted and inspired children while teaching them to read, to dream and to care.”

Melania Trump is living in New York while her son finishes school, rather than joining her husband at the White House in Washington, D.C.
…

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts has acquired the complete archives of Lou Reed .

The library and Reed’s wife, musician Laurie Anderson, made the announcement Thursday, on what would have been his 75th birthday.

The Lou Reed Archive features paper and electronic records, photos, and about 3,600 audio and 1,300 video recordings.

 

Anderson says the archive couldn’t be in a better place: “in the heart of the city he loved the best.”

Reed, an aspiring poet, rose to prominence after Andy Warhol encountered his experimental rock band, The Velvet Underground. Warhol produced the band’s first studio album.

The library will host free displays and public programs over the next two weeks to celebrate and showcase Reed’s life and work, and his collection’s new home.
…

Every year, the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising Museum in Los Angeles holds an exhibit showcasing the works of Oscar nominated fashion designers of that year. VOA got a closer look at the designs of this year’s costumes, and spoke to one of the nominees.
…

A Californian musician and a Russian music fan decided to become business partners. They founded a company to manufacture high-end microphones from old machinery that once produced Kalashnikov rifles. VOA’s Faiza Elmasry has more. Faith Lapidus narrates.
…

Danish toymaker Lego plans to honor five women scientists, engineers and astronauts who worked for U.S. space agency NASA by releasing figurines of the pioneering women that its creator hopes will inspire more girls to pursue careers in science.

The women include computer scientist Margaret Hamilton, astronaut Sally Ride and Katherine Johnson, one of three black female mathematicians whose work on the U.S. space program in the 1960s is captured in Oscar-nominated film “Hidden Figures.”

Maia Weinstock, a science editor and the winner of a Lego competition for new sets created by fans, said she wanted to recognize women who made significant contributions at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

“There are people whose stories have not really been told who have made seminal contributions to the NASA programs,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

After submitting her design idea to a Lego website, Weinstock said it only took 15 days before her proposal garnered 10,000 public votes and attracted attention from the toymaker.

The set, which will also pay tribute to astronomer Nancy Grace Roman and astronaut Mae Jemison, will feature a mini version of the Hubble Space Telescope which was sent into space in the 1990s to collect data and take photographs.

It will also include a space shuttle with rocket boosters, and various instruments used during historic space missions like Apollo and Mercury.

Lego Ideas spokeswoman Lise Dydensborg announced Weinstock as the winner on Tuesday in a video posted on Twitter.

Weinstock said “it was a dream come true” that her design will be available by late 2017 or early 2018 and hopes it will inspire girls to become more interested in science, technology, engineering and research (STEM).

Even though the number of women involved in STEM has significantly increased in recent years, they are still under-represented in science, accounting for only about 30 percent of the world’s researchers, the United Nations’ cultural agency UNESCO says.

“To be able to see yourself in the toys that you play with and envision a career that you might go into, I think that’s really powerful. And I hope that girls will see that and be inspired,” she said. “I also want to make sure boys see that as well and recognize that women have a place in these fields too.”
…

The predicted peak blooming period for this year’s cherry blossom season in Washington is being announced.

 

The window is expected to be announced Wednesday at a news conference at the Newseum.

 

Last year’s peak bloom happened March 25. According to the National Park Service website, however, from 2013 to 2015, peak bloom was around April 10.

 

Peak bloom means at least 70 percent of the trees around Washington, D.C.’s Tidal Basin are blossoming. Once peak bloom is reached, the blossoms can remain on the trees from four to 10 days.

 

This year’s National Cherry Blossom Festival , which is timed to coincide with the blooming, will be held from March 20 to April 16.

 

 
…

Barack and Michelle Obama have book deals.

The former president and first lady have signed with Penguin Random House, the publisher announced Tuesday. Financial terms were not disclosed for the books, which several publishers had competed for, although the deals are likely in the tens of millions of dollars.

Both Obamas have published through Crown, a Penguin Random House imprint.  But Penguin Random House declined comment on which imprint or imprints the books would be released through.

“We are absolutely thrilled to continue our publishing partnership with President and Mrs. Obama,” Penguin Random House CEO Markus Dohle said in a statement.

“With their words and their leadership, they changed the world, and every day, with the books we publish at Penguin Random House, we strive to do the same. Now, we are very much looking forward to working together with President and Mrs. Obama to make each of their books global publishing events of unprecedented scope and significance.”

The Obamas were represented in negotiations by Robert Barnett and Deneen Howell of Williams & Connolly. Barnett has worked on deals with Barack Obama’s two immediate predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and with Michelle Obama’s predecessors Hillary Rodham Clinton and Laura Bush.

The Obamas plans to donate a “significant portion” of their author proceeds to charity, including to the Obama Foundation. Barack Obama’s book is a strong contender to attract the largest advance for any ex-president; the previous record is believed to be $15 million for Bill Clinton’s My Life.

The unique dual arrangement announced Tuesday is for books that are among the most anticipated in memory from a former president and first lady. Barack Obama is widely regarded as one of the finest prose stylists among modern presidents, and his million-selling Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope are considered essential to his rise to the White House. Michelle Obama has given few details about her time as first lady: Her only book is about food and gardening, American Grown, released in 2012. Both Obamas are widely popular with the public in the U.S. and abroad.

Titles and release dates were not immediately available. The books will reflect on the Obamas’ White House years, although Penguin Random House declined to give further details. A publishing official with knowledge of the negotiations said that Barack Obama’s book will be a straightforward memoir about his presidency, while Michelle Obama plans to write an inspirational work for young people that will draw upon her life story.

The official was not authorized to discuss the negotiations and asked not to be identified.

Presidential memoirs have contributed little to the literary canon, a tradition many believe Barack Obama will change. But recent books have found large audiences: Clinton’s My Life and George W. Bush’s Decision Points were million sellers. Books by first ladies, including Hillary Clinton’s Living History, have been dependable best-sellers.
…

Warren Beatty says Academy of Motion Pictures President Cheryl Boone Isaacs should “publicly clarify” what happened during Sunday night’s best picture presentation “as soon as possible.”

 

Beatty released a statement Tuesday to The Associated Press in which he declined to comment further on the debacle that led to him and co-presenter Faye Dunaway mistakenly reading “La La Land” as best picture winner rather than “Moonlight.” Instead, he urged the academy to answer questions.

 

“I feel it would be more appropriate for the president of the Academy, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, to publicly clarify what happened as soon as possible,” said Beatty.

 

Representatives for the academy didn’t immediately comment Tuesday.

 

Since Sunday’s broadcast, the academy has largely left the explaining to PwC, the accounting firm that has taken the blame for the “La La Land” mistakenly being read as the best picture winner by Beatty and Faye Dunaway. PwC, which is in charge of tabulating the winners, has said partner Brian Cullinan mistakenly handed them the wrong envelope.

 

The film academy didn’t release a statement of its own until late Monday.

 

“We deeply regret the mistakes that were made during the presentation of the best picture category during last night’s Oscar ceremony,” it read. “We apologize to the entire cast and crew of ‘La La Land’ and ‘Moonlight’ whose experience was profoundly altered by this error. We salute the tremendous grace they displayed under the circumstances. To all involved – including our presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, the filmmakers, and our fans watching worldwide – we apologize.”

 

On Monday, the academy said it has spent Sunday night and the following day “investigating the circumstances” and “will determine what actions are appropriate going forward.”

 

Others were coming to Beatty’s defense, including his older sister, Shirley MacLaine.

 

“They have to get their act together,” MacLaine said during an interview with the AP for her upcoming film, “The Last Word.” “I thought it was just really, really terrible. I couldn’t imagine what he must have been feeling. I’m still basically processing it because it was in front of so many people.”

 

Neither PwC or the academy has commented on whether Cullinan’s use of social media was a factor in the error. The PwC partner tweeted a behind-the-scenes photo of best-actress winner Emma Stone moments before the best picture announcement. The tweet was later deleted.

 

As per protocol, Cullinan and PwC colleague Martha Ruiz toted briefcases to the awards via the red carpet, each holding an identical set of envelopes for the show’s 24 categories. During the telecast, the accountants were stationed in the Dolby Theatre wings, one stage left and one stage right, to give presenters their category’s envelope before they went on stage.

 

Most presenters entered stage right, where Cullinan was posted and where he handed Beatty and Dunaway the errant envelope. Yet the previous award, best actress, had been presented by Leonardo DiCaprio, who entered stage left and received the envelope from Ruiz. That left a duplicate, unopened envelope for best actress at stage right.
…

The last time the entire Sistine Chapel was photographed for posterity, digital photography was in its infancy and words like pixels were bandied about mostly by computer nerds and NASA scientists.

Now, after decades of technological advances in art photography, digital darkrooms and printing techniques, a five-year project that will aid future restorations has left the Vatican Museums with 270,000 digital frames that show frescoes by Michelangelo and other masters in fresh, stunning detail.

“In the future, this will allow us to know the state of every centimeter of the chapel as it is today, in 2017,” said Antonio Paolucci, former head of the museums and a world-renowned expert on the Sistine.

Michelangelo’s ceiling frescoes include one of the most famous scenes in art – the arm of a gentle, bearded God reaching out to give life to Adam.

The Renaissance master finished the ceiling in 1512 and painted the massive “Last Judgement” panel behind the altar between 1535 and 1541.

The last time all Sistine frescoes were photographed was between 1980 and 1994, during a landmark restoration project that cleaned them for the first time in centuries.

The new photos were taken for inclusion in a new three-volume, 870-page set that is limited to 1,999 copies and marketed to libraries and collectors.

The set, which costs about 12,000 euros ($12,700), was a joint production of the Vatican Museums and Italy’s Scripta Maneant high-end art publishers.

Post-production computer techniques included “stitching” of frames that photographers took while working out of sight for 65 nights from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m., when the chapel where popes are elected is closed.

The project was known to only to a few people until it was unveiled in the chapel on Friday night.

The set includes the entire chapel, including the mosaic floor and 15th century frescoes by artists who have long languished in Michelangelo’s giant shadow.

More than 220 pages are printed in 1:1 scale, including ‘The Creation of Adam’ and Jesus’ face from the Last Judgement. Each volume weighs about 9 kg (20 pounds) and fold-out pages measure 60 by 130 cm ( 24 by 51 inches).

The old photos taken during the last restoration were done with film.

“We used special post-production software to get the depth, intensity, warmth and nuance of colours to an accuracy of 99.9 percent,” said Giorgio Armaroli, head of Scripta Maneant.

“Future restorers will use these as their standards,” he said, adding that each page was printed six times.

Brush strokes are clearly visible as are the “borders” delineating sections, known as “giornate,” or days. Since frescoes are painted on wet plaster, artists prepare just enough for what they can complete in each session.

The photographers used a 10-meter-high (33 feet) portable scaffold and special telescopic lens. The results are now stored in a Vatican server holding 30 terabytes of information.

($1 = 0.9450 euros)
…

The late Country music star Merle Haggard will be honored a year after his death with an all-star concert featuring his longtime friend and duet partner Willie Nelson as well as Kenny Chesney, Miranda Lambert, John Mellencamp and more.

 

“Sing Me Back Home: The Music of Merle Haggard” will be held in Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on April 6, which would have been the songwriter’s 80th birthday.

 

Additional performers include Loretta Lynn, Hank Williams Jr., The Avett Brothers, Alison Krauss, Dierks Bentley, Ronnie Dunn, Warren Haynes, Jamey Johnson, Kacey Musgraves, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Lucinda Williams, Ben Haggard, John Anderson, Connie Smith and Bobby Bare. Tickets go on sale March 3.

 

Keith Wortman, CEO of Blackbird Presents, which has produced tributes to John Lennon, Kris Kristofferson and Gregg Allman, said Nelson originally came up with the idea for a tribute concert and Haggard’s wife, Theresa, and his son, Ben, helped select the artists to be included. Haggard and Nelson recorded several albums together, including “Pancho & Lefty,” and Haggard’s last released album, “Django and Jimmie,” in 2015.

 

Haggard died April 6 on his 79th birthday after a career spanning five decades and dozens of iconic hits, including “Okie from Muskogee,” “Mama Tried,” “Hungry Eyes,” “Today I Started Loving You Again” and such blue collar chronicles as “If We Make It Through December” and “Workin’ Man Blues.”
…

Not even an honorary National Book Award kept Ursula K. Le Guin from being surprised by her latest tribute: membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

 

“My reputation was made as a writer of fantasy and science fiction, a literature that has mostly gone without such honors,” she told The Associated Press recently.

 

Known for such classics as “The Left Hand of Darkness” and “The Dispossessed,” Le Guin has won numerous science fiction and fantasy awards, but only in recent years has she received more literary recognition, notably a National Book Award medal in 2014. The arts academy, an honorary society with a core membership of 250 writers, artists, composers and architects, once shunned “genre” writers such as Le Guin. Even such giants as science fiction writer Ray Bradbury and crime novelist Elmore Leonard never got in.

 

Academy member Michael Chabon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, advocated for Le Guin.

 

“As a deviser of worlds, as a literary stylist, as a social critic and as a storyteller, Le Guin has no peer,” he wrote in his recommendation, shared with the AP, that she be admitted. “From the time of her first published work in the mid-1960s, she began to push against the confines of science fiction, bringing to bear an anthropologist’s acute eye for large social textures and mythic structures, a fierce egalitarianism and a remarkable gift of language, without ever renouncing the sense of wonder and the spirit of play inherent in her genre of origin.”

 

The 87-year-old Le Guin is one of 14 new core members, the academy told the AP. Others include fiction writers Junot Diaz, Ann Patchett, Amy Hempel and Colum McCann, former U.S. poet laureate Kay Ryan and fellow poets Henri Cole and Edward Hirsch. The academy also voted in the artists Mary Heilmann, Julie Mehretu and Stanley Whitney, architect Annabelle Selldorf and composers Melinda Wagner and Julia Wolfe.

 

Three foreign honorary members were added: authors Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Zadie Smith and composer Kaija Saariaho.

 

The arts academy was founded in 1898, with members since ranging from Henry James and William Dean Howells to Chuck Close and Stephen Sondheim. The new inductees will be formally welcomed at a ceremony at the New York-based academy in May, where academy member Joyce Carol Oates will deliver the centennial Blashfield Foundation keynote address. Previous speakers have included Helen Keller, Robert Frost and Robert Caro.

 

Patchett, author of the acclaimed “Bel Canto” and most recently “Commonwealth,” said she had tears in her eyes after learning she had been selected. Years earlier, she had been given a prize by the academy, presented to her by John Updike.

 

“They could have just given me the Getting-To-Eat-Lunch-With John-Updike award and that would have been the biggest thrill of my life,” she told the AP. “This is an institution where all of my heroes gather. I am very moved that they’ve invited me in.”

 

Diaz, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” told the AP that he was surprised to get into the academy, in part because he was informed in an old-fashioned way – by letter.

 

“No one sends letters anymore,” he wrote recently in a more prevalent form of communication, email.

 

Le Guin lives in Portland, Oregon, and will not be attending the May ceremony. For a time, she didn’t even know she had been chosen. Blame it on the risks of sending paper letters.

 

“[T]he academy’s written invitation never got to me,” she said, adding that she feared comparisons to Bob Dylan, who took more than two weeks to personally respond to winning the Nobel Prize for literature. “I found out they’d been waiting days or weeks for a reply. I thought: ‘Oh, no, they’ll think I’ve been pulling a Dylan on them!'”
…

The Oscar awarded to a documentary about the daily lives of volunteers of a Syrian search and rescue group called the “White Helmets” shows people care about its mission to help civilians caught in Syria’s civil war, the group said on Monday.

The White Helmets operate a rescue service in rebel-held parts of Syria, which have been subjected to fierce bombardment by the government and Russia’s air force during the country’s civil war that has leveled whole city districts.

Syria’s government under President Bashar al-Assad has accused the group of being a front for al Qaeda and of faking footage of the aftermath of air strikes for propaganda purposes, charges the White Helmets deny.

“I am absolutely delighted that we won an Oscar — it show us that people care about us and the people we serve,” said Khaled Khatib, a volunteer and cinematographer on the film, which won an Oscar for best short documentary at Sunday’s award ceremony.

“We are honored that ‘The White Helmets’ film has received an Oscar,” Raed Saleh, head of the Syria Civil Defense, said in a statement posted on Twitter early on Monday. “But we are not happy to do what we do. We abhor the reality we live in,” he added.

The 40-minute Netflix film, directed by British documentary-maker Orlando von Einsiedel, follows volunteers as they conduct search and rescue operations in Aleppo and undergo training in Turkey.

But members of the “White Helmets” could not attend the awards ceremony in Los Angeles because of passport issues and air strikes in Syria, the group said in a statement.

Both Saleh and Khatib were given visas by the United States for the Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles.

However, in a statement early on Sunday, the White Helmets said Saleh would not be able to leave his work because of the high intensity of air strikes while Khatib could not attend because Syria’s government had cancelled his passport.

“We hope this film and the attention helps move the world to stop the bloodshed in Syria,” Saleh said.

The nearly six-year-long conflict in Syria has killed at least 300,000 people and displaced millions, according to groups that monitor the war.
…

It’s a rare sight. Girls in Nigeria playing rugby. And in northern Nigeria’s Kano state, the girls in the Basic College secondary school are defying cultural norms.

“A girl is expected not to be involved in all those masculine games, because they believe rugby needs strength,” said Rahilat Umar. “So they believe, as a girl, I’m just supposed to face my studies, leave all those games. I believe that what a man can do, a woman can do better.”

 At 13 years of age, Umar is one of the youngest players on this all-girls high school rugby team. The team captain, Janet Emmanuel, is a star player. Janet says she has learned to ignore what people say about girls playing rugby.

“We are not weaklings at all,” Emmanuel said. “We’re doing good in rugby.”

‘Here to crack rocks’

The team has been getting ready for Nigeria’s largest rugby tournament, and Coach Stanley Uka is working hard to prepare them as much as he can on the field.

 

 

 

 

“To let them know that they’re coming here to crack rocks,” said Uka. “Not just coming here for child’s play.”

Off the field, the coach knows that some of his players are facing challenges.

Umar comes from a conservative Muslim family. Her father is strongly against her playing rugby.

“I sent her to school to learn, not to be playing rugby,” said her father. “As a Muslim and a girl, I don’t think it will be very wise, I allow her to play rugby. If I decide to stop her, I will do that.”

Game day is here

But Umar said she hopes her parents will eventually come around. The next day is game day, and the team is ready.

At the Kano State Youth Rugby Championships, only two of the thirteen competing teams are made up of female players. Umar’s parents are not coming. But she doesn’t dwell on that for long. Coach Uka is counting on her.

“Rahilat as a player is one of the fantastic players I have,” said Uka. “When it comes to games, Nigeria … was nowhere to be found when it comes to the females. But presently, the females are coming up; they are beating the imaginations of so many people.”

This is the second time the tournament takes place. It was put together by the Kano State Rugby Association and the Barewa Rugby Club. U.K. national Martin Crawford moved to Kano 13 years ago. He grew up playing the sport, and these days, he’s passing it on to Nigerian youngsters.

“When we started, we focused on the senior secondary [students] and we realized that was a mistake,” said Crawford. “Because if you catch the kids when they’re 12 or 13, they’re with you till 13, 14, 15, 16. They leave secondary school, by that time, they’re die-hard rugby players. They play rugby for the pure pleasure of it, in fact, they’ll walk over hot coals.”

Coach is proud

They try their best, but by halftime, no one scores. And Coach Uka is not happy. They try again. But it’s a scoreless draw. In the end, both female teams win a trophy. Uka said he is proud of his players.

“Nigerian females are coming up and not just crawling,” said Uka. “They are really coming up, and I believe they’re going to make the world proud some day. With the cooperation and the understanding of her parents, Rahilat is moving somewhere, and I know for sure she will get somewhere. The sky will not just be her limit, but her starting point.”

Umar is disappointed that they didn’t score, but that doesn’t dampen her spirits.

“I tried my best,” said Umar. “I put all my effort in it.”

These female players from Basic College secondary school represent change and gender equality.
…