Author: Ohart

Here are the winners in key categories for the 78th Golden Globe Awards, which were handed out on Sunday. “Nomadland” boosted its Oscars momentum by taking home the prizes for best drama film and best director for Chloe Zhao. On the comedy side, “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” was named best musical or comedy film, and Sacha Baron Cohen was named best comedy actor. “The Crown” dominated in the television drama categories. Comedians Tina Fey and Amy Poehler were back to host the event — the first major awards show of a pandemic-era season that culminates with the Oscars on April 25 — though they were on opposite coasts due to the coronavirus crisis. FILM Best film, drama: “Nomadland” Best film, musical or comedy: “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” Best director: Chloe Zhao, “Nomadland” Best actor, drama: Chadwick Boseman, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” Best actress, drama: Andra Day, “The United States vs Billie Holiday” Best actor, musical or comedy: Sacha Baron Cohen, “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” Best actress, musical or comedy: Rosamund Pike, “I Care A Lot”   Best supporting actor: Daniel Kaluuya, “Judas and the Black Messiah”  Best supporting actress: Jodie Foster, “The Mauritanian” Best foreign language film: “Minari” Best animated feature: “Soul” TELEVISION Best drama series: “The Crown” Best drama actor: Josh O’Connor, “The Crown” Best drama actress: Emma Corrin, “The Crown” Best musical or comedy series: “Schitt’s Creek” Best musical or comedy actor: Jason Sudeikis, “Ted Lasso”   Best musical or comedy actress: Catherine O’Hara, “Schitt’s Creek” Best supporting actor: John Boyega, “Small Axe” Best supporting actress: Gillian Anderson, “The Crown”   Best limited series or TV movie: “The Queen’s Gambit”   Best limited series or TV movie actor: Mark Ruffalo, “I Know This Much Is True” Best limited series or TV movie actress: Anya Taylor-Joy, “The Queen’s Gambit”   
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Drama “Nomadland” and satire “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” won movie honors at the Golden Globes on Sunday in a mostly virtual bicoastal ceremony that was marked by impassioned calls for more diversity and the dominance of Netflix. “Nomadland,” a moving drama about van dwellers in recession-hit America from Searchlight Pictures, also took the best director prize for Chinese-born Chloe Zhao.It made Zhao only the second woman to win at the Globes in that category, and the first woman director of Asian descent to win. “For everyone who has gone through this difficult and beautiful journey at some point in their lives, this is for you,” said Zhao. “We don’t say goodbye, we say see you down the road,” she said, quoting a line from the movie. The two wins for “Nomadland” increased the profile of the film ahead of nominations in March for the Oscars. Sacha Baron Cohen, the creator of “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” from Amazon Studios was named best comedy movie actor, while singer Andra Day was a surprise winner for her lead role in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday.” “Donald Trump is contesting the result!” Baron Cohen joked about the win for the “Borat” sequel, which was a satire on the America of the former U.S. president. Netflix Inc’s period drama “Mank,” about “Citizen Kane” screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, had gone into Sunday’s show with a leading six nods but ended the night empty-handed.78th Annual Golden Globe Awards, Feb. 28, 2021.Nevertheless, the streaming service was the biggest winner on Sunday, with four wins in the movie field and six for television, including best TV drama series “The Crown” and limited series chess saga “The Queen’s Gambit.” The usual chummy gathering of A-listers at a gala dinner in Beverly Hills, California, was replaced by webcams in the homes of celebrities that were either dressed up or, like “Ted Lasso” star Jason Sudeikis, in casual garb. Hosted by Tina Fey in New York and Amy Poehler in Beverly Hills, the small physical audiences were made up of masked frontline workers. Peter Morgan, creator of “The Crown” said he missed being together. “I’m just sorry I am sitting here in my tragic little office and not surrounded by the people who make this show such a pleasure,” Morgan said, appearing by video. However Jodie Foster, a best supporting actress winner for the Guantanamo prison legal drama “The Mauritanian,” told reporters backstage that she felt it was one of the best Golden Globe shows ever. “It didn’t feel like it was filled with so much artifice,” said Foster. Emotional high points included a posthumous best actor award for Chadwick Boseman, who died at age 43 last August from an undisclosed battle with cancer. “He would say something beautiful,” said his widow Simone Ledward Boseman, as she fought back tears. “I don’t have his words.” British actors Daniel Kaluuya and John Boyega were among other Black winners chosen by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), which has been lambasted in recent days for having no Black people among its 87 members.Daniel Kaluuya at the 78th Annual Golden Globe Awards, Feb. 28, 2021.”Soul,” the first Pixar movie to have a Black character in the lead, was named best animated movie and won best score. The HFPA was the target of jokes and comments throughout the night. “We all know awards shows are stupid,” said Fey. “Even in stupid things, inclusivity is important and there are no Black members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.” Members of the HFPA appeared briefly on Sunday’s show and pledged to do better. Jane Fonda, 83, used her lifetime achievement acceptance speech to make the case for elevating all voices in Hollywood, saying that stories “really can change people.” 
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Black British actors Daniel Kaluuya and John Boyega, and animated movie “Soul,” were among the early winners at Sunday’s virtual Golden Globes ceremony, which took place under a cloud following a furor over diversity.Kaluuya won best supporting actor for his role as Black Panther activist Fred Hampton in “Judas and the Black Messiah.””This took it out of me. I gave everything,” said Kaluuya, accepting the award via a webcam.Boyega won the supporting actor award for his role in the “Small Axe” series of TV movies about life as a Black person in 1970s London. “Soul,” the first Pixar movie to have a black character in the lead, was named best animated movie.The usual chummy gathering of A-listers at a gala dinner in Beverly Hills has been overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic and controversy over the lack of Black members in the 87-member Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) whose members choose the Golden Globe winners.Actor Laura Dern presents the Best Supporting Actor award, in this handout photo from the 78th Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, California, Feb. 28, 2021.Three members of the HFPA appeared on the show and pledged to do better.”We look forward to a more inclusive future,” said Ali Sar, the current president, who is from Turkey.Comedians Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, hosting from New York and Los Angeles respectively, opened the show by lobbing a series of jokes at the expense of the HFPA.”Let’s see what these European weirdos nominated this year,” Fey said.”We all know awards shows are stupid,” she said. “Even in stupid things, inclusivity is important and there are no Black members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. I realize HFPA maybe you guys didn’t get the memo … but you’ve got to change that.”In the movie category, Netflix period drama “Mank,” about the screenwriter of “Citizen Kane,” went into Sunday’s show with a leading six nominations, including for best drama movie, for actors Gary Oldman and Amanda Seyfried, and for director David Fincher.The biggest competition comes from Searchlight Pictures’ “Nomadland,” a moving documentary-style drama about van dwellers in recession-hit America, and star-laden 1960s hippie courtroom drama “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” also from Netflix. The #MeToo revenge black comedy “Promising Young Woman” and the unsettling aging tale “The Father” round out the film drama nominations.Aaron Sorkin won the Golden Globe for best screenplay for “The Trial of the Chicago 7.”The Disney+ TV film of hit Broadway musical “Hamilton” and Amazon Studios’ “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” a satire on the America of former President Donald Trump, are seen as front-runners in the best comedy or musical movie category.For television, the Netflix royal series “The Crown” leads the way with six nods, followed by quirky small-town comedy “Schitt’s Creek” on Pop TV.”Black Panther” star Chadwick Boseman, whose death at 43 of an undisclosed battle with cancer stunned fans and the industry, is considered the favorite for a best actor Golden Globe. His last performance, as a brash trumpet player in drama “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” was released after his death.Jane Fonda and TV producer Norman Lear will get lifetime achievement awards on Sunday.
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When drained of glamour, what’s left of the Golden Globes?That’s one of the biggest questions heading into the 78th annual awards on Sunday night. The show, postponed two months from its usual early-January perch, will have little of what makes the Globes one of the frothiest and glitziest events of the year. Due to the pandemic, there will be no parade of stars down the red carpet outside the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California. Its hosts, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, will be on different sides of the country.More than any award show, the Globes revel in being an intimate banquet of stars. When the show begins at 8 p.m. EST on NBC, with Poehler in Beverly Hills and Fey in New York’s Rainbow Room, the circumstances will test the Globes telecast like never before.Presenters will include Awkwafina, Joaquin Phoenix, Kristen Wiig, Tiffany Haddish, Margot Robbie and Angela Bassett. At least some of them will be present at one of the two locations. Pre-show coverage is still going forward on E! beginning at 4 p.m. EST and on NBC beginning at 7 p.m. EST. The telecast will be streamed on NBC’s website with a television-provider log-in, as well as on the Roku Channel, Hulu with Live TV, YouTube TV, AT&T TV, Sling TV and Fubo TV.Lack of diversityBut pandemic improvising is only part of the damage control the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which puts on the Globes, finds itself dealing with this year. A pair of extensive reports by the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times in the week leading up to the awards renewed scrutiny on the press association and its 87 voting members.While the HFPA has long been known as an organization with members of questionable qualification — most of its members don’t write for well-known publications — and are known for being swayed by high-priced junkets, the reports again forced the HFPA to defend itself.Among the most damning details was the revelation that there are no Black voting members in the group, something that only reinforced criticism that the press association — which host Ricky Gervais last year called “very, very racist” in his opening monologue — needs overhauling. This year, none of the most acclaimed Black-led films — Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, One Night in Miami, Judas and the Black Messiah, Da 5 Bloods — were nominated for the Globes’ best picture award.In a statement, the HFPA said it would make “an action plan” to change. “We understand that we need to bring in Black members, as well as members from other underrepresented backgrounds,” the group said.For some, none of the revelations were surprising. Ava DuVernay tweeted in response to the Los Angeles Times article: “Reveals? As in, people are acting like this isn’t already widely known? For YEARS?”Two-time nominee Sterling K. Brown, who’s presenting Sunday, said in an Instagram post that “having a multitude of Black presenters does not absolve you of your lack of diversity.”“87 people wield a tremendous amount of power,” said Brown. “For any governing body of a current Hollywood award show to have such a lack of voting representation illustrates a level of irresponsibility that should not be ignored.”42 nominations for NetflixYet the Globes have persisted because of their popularity (the show ranks as the third most-watched award show, after the Oscars and Grammys), their profitability (NBC paid $60 million for broadcast rights in 2018) and because they serve as important marketing material for contending films and Oscar hopefuls. That may be especially true this year when the pandemic has upset the normal rhythms of buzz in a virtual awards season lacking the usual frenzy.The Globes are happening on the original date of the Academy Awards, which are instead to be held April 25.Netflix comes in with a commanding 42 nominations, including a leading six nods for David Fincher’s Mank and The Crown also topping TV nominees with six nods. Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7, also from Netflix, is also a heavyweight with five nominations.Chloe Zhao, the Nomadland filmmaker and Oscar frontrunner, is expected to become the first woman of Asian descent to win best director at the Globes and the first woman since Barbra Streisand won for Yentl in 1984.Chadwick Boseman, nominated for best actor for his performance in the August Wilson adaptation Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, could win a posthumous Golden Globe. Boseman is widely expected to be nominated for an Oscar.And Borat Subsequent Moviefilm stands a good chance of being crowned best picture, comedy or musical. With many of the leading nominees in the drama category — among them Mank, Nomadland, The Father, Promising Young Woman and The Trial of the Chicago 7 — Sacha Baron Cohen’s sequel could emerge a big winner. Cohen, who won a Globe for his performance in the first Borat film, is nominated for Borat and for his role in The Trial of the Chicago 7.Jane Fonda, a seven-time Globe winner, will receive the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement. Norman Lear will be honored for his television career and accept an award named after Carol Burnett.
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Officials at the Pompeii archaeological site in Italy announced Saturday the discovery of an intact ceremonial chariot, one of several important discoveries made in the same area outside the park near Naples following an investigation into an illegal dig.The chariot, with its iron elements, bronze decorations and mineralized wooden remains, was found in the ruins of a settlement north of Pompeii, beyond the walls of the ancient city, parked in the portico of a stable where the remains of three horses previously were discovered.The Archaeological Park of Pompeii called the chariot “an exceptional discovery” and said “it represents a unique find — which has no parallel in Italy thus far — in an excellent state of preservation.”A detail of the decoration of a chariot that was found in Civita Giuliana, north of Pompeii. Officials at the Pompeii archaeological site near Naples announced its discovery Feb. 27, 2021.The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD destroyed Pompeii. The chariot was spared when the walls and roof of the structure it was in collapsed, and also survived looting by modern-day antiquities thieves, who had dug tunnels through to the site, grazing but not damaging the four-wheeled cart, according to park officials.The chariot was found on the grounds of what is one of the most significant ancient villas in the area around Vesuvius, with a panoramic view of the Mediterranean Sea, on the outskirts of the ancient Roman city.Archaeologists last year found in the same area on the outskirts of Pompeii, Civita Giulian, the skeletal remains of what are believed to have been a wealthy man and his male slave, attempting to escape death.The chariot’s first iron element emerged January 7 from the blanket of volcanic material filling the two-story portico. Archaeologists believe the cart was used for festivities and parades, perhaps also to carry brides to their new homes.While chariots for daily life or the transport of agricultural products have been previously found at Pompeii, officials said the new find is the first ceremonial chariot unearthed in its entirety.The villa was discovered after police came across the illegal tunnels in 2017, officials said. Two people who live in the houses atop the site are on trial for allegedly digging more than 80 meters of tunnels at the site.  
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A former U.S. Olympics gymnastics coach with ties to disgraced sports doctor Larry Nassar died by suicide Thursday after being charged with two dozen crimes, including forms of human trafficking, Michigan’s attorney general said. The announcement from Attorney General Dana Nessel came about three hours after a news conference where Nessel announced that John Geddert was charged with crimes, including sexual assault, human trafficking and running a criminal enterprise. The charges were the latest fallout from the sexual abuse scandal involving Nassar, a former Michigan State University sports doctor now in prison. Geddert was accused of turning his Michigan gym into a yearslong criminal enterprise by coercing girls to train under him and then verbally and physically abusing them. FILE – Larry Nassar sits during his sentencing hearing in Lansing, Mich., Jan. 24, 2018.He was accused of lying to investigators in 2016 when he denied ever hearing complaints about Nassar, who is serving decades in prison for sexually assaulting female athletes in a scandal that counted hundreds of victims and turned USA Gymnastics upside down. Geddert, 63, was head coach of the 2012 U.S. women’s Olympic gymnastics team, which won a gold medal. He has long been associated with Nassar, who was the Olympic team’s doctor and also treated injured gymnasts at Twistars, Geddert’s Lansing-area gym. Geddert was accused of recruiting minors for forced labor, a reference to the gymnasts he coached, according to documents filed in an Eaton County court. A message seeking comment was left with his attorney. Nessel said the coach used “force, fraud and coercion” for financial benefit. FILE – Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel speaks during a news conference in Lansing, Mich., March 5, 2020.”The victims suffer from disordered eating,” Nessel said, “including bulimia and anorexia, suicide attempts and attempts at self-harm, excessive physical conditioning, repeatedly being forced to perform even when injured, extreme emotional abuse and physical abuse, including sexual assault.” The charges against Geddert included two counts of sexual assault against a teen in 2012. Nessel acknowledged that the case might not fit the common understanding of human trafficking. “We think of it predominantly as affecting people of color or those without means to protect themselves … but honestly, it can happen to anyone, anywhere,” she said. “Young, impressionable women may at times be vulnerable and open to trafficking crimes, regardless of their stature in the community or the financial well-being of their families.”  Assistant Attorney General Danielle Hagaman-Clark said the charges against Geddert had “very little to do” with Nassar. Geddert was suspended by Indianapolis-based USA Gymnastics during the Nassar scandal. He told families in 2018 that he was retiring. On his LinkedIn page, Geddert described himself as the “most decorated women’s gymnastics coach in Michigan gymnastics history.” He said his Twistars teams won 130 club championships. But Geddert was often portrayed in unflattering ways when Nassar’s victims spoke during court hearings in 2018. “What a great best friend John was to Larry for giving him an entire world where he was able to abuse so easily,” said Lindsey Lemke, now a coach at the University of Arkansas. “You two sure do have a funny meaning of friendship. You, John Geddert, also deserve to sit behind bars right next to Larry.” 
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Bruce Springsteen was fined $500 Wednesday after the rock ‘n’ roll legend pleaded guilty to a charge of consuming alcohol at a federally run New Jersey beach in November, and prosecutors dropped drunk driving and reckless driving charges.
 
Springsteen, 71, who has made his home state of New Jersey and its shore scene a staple of his career of more than 50 years, entered his plea in an online arraignment before U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Anthony R. Mautone in Newark.
 
Appearing on an online hearing, Springsteen admitted to downing two shots of tequila on November 14 at Sandy Hook beach, part of the National Park Service’s Gateway National Recreation Area, where alcohol consumption is prohibited.
 
Mautone also imposed $40 in court fees on the rock star, who said he would pay the $540 total immediately.
 
Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Baker said the government was dropping the driving-while-intoxicated and reckless driving charges because it did not believe it could meet its burden of proving them in court.
 
Springsteen initially had pleaded not guilty to all three charges.
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Police on Wednesday sought to determine what caused Tiger Woods to swerve off a Southern California road in his sport utility vehicle, colliding with a tree and rolling down a hillside in a crash that left the golf great seriously injured.
 
Woods, 45, was pried from the wreckage by rescue crews and rushed by ambulance from the scene of the Tuesday morning crash outside Los Angeles to nearby Harbor-UCLA Medical Center suffering what his agent described as “multiple leg injuries.”
 
A statement posted on Woods’ official Twitter account on Tuesday night said he had undergone a “long surgical procedure” to his lower right leg and ankle and was “awake, responsive and recovering in his hospital room.”
 pic.twitter.com/vZitnFV0YA— Tiger Woods (@TigerWoods) February 24, 2021Compound fractures of his tibia and fibula – the two bones of his leg below the knee – were stabilized with a rod, and screws and pins were used to stabilize additional injuries to his foot and ankle, Dr. Anish Mahajan, chief medical officer of Harbor-UCLA, said in the tweet.
 
Mahajan also said that trauma to the muscle and other soft tissue of the leg “required surgical release of the covering of the muscles to relieve pressure due to swelling.”
 
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies responding to the wreck found no immediate indication that Woods had been under the influence of alcohol or drugs before losing control of his vehicle shortly after 7 a.m.
 
Sheriff Alex Villanueva, however, said the golf star, who was “lucid” following the accident, appeared to have been going faster than normal for a downhill, curving stretch of road known by locals to be hazardous. Weather was not considered a factor.
 
Video footage from the scene showed Woods’ dark gray 2021 Genesis sport utility vehicle badly crumpled and lying on its side near the bottom of the hillside, its windows smashed.
 The damaged car of Tiger Woods is towed away after he was involved in a car crash, near Los Angeles, California, Feb. 23, 2021.Woods’ injuries were not life-threatening, the sheriff said, but sports commentators were already speculating that the crash could end the career of the greatest golfer of his generation.
 
Woods is the only modern professional to win all four major golf titles in succession, taking the U.S. Open, British Open and PGA Championship in 2000 and the Masters title in 2001, a feat that became known as the ‘Tiger Slam’.
 
But he has suffered years of injuries and undergone multiple surgeries on both his back and knees.
 Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 6 MB480p | 8 MB540p | 11 MB720p | 24 MB1080p | 44 MBOriginal | 123 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioWoods, one of the world’s most celebrated sports figures, was the sole occupant of the car when it crashed near the suburban communities of Rolling Hills Estates and Rancho Palos Verdes, the sheriff’s department said.
 
The vehicle veered across the center divider of the road into an opposite traffic lane, striking a roadside curb, and a tree as it careened over an embankment, and “there were several rollovers” before the SUV came to rest, Villanueva said.
 
Woods hosted the PGA tour’s Genesis Invitational at the Riviera Country Club over the weekend but did not compete due to his back injuries. The wrecked sport utility vehicle bore the Genesis Invitational name on its doors.
 
He was seen at the Rolling Hills Country Club on Monday with actress Jada Pinkett Smith, retired basketball star Dwyane Wade and comedian David Spade.
 
Golf Digest reported Woods had been shooting a TV show segment in which he was giving on-course instruction to the three celebrities and was due to resume filming on Tuesday.
 
Woods held the top spot in golf’s world rankings for a record total of 683 weeks, winning 14 major championship titles from 1997 to 2008. His 15 major titles stand second only to the record 18 won by Jack Nicklaus.
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Golfer Tiger Woods suffered injuries in a single-car crash early Tuesday in California. Esha Sarai has more.Produced by: Esha Sarai
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Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the poet, publisher, bookseller and activist who helped launch the Beat movement in the 1950s and embody its curious and rebellious spirit well into the 21st century, has died at age 101. Ferlinghetti, a San Francisco institution, died Monday at his home, his son Lorenzo Ferlinghetti said. A month shy of his 102nd birthday, Ferlinghetti died “in his own room,” holding the hands of his son and his son’s girlfriend, “as he took his last breath.” The cause of death was lung disease. Ferlinghetti had received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine last week, his son said Tuesday. Few poets of the past 60 years were so well known, or so influential. His books sold more than 1 million copies worldwide, a fantasy for virtually any of his peers, and he ran one of the world’s most famous and distinctive bookstores, City Lights. Although he never considered himself one of the Beats, he was a patron and soul mate and, for many, a lasting symbol — preaching a nobler and more ecstatic American dream. “Am I the consciousness of a generation or just some old fool sounding off and trying to escape the dominant materialist avaricious consciousness of America?” he asked in “Little Boy,” a stream of consciousness novel published around the time of his 100th birthday. City LightsHe made history. Through the City Lights publishing arm, books by Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs and many others came out and the release of Allen Ginsberg’s landmark poem “Howl” led to a 1957 obscenity case that broke new ground for freedom of expression.  He also defied history. The internet, superstore chains and high rents shut down numerous booksellers in the Bay Area and beyond, but City Lights remained a thriving political and cultural outlet, where one section was devoted to books enabling “revolutionary competence,” where employees could get the day off to attend an anti-war protest.  “Generally, people seem to get more conservative as they age, but in my case, I seem to have gotten more radical,” Ferlinghetti told Interview magazine in 2013. “Poetry must be capable of answering the challenge of apocalyptic times, even if this means sounding apocalyptic.” The store even endured during the coronavirus outbreak, when it was forced to close and required $300,000 to stay in business. A GoFundMe campaign quickly raised $400,000. His poetryFerlinghetti, tall and bearded, with sharp blue eyes, could be soft-spoken, even introverted and reticent in unfamiliar situations. But he was the most public of poets and his work wasn’t intended for solitary contemplation. It was meant to be recited or chanted out loud, whether in coffee houses, bookstores or at campus gatherings.  His 1958 compilation, “A Coney Island of the Mind,” sold hundreds of thousands of copies in the U.S. alone. Long an outsider from the poetry community, Ferlinghetti once joked that he had “committed the sin of too much clarity.” He called his style “wide open” and his work, influenced in part by e.e. cummings, was often lyrical and childlike: “Peacocks walked/under the night trees/in the lost moon/light/when I went out/looking for love,” he wrote in “Coney Island.” Ferlinghetti also was a playwright, novelist, translator and painter and had many admirers among musicians. In 1976, he recited “The Lord’s Prayer” at the Band’s farewell concert, immortalized in Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Waltz.” The folk-rock band Aztec Two-Step lifted its name from a line in the title poem of Ferlinghetti’s “Coney Island” book: “A couple of Papish cats/is doing an Aztec two-step.” Ferlinghetti also published some of the earliest film reviews by Pauline Kael, who with The New Yorker became one of the country’s most influential critics. Personal lifeHe lived long and well despite a traumatic childhood. His father died five months before Lawrence was born in Yonkers, New York, in 1919, leaving behind a sense of loss that haunted him, yet provided much of the creative tension that drove his art. His mother, unable to cope, had a nervous breakdown two years after his father’s death. She eventually disappeared and died in a state hospital. Ferlinghetti spent years moving among relatives, boarding homes and an orphanage before he was taken in by a wealthy New York family, the Bislands, for whom his mother had worked as a governess. He studied journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, received a master’s in literature from Columbia University, and a doctorate degree from the Sorbonne in Paris. His early influences included Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe and Ezra Pound. Ferlinghetti hated war, because he was in one. In 1945, he was a Navy commander stationed in Japan and remembered visiting Nagasaki a few weeks after the U.S. had dropped an atom bomb. The carnage, he would recall, made him an “instant pacifist.”  In the early 1950s, he settled in San Francisco and married Selden Kirby-Smith, whom he divorced in 1976. (They had two children). Ferlinghetti also became a member of the city’s rising literary movement, the so-called San Francisco Renaissance, and soon helped establish a gathering place. Peter D. Martin, a sociologist, had opened a paperback store in the city’s North Beach section and named it after a recent Charlie Chaplin film, “City Lights.” When Ferlinghetti saw the storefront, in 1953, he suggested he and Martin become partners. Each contributed $500. Ferlinghetti later told The New York Times: “City Lights became about the only place around where you could go in, sit down, and read books without being pestered to buy something.” ControversiesThe Beats, who had met in New York in the 1940s, now had a new base. One project was City Lights’ Pocket Poets series, which offered low-cost editions of verse, notably Ginsberg’s “Howl.” Ferlinghetti had heard Ginsberg read a version in 1955 and wrote him: “I greet you at the beginning of a great career. When do I get the manuscript?” a humorous take on the message sent from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Walt Whitman upon reading “Leaves of Grass.” Ferlinghetti published “Howl and Other Poems” in 1956, but customs officials seized copies of the book that were being shipped from London, and Ferlinghetti was arrested on obscenity charges. After a highly publicized court battle, a judge in 1957 ruled that “Howl” was not obscene, despite its sexual themes, citing the poem’s relevance as a criticism of modern society. A 2010 film about the case, “Howl,” starred James Franco as Ginsberg and Andrew Rogers as Ferlinghetti. Ferlinghetti would also release Kerouac’s “Book of Dreams,” prison writings by Timothy Leary and Frank O’Hara’s “Lunch Poems.” Ferlinghetti risked prison for “Howl,” but rejected Burrough’s classic “Naked Lunch,” worrying that publication would lead to “sure premeditated legal lunacy.” RecognitionFerlinghetti’s eyesight was poor in recent years, but he continued to write and to keep regular hours at City Lights. The establishment, meanwhile, warmed to him, even if the affection wasn’t always returned. He was named San Francisco’s first poet laureate, in 1998, and City Lights was granted landmark status three years later. He received an honorary prize from the National Book Critics Circle in 2000 and five years later was given a National Book Award medal for “his tireless work on behalf of poets and the entire literary community.”  “The dominant American mercantile culture may globalize the world, but it is not the mainstream culture of our civilization,” Ferlinghetti said upon receiving the award. “The true mainstream is made, not of oil, but of literarians, publishers, bookstores, editors, libraries, writers and readers, universities and all the institutions that support them.” In 2012, Ferlinghetti won the Janus Pannonius International Poetry Prize from the Hungarian PEN Club. When he learned the country’s right-wing government was a sponsor, he turned the award down.  
 
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Professional golfer Tiger Woods was involved in a serious car accident Tuesday, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The car reportedly rolled over near Ranchos Palos Verdes, California, and Woods had to be extracted from the wreckage. Video footage of the crash scene showed a vehicle on its side in a ditch at the bottom of a hill with a badly damaged front end. Pieces of the car were spotted around the wreckage. FILE – Tiger Woods celebrates after winning the 2019 Masters, at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, April 14, 2019.Woods, who was taken to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center where he was being treated for “moderate to critical” injuries, was reportedly the only occupant of the car. “Tiger Woods was in a single-car accident this morning in California where he suffered multiple leg injuries,” Woods’s agent, Mark Steinberg, told Golf Digest’s Daniel Rapaport. “He is currently in surgery, and we thank you for your privacy and support.” Woods was undergoing treatment of compound fractures on at least one leg, according to NBC News. The L.A. County Sheriff’s Office said the golfer’s injuries were non-life threatening. The Los Angeles Times reported Woods had been traveling at high speed and lost control of the vehicle, crossed over a center divider and rolled several times before coming to a stop. Woods, 45, was in the Los Angeles area for the PGA Tour’s Genesis Invitational, a tournament run by his charity. The 15-time major tournament winner did not play in the tournament because he was recovering from a December 23 back surgery, the fifth such procedure for one of golf’s all-time greats. 
 
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Norway’s National Museum says a small, barely visible sentence written with a pencil on Edvard Munch’s 1893 masterpiece “The Scream” was penned by the Norwegian painter himself.The painting, which shows a waif-like figure cradling its head in its hands with its mouth agape, has become a global icon for the expression of human anxiety. The sentence — “can only have been painted by a madman” — was scribbled in the top left-hand corner.The painting is being prepared to be exhibited at the new National Museum of Norway that is set to open in Oslo, the Norwegian capital, in 2022. In this connection, the canvas has undergone research and conservation.”The writing is without a doubt Munch’s own,” Mai Britt Guleng, curator at the National Museum, said in a statement Monday, adding it was compared to the painter’s diaries and letters.”The handwriting itself, as well as events that happened in 1895, when Munch showed the painting in Norway for the first time, all point in the same direction,” Guleng said.The writing on the canvas was added after Munch had completed the painting but for years it has been a mystery, the museum said in a statement. Speculation has ranged from it being an act of vandalism by an outraged viewer to something written by Munch himself.Guleng said the inscription was likely made “in 1895, when Munch exhibited the painting for the first time.”The painting at the time caused public speculation about Munch’s mental state. During a discussion night when the artist was present, a young medical student questioned Munch’s mental health and claimed his work proved he was not sound.”It is likely that Munch added the inscription in 1895, or shortly after, in response to the judgment on his work,” the statement read.Munch was profoundly hurt by the accusations, returning to the incident again and again in letters and diary entries. Both his father and sister suffered bouts of depression and Munch was finally hospitalized after a nervous breakdown in 1908, Guleng said.The National Gallery was temporarily closed in 2019 to secure a safe moving process to the new National Museum, which is under construction in downtown Oslo. The museum will exhibit 400,000 objects ranging from antiquity to the present day and includes paintings, sculpture, drawings, textiles, furniture and architectural models.
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Grammy-winning electronic music pioneers Daft Punk have announced that they are breaking up after 28 years.
The helmet-wearing French duo shared the news Monday in an 8-minute video called “Epilogue.” Kathryn Frazier, the band’s longtime publicist, confirmed the break up for The Associated Press.
Daft Punk, comprised of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, have had major success over the years, winning six Grammy Awards and launching international hits with “One More Time,” “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” and “Get Lucky.”
Bangalter and de Homem-Christo met at a Paris school in 1987. Prior to Daft Punk, they formed an indie rock band named Darling.
They officially formed Daft Punk in 1993, and the helmeted, mute and mysterious musicians released their debut album, “Homework,” 1997. They first found success with the international hit “Da Funk,” which topped the Billboard dance charts and earned them their first Grammy nomination. A second No. 1 hit and Grammy nomination followed with “Around the World.”
Daft Punk spent time touring around the world and reached greater heights with their sophomore album, 2001’s “Discovery.” It included the infectious smash “One More Time” and “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger,” which Kanye West famously flipped into his own hit “Stronger,” released in 2007. It won West the best rap solo performance Grammy at the 2008 show, where West and Daft Punk performed together onstage.
A year later, a live version of “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” won Daft Punk the best dance recording Grammy — their first win — and their “Alive 2007” album picked up best electronic/dance album.
But it was the 2014 Grammys where Daft Punk really took the spotlight, winning album of the year for “Random Access Memories” and making history as the first electronic act to win the highest honor at the Grammys. The duo won four awards that night, including record of the year for their bombshell hit “Get Lucky,” featuring Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers.
“Random Access Memories” was regarded as a genre-bending album highlighted by its mix of live instrumentation, disco sounds, funk, rock, R&B and more. Rolling Stone ranked it No. 295 on their list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” last year.
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Christopher Plummer, the dashing, award-winning actor who played Captain von Trapp in the film The Sound of Music and at 82 became the oldest Academy Award acting winner in history, has died. He was 91.Plummer died Friday morning at his home in Connecticut with his wife, Elaine Taylor, by his side, said Lou Pitt, his longtime friend and manager.Across more than 50 years in the industry, Plummer enjoyed varied roles. He was a sophisticated businessman in the film The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the voice of the villain in 2009’s Up and a canny lawyer in Broadway’s Inherit the Wind. In 2019, he starred as a murdered mystery novelist in Rian Johnson’s whodunnit Knives Out.But it was his role as von Trapp, opposite Julie Andrews, that made him a star. He played an Austrian captain who must flee the country with his folk-singing family to escape service in the Nazi navy, a role he lamented was “humorless and one-dimensional.” Plummer spent the rest of his life referring to the film as “The Sound of Mucus” or “S&M.”‘Cardboard figure'”We tried so hard to put humor into it,” he told The Associated Press in 2007. “It was almost impossible. It was just agony to try to make that guy not a cardboard figure.”The role catapulted Plummer to stardom, but he never took to leading-man parts, despite his silver hair, good looks and slight English accent. He preferred character parts, considering them more meaty.Tributes quickly came from Hollywood and Broadway. Joseph Gordon-Levitt called him “one of the greats” and George Takei posted, “Rest in eternal music, Captain von Trapp.” Dave Foley, a fellow Canadian, wrote: “If I live to be 91 maybe I’ll have time to fully appreciate all the great work of Christopher Plummer.”Plummer had a remarkable film renaissance late in life, which began with his acclaimed performance as Mike Wallace in Michael Mann’s 1999 film The Insider and continued in films such as 2001’s A Beautiful Mind and 2009’s The Last Station, in which he played a deteriorating Tolstoy and was nominated for an Oscar.FILE – Christopher Plummer holds his Oscar for best actor in a supporting role for “Beginners” in the press room at the 84th Annual Academy Awards, Feb. 26, 2012, in Hollywood, Calif.In 2012, Plummer won a supporting actor Oscar for his role in Beginners as Hal Fields, a museum director who becomes openly gay after his wife of 44 years dies. His loving, final relationship becomes an inspiration for his son, who struggles with his father’s death and how to find intimacy in a new relationship.”Too many people in the world are unhappy with their lot. And then they retire and they become vegetables. I think retirement in any profession is death, so I’m determined to keep crackin’,” he told AP in 2011.Plummer in 2017 replaced Kevin Spacey as J. Paul Getty in All the Money in the World just six weeks before the film was set to hit theaters. That choice that was officially validated in the best possible way for the film — a supporting Oscar nomination for Plummer, his third. In 2019, he starred in the TV suspense drama series Departure.There were fallow periods in his career — a Pink Panther movie here, a Dracula 2000 there and even a Star Trek — as a Klingon, no less. But Plummer had other reasons than the scripts in mind.Better hotels, beaches”For a long time, I accepted parts that took me to attractive places in the world. Rather than shooting in the Bronx, I would rather go to the south of France, crazed creature that I am,” he told AP in 2007. “And so I sacrificed a lot of my career for nicer hotels and more attractive beaches.”Plummer performed most of the major Shakespeare roles, including Hamlet, Cyrano, Iago, Othello, Prospero, Henry V and a staggering King Lear at Lincoln Center in 2004. He was a frequent star at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada.”I’ve become simpler and simpler with playing Shakespeare,” he said in 2007. “I’m not as extravagant as I used to be. I don’t listen to my voice so much anymore. All the pitfalls of playing the classics — you can fall in love with yourself.”FILE – Actor Christopher Plummer, shown June 15, 1973, poses for a photo before making his musical debut on Broadway in “Cyrano.”He won two Tony Awards. The first was in 1974 for best actor in a musical for playing the title role in Cyrano, and his second was in 1997 for his portrayal of John Barrymore in Barrymore. He also won two Emmys.Plummer was born Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer in Toronto. His maternal great-grandfather was former Canadian Prime Minister Sir John Abbott. His parents divorced shortly after his birth and he was raised by his mother and aunts.Plummer began his career on stage and in radio in Canada in the 1940s and made his Broadway debut in 1954 in The Starcross Story. While still a relative unknown, he was cast as Hamlet in a 1963 performance co-starring Robert Shaw and Michael Caine. It was taped by the BBC at Elsinore Castle in Denmark, where the play is set, and released in 1964. It won an Emmy.Marriages, daughterPlummer married Tony-winning actress Tammy Grimes in 1956, and fathered his only child, actress Amanda Plummer, in 1957. Like both her parents, she also won a Tony, in 1982 for Agnes of God. (Grimes won two Tonys, for Private Lives and The Unsinkable Molly Brown.)Plummer and Grimes divorced in 1960. A five-year marriage to Patricia Lewis ended in 1967. Plummer married his third wife, dancer Taylor, in 1970, and credited her with helping him overcome a drinking problem.He was given Canada’s highest civilian honor when he was invested as Companion of the Order of Canada by Queen Elizabeth II in 1968 and was inducted into the American Theatre’s Hall of Fame in 1986.   
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Donald Trump has resigned from the Screen Actors Guild after the union threatened to expel him for his role in the Capitol riot in January.In a letter dated Thursday and addressed to SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris, Trump said he was resigning from the union that he had been a member of since 1989. “I no longer wish to be associated with your union,” wrote Trump in a letter shared by the actors guild. “As such, this letter is to inform you of my immediate resignation from SAG-AFTRA. You have done nothing for me.”  The guild responded with a short statement: “Thank you.”  Last month, the SAG-AFTRA board voted that there was probable cause that Trump violated its guidelines for membership by his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol siege. Trump, the guild said, had sustained “a reckless campaign of misinformation aimed at discrediting and ultimately threatening the safety of journalists, many of whom are SAG-AFTRA members.” Trump’s case was to be weighed by a disciplinary committee. In his letter, the former president said he had no interest in such a hearing. “Who cares?” he wrote.”While I’m not familiar with your work, I’m very proud of my work on movies such as ‘Home Alone 2,’ ‘Zoolander’ and ‘Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps’; and television shows including ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,’ ‘Saturday Night Live,’ and of course, one of the most successful shows in television history, ‘The Apprentice’ — to name just a few!” wrote Trump. “I’ve also greatly helped the cable news television business (said to be a dying platform with not much time left until I got involved in politics), and created thousands of jobs at networks such as MSDNC and Fake News CNN, among many others,” Trump continued.  On Thursday, the Screen Actors Guild announced nominees to its annual awards. Losing guild membership doesn’t disqualify anyone from performing. But most major productions abide by union contracts and hire only union actors.
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Pope Francis Thursday said his thoughts are with musicians and those who work in the music industry whose livelihood has been all but eliminated by restrictions imposed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.In a video message he delivered to an international conference on music, Pope Francis said he knows musicians have seen their lives and livelihoods “upset” by the pandemic and how their work, training and communities have suffered due to COVID-19-related restrictions.He also credited the “significant efforts” made by those musicians who have continued working through the pandemic through virtual or isolated performances. He said those are “valid efforts” not only for music in the church but in concert halls and other places, “music is a service of the community.”The pope said he hoped “this aspect of social life can also be reborn, that we return to singing, playing and enjoying music and singing together.” He said that music, whether through voice, instruments or written compositions, express the “harmony of the voice of God,” and the “symphony” of this universal brotherhood.As Pope, Francis has never showed particular passion for music, unlike his predecessor, Pope Benedict, who was passionate about classical music and continued to play the piano even as Pope.
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On frozen lakes and snow-covered fields in Canada’s wilds, magnificent geometric formations have suddenly appeared — the work of a retired headmaster stomping around in snowshoes to beat back pandemic blues. “I start with a shape — a hexagon, a square or a triangle — and draw lines through it or intersecting circles,” Kim Asmussen said in a telephone interview. The 62-year-old spends a lot of time tinkering with sketches in advance, he told AFP, “because once you’ve made a mark in the snow you can’t erase it. It’s not like drawing on a piece of paper. This undated family handout photo obtained Feb. 4, 2021, shows retired headmaster and artist Kim Asmussen in Schreiber, Ontario.”The biggest part,” he explained, “is just figuring out how we’re gonna go about walking it. You have to go back and forth quite a bit to pack the snow.” He started last year and has made 20 snowshoe artworks in and around the town of Schreiber, Ontario, about 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) northwest of Toronto on the shores of Lake Superior, which he photographs using drones and posts online. The largest measures about 400 meters long. Compass, rope, friends Asmussen said he uses drafting software to create designs and mapping tools to scope out suitable locations to use as canvasses. Then with a compass, a rope for measuring and a team of friends or local students, he sets about stamping out shapes in the snow, which can take up to three days depending on their size and intricacy. “There aren’t many fields in town, but there’re lots of [frozen] lakes around here,” he said. Asmussen said he got the idea while researching snow sculptures online and landed on snowshoe art by acclaimed artist Simon Beck, whose works have graced the mountainsides of Banff National Park, including a giant snowflake, a wolf and a maple leaf.  This aerial view received courtesy of Kim Asmussen on Feb. 3, 2021, shows geometric formations in the snow created by Asmussen near Rongie Lake in Schreiber, Ontario, Canada.”It’s just starting to take off,” said Asmussen, who hopes to popularize the method. “I thought to myself, maybe I can do that too,” he said, adding that it helps keep his mind sharp while getting a bit of fresh air. Sunny holiday substitute Several friends who were prevented from taking their usual winter holidays in sunbelts this year because of travel restrictions volunteered to help. Asmussen said he’d like to involve more people to help pack the snow, but local pandemic restrictions in place since December permit only a maximum of five to gather in groups outside. He is looking to involve more schools and set up a snowshoe art festival and is scouting locations near the TransCanada Highway to showcase artworks to passing truckers and tourists. Ideally, he said, there needs to be 15 to 30 centimeters (6 to 12 inches) of fresh snow in which to mark out a design. Most last only a few days before being covered up by the next snowfall. “I kind of like when it does snow right after [making a formation],” he said, “because you’ve got this new blanket of the snow and you can do it all over again.” 
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An outcry by Hindu nationalists and criminal complaints for allegedly hurting Hindus’ religious sentiment has prompted the director of a new Amazon television political drama to delete scenes that allegedly mocked Hindi deities and a dialogue with derisive references to lower castes.The show, Tandav, released last month here, was widely expected to win many viewers as it boasted of some of the biggest names in Bollywood. But political analysts say the backlash against the TV series has again put the spotlight on a rising tide of Hindu nationalism in India.  “This signals a new political culture supportive of intolerance, of a hardline Hindu ideology which is endorsed by the ruling party,” said Niranjan Sahoo at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, pointing out that members of the ruling right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party and Hindu groups were among those who filed police complaints, voiced strident objections and called for the show to be banned.A Bharatiya Janata Party supporter wearing mask rests on bike as she waits to take part in a protest against The Amazon Prime Video web series Tandav in Mumbai, India, Jan 19, 2021.The TV show is centered on a power-hungry politician bent on becoming India’s prime minister. The scenes that offended Hindu nationalists include one in which a university student plays the role of the Hindu god Shiva and scenes in which characters insult lower castes. One of the police complaints filed in the northern Uttar Pradesh state, ruled by the BJP, also said that the political drama portrays the prime minister’s post in “an indecent manner.” In a statement after the controversy erupted, the show’s director, Ali Abbas Zafar, called the TV series a “pure work of fiction” and said that the cast and crew “unconditionally apologize if it has unintentionally hurt anybody’s sentiments.” However, the apology and the deletion of the offending scenes have not assuaged those who have objected to the TV series. A BJP member of Parliament, Manoj Kotak, told VOA the makers of the TV series and actors must face legal action.  
 
“What they did is not pardonable,” he said. “It is not enough to say ‘sorry’ after doing something wrong. You have to be answerable for what has been done.”   
 
Soon after the show went on the air last month, he had said that the show “deliberately mocked Hindu gods and disrespected Hindu religious sentiments.”Tandav is not the only TV series that has angered Hindu nationalists. Objections to a scene in which a Hindu woman and a Muslim man kiss against the backdrop of a Hindu temple in a Netflix TV series, A Suitable Boy, had prompted a police complaint in November in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh by a BJP youth wing member, Gaurav Tiwari, who said the scene “hurt religious sentiments.”  A stand-up comedian, Munawar Faruqui, who was scheduled to give a comedy show in Madhya Pradesh, has been in jail since last month after the leader of a local Hindu group, Eklavya Singh Gaud, complained to police that he had outraged religious feelings. Faruqui had not begun his show when he was arrested. Gaud told reporters later that “he has made indecent remarks on Hindu gods and goddesses in the past.” Three BJP-ruled states have also passed controversial legislation prescribing prison terms for anyone using marriage to force religious conversion.  Dubbed the “love jihad” law, it aims to address concerns among Hindu nationalists that women are being lured into marriage by Muslim men in order to convert them to Islam — critics have dismissed such fears as a “conspiracy” theory. In Uttar Pradesh, several Muslim men have been arrested under the law.Political analysts such as Sahoo say the trend is disturbing.“Filing police complaints, dragging people to courts, this all will have a chilling impact on our democracy, on free speech and creative expression,” he said. There have been growing calls for regulation of content on platforms such as Netflix, Amazon and Disney’s Hotstar as it raises the ire of some amid the growing wave of Hindu nationalism.   BJP lawmaker Kotak said the problem is not just with Tandav.“The way shows on streaming services are portraying sex, violence, abuse, women, Hindu gods and goddesses is not correct,” he told VOA.Kotak is among those who have called on the Information and Broadcasting Ministry to regulate streaming platforms. Unlike films, streaming TV services are not subject to the country’s censorship boards.  India has emerged as a big market for Amazon and other streaming platforms, which, besides airing international shows, are producing a lot of local content as they gain popularity.In the days after the controversy over Tandav erupted last month, an editorial in The Times of India newspaper, “Democracy’s Killjoys,” said, “This bullying of artists and creative expression doesn’t serve India well, culturally or commercially.” “Cinema is a source of immense soft power for India,” the editorial said.Using an abbreviation for “over-the-top media,” which refers to media distributed by internet, the paper said, “The Bollywood-centred OTT industry is booming, generating jobs and new experiential spaces for creators and consumers.“However,” it continued, “censorship, harassment and governmental overreach endanger this India story too, after other India stories have come off the rails.”
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After three years of negotiations with the late controversial art collector Douglas Latchford and his family, more than 100 Cambodian artifacts will be returned to Cambodia, according to the government.How Latchford, a British art collector and co-author of three books on Cambodian art and antiques, built his collection was a topic of art world speculation. He faced accusations of trafficking the artifacts to his homes in Bangkok and London. In November 2019, federal prosecutors in New York City charged Latchford with falsifying the provenance, invoices and shipping documents to transport valuable Khmer-era relics to private collections, museums and auction houses across the world.At the time, FILE – Cambodia’s famed Angkor Wat ancient Hindu temple complex stands in Siem Reap province, some 230 kilometers northwest of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, June 28, 2012.The first shipment of five artifacts is expected to arrive in late February or early March. Cambodian authorities anticipate these will include a 10th-century sandstone sculpture of Hindu deities Shiva and Skanda, a 12th-century sandstone sculpture of Prajnaparamita – a female deity worshipped during the Khmer Empire – and a bronze statue of a male deity from the late 11th century.Kriangsak said she didn’t anticipate the complexity of the lengthy negotiations.“I am delighted that this complete collection, gathered over many decades, will be returned to their ancestral home in the Kingdom of Cambodia,” she said in the same Culture Ministry statement.In an interview with The New York Times published last week, Kriangsak skirted questions about the accusations and charges levelled against Latchford.“Despite what people say or accuse against Douglas, my father started his collection in a very different era, and his world has changed,” she FILE – Tourists visit the Angkor Wat temple in Siem Reap, Cambodia, March 14, 2018. Cambodia’s main tourist destination, Angkor Wat, was built between the 9th and 15th centuries.The indictment alleges that Latchford intentionally faked the provenance of antiquities that were the “product of looting, unauthorized excavation, and illicit smuggling” to encourage the sales and boost the prices of merchandise he was putting on the international market.United States federal law enforcement authorities worked with the Cambodian Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts in 2020 to return two statues that were confiscated from an auction house in California in 2017. The U.S. and Cambodia signed a memorandum of understanding to place import restrictions on archaeological artifacts being taken out of the country.Hab Touch, secretary of state in charge of illicit trafficking and restitution at Cambodia’s Culture Ministry, said the government had negotiated with Douglas before he died last year.“We had worked with [Kriangsak’s] father for a long time,” he said. “His daughter had the willingness and intention to return what she has got from her father to Cambodia.”The official did not comment on the accusations and charges against Latchford.Thuy Chanthourn, who has researched Cambodian artifacts for 30 years, said many artifacts were lost most recently during the civil war in the 1970s and 1980 but also during the late 1800s and early 1900s.“Our ancient objects are not only with Douglas. There are many in Thailand, England, the U.S. and France. They are privately owned,” he said.The artifact researcher claimed that Latchford did not steal the artifacts himself but that they were trafficked to Thailand, which is one of the biggest markets for Cambodian relics.Vong Sotheara, a professor of history at the state-run Royal University of Phnom Penh, said numerous Cambodian artifacts remained in private collections, with many people having small museums to display their antiques.“The rich and millionaires spend their money buying authentic old objects from Cambodia as a hobby,” he said, adding that it was a long process to prove the provenance of these objects so they could be returned to Cambodia.
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American pop star Rihanna tweeted about ongoing farmers’ protests in India this week, sparking attention from other big names on social media and anger from the Indian government.
 
“Why aren’t we talking about this?!” Rihanna tweeted on Tuesday, with a link to a CNN article about ongoing protests.why aren’t we talking about this?! #FarmersProtesthttps://t.co/obmIlXhK9S— Rihanna (@rihanna) February 2, 2021The tweet, which has been liked more than a half-million times in the past day, sparked attention from climate activist Greta Thunberg and the niece of Vice President Kamala Harris.We stand in solidarity with the #FarmersProtest in India.https://t.co/tqvR0oHgo0— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) February 2, 2021″It’s no coincidence that the world’s oldest democracy was attacked not even a month ago, and as we speak, the most populous democracy is under assault. This is related. We ALL should be outraged by India’s internet shutdowns and paramilitary violence against farmer protesters,” Meena Harris tweeted.But its reception in India was mixed.
 
In a statement released Wednesday, India’s Ministry of External Affairs said that the issue was a domestic one and accused “vested interest groups” of mobilizing international support against India.
 
“Before rushing to comment on such matters, we would urge that the facts be ascertained, and a proper understanding of the issues at hand be undertaken,” the Ministry said in a statement.
 
“The temptation of sensationalist social media hashtags and comments, especially when resorted to by celebrities and others, is neither accurate nor responsible,” the statement went on.
 
The statement claims that only a “very small section” of farmers have protested three new bills, which farmers fear would put them at the mercy of large corporations. However, tens of thousands of farmers have been camped out near India’s capital of Delhi for nearly two months as talks with the government have stalled.India’s Top Court Puts Controversial Farm Laws on HoldProtest leaders adamant that they will not negotiate with court-appointed panel saying all its members are ‘pro-government’ and reiterating that laws must be repealedIndian newspapers have reported that journalists reporting along the Singhu border near Delhi have been arrested or prevented from entering secured areas to report. The Indian government has also reportedly shut down the internet in various parts of the state of Haryana, where many farmers have set up camp.
 
While many Bollywood celebrities have echoed the rhetoric of the ruling party, famous musicians from Punjab — the state known as the “bread basket” of India where most protesters have traveled from — have welcomed the international attention.
 
Diljit Dosanjh, a Punjabi musician and actor who has been vocal in his support of the protests, produced a song called “Riri” in honor of Rihanna less than twelve hours after her tweet.#RIRI#Rihanna ✊?https://t.co/SkyOBC8lLx@Thisizintense@raj_ranjodh— DILJIT DOSANJH (@diljitdosanjh) February 3, 2021The farmers’ protest has emerged as a major challenge for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with the government refusing to repeal the laws and farmers refusing to settle for anything less.    
 
The government has defended the laws saying they would modernize agriculture and help farmers raise their incomes by affording them new opportunities to market their produce to private companies.
But farmers say the laws favor powerful corporations and fear they will dismantle the protection afforded by a decades-old system under which the government buys farm produce such as rice and wheat at what is called a “minimum price.”
  
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Hollywood period drama “Mank” got a leading six nominations on Wednesday for the 2021 Golden Globe awards in film, while television shows “The Crown” and “The Mandalorian” will be among those competing for best series.
Streaming service Netflix Inc dominated the nominations in both film, with 22 nods, and television (20) after a year in which the coronavirus pandemic prompted Hollywood studios to push back dozens of their film releases, and many movie theaters were closed for months.
The contest for the Golden Globe best drama film awards will also include modern Great Recession-era story “Nomadland,” 1960s Vietnam War protest drama “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” #MeToo revenge story “Promising Young Woman and aging family drama “The Father.”
Sacha Baron Cohen’s satire on former President Donald Trump’s America, “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm;” the film version of the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton;” LGBTQ musical “The Prom;” “Music” and time-loop comedy “Palm Springs” will compete in a separate category for musicals and comedies.
The Golden Globe awards, which kick off a pandemic-era Hollywood awards season, are due to be handed out at a ceremony on Feb. 28, hosted by actors Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. The nominees and winners are selected by the small Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA).
Three of the five directors nominated on Wednesday were women, including Regina King for Black drama “One Night in Miami,” Britain’s Emerald Fennell for “Promising Young Woman” and Chinese-born filmmaker Chloe Zhao for “Nomadland.”
Among the actors nominated were Baron Cohen for “Borat,” the late Chadwick Boseman in his last film role in jazz period piece “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” British actor Riz Ahmed as a drummer losing his hearing in “Sound of Metal” and Frances McDormand for “Nomadland.”
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Whether anyone will be attending the Golden Globes in person remains uncertain and improbable. But nominations to the 78th Globes will be announced Wednesday, nevertheless. Hollywood’s strange and largely virtual awards season lacks the usual kind of buzz and red-carpet glamour that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association annually feasts on. More than perhaps any other award show, the Globes depend on a cavalcade of stars — something that won’t materialize when the awards are handed out February 28 in a ceremony hosted by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.  Virtual announcementNominations will be announced virtually at 8:35 a.m. ET Wednesday by presenters Sarah Jessica Parker and Taraji P. Henson. They will reveal 12 categories on NBC’s “Today” show, with full nominees announced live on E! digital channels and the Golden Globes’ website. Without any in-person screenings or photo ops with stars, little is known about how the roughly 90-member press association — a notoriously unpredictable group, in normal times — is swaying this year. But one thing may be a lock: Netflix will land a whole lot of nominations. Several of the streaming service’s films — including Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods,” David Fincher’ “Mank” and Aaron Sorkin’s “The Trial of the Chicago 7” — are considered frontrunners, as are Netflix TV series “The Crown” and “Ozark.” At last year’s Globes, Netflix also led all studios with 34 nominations. Also widely expected to be nominated Wednesday are Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland,” with Frances McDormand; Regina King’s directorial debut “One Night in Miami”; and George C. Wolfe’s August Wilson adaptation “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” with Viola Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman all but assured of nods. The Globes’ splitting of nominees between drama and comedy/musical could also mean one wildcard of the season — “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” — may emerge. The film could be nominated for best feature, comedy or musical, along with acting nods for Sacha Baron Cohen (also a contender for his supporting performance in “The Trial of the Chicago 7”) and Maria Bakalova. Also of note in the category: the “Hamilton” film, ineligible for the Academy Awards, is a likely nominee at the Globes. In the television categories, expect “The Mandalorian,” “The Queen’s Gambit,” “The Flight Attendant,” “Ted Lasso” and the final season of “Schitt’s Creek” to be in the mix.  Awards ceremonyThe HFPA has yet to announce what form its awards ceremony — typically a bubbly dinner gathering with flowing drinks — will take this year. In August, the group’s president, Lorenzo Soria, died at age 68. He was replaced by Ali Sar. This year’s Globes were postponed nearly two months because of the pandemic and to adjust to the delayed Oscars. Those are set for April 25. Last year’s Golden Globes culminated in awards for “1917” and “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.” The telecast, hosted by Ricky Gervais, couldn’t buck the overall ratings trend for awards shows, drawing an average of 18.3 million viewers, down 2% from the previous year. 
 
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While many U.S. professional football games this season have been played in empty stadiums because of the coronavirus pandemic, the February 7 Super Bowl will be played in front of 25,000 fans. It will be the lowest attended National Football League championship game of all time.Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida, where the Kansas City Chiefs will take on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, has a capacity of 65,890, so the empty seats will be filled with as many as 30,000 cardboard cutouts of fans.Buccaneers, Chiefs to Face Off in Super Bowl Quarterbacks Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes look to add to their championship resumes According to the NFL, all fans in attendance will be given personal protective equipment (PPE) kits. The league said that it was giving 7,500 vaccinated health care workers free tickets to the game. Everyone in attendance will be required to wear face coverings.Until this year’s game, the lowest attended Super Bowl was the first one, where nearly 62,000 fans in the Los Angeles Coliseum watched the Green Bay Packers defeat the Chiefs 35-10 in 1967. There were 35,000 empty seats.The 1980 Super Bowl between the Los Angeles Rams and Pittsburgh Steelers remains the most attended game with 103,985 fans watching in the Rose Bowl. Pittsburgh won the game 31-19.
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Rocker Marilyn Manson was dropped by his record label on Monday after actor Evan Rachel Wood accused her ex-fiancé of sexual and other physical abuse, alleging she was “manipulated into submission” during their relationship.
Manson called the allegations “horrible distortions of reality.”
Wood, who stars on HBO’s “Westworld,” had spoken frequently in recent years about being abused in a relationship but did not name the person until she posted Monday on Instagram.
“The name of my abuser is Brian Warner, also known to the world as Marilyn Manson,” Wood said. “He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years.”
Manson’s label, Loma Vista Recordings, said in a statement that after the “disturbing allegations,” it will “cease to further promote his current album” and has “also decided not to work with Marilyn Manson on any future projects.”
Wood and Manson’s relationship became public in 2007 when he was 38 and she was 19, and they were briefly engaged in 2010 before breaking up.
Wood, now 33, said in her post that Manson left her “brainwashed and manipulated into submission.”
“I am done living in fear of retaliation, slander, or blackmail. I am here to expose this dangerous man and call out the many industries that have enabled him, before he ruins any more lives,” the post added.
She concluded, “I stand with the many victims who will no longer be silent.”
Manson responded with his own Instagram post Monday night.
“Obviously my art and life have long been magnets for controversy, but these recent claims about me are horrible distortions of reality,” his post said. “My intimate relationships have always been entirely consensual with like-minded partners. Regardless of how — and why — others are now choosing to misrepresent the past, that is the truth.”
It was not immediately clear whether Wood has gone to authorities with any of her allegations, and a representative did not immediately respond when asked via email whether she had.
In 2018, Los Angeles County prosecutors declined to file charges against Manson over allegations of assault, battery and sexual assault dating to 2011, saying they were limited by statutes of limitations and a lack of corroboration. The accuser in that case was identified only as a social acquaintance of Manson.
He denied the allegations through his attorney at the time.
In 2017, Wood was one of thousands of women who identified themselves as victims of sexual harassment or assault amid the #MeToo movement.
“Being raped once made it easier to be raped again. I instinctually shut down. My body remembered, so it protected me. I disappeared. #metoo,” Wood wrote at the time as part of a series of tweets on her experience.
In 2018, she testified about her abuse to a House Judiciary subcommittee as she sought to have a Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights passed in all 50 states.
“My experience with domestic violence was this: Toxic mental, physical and sexual abuse which started slow but escalated over time,” she told the committee.
Wood began acting as a child, gaining fame and a Golden Globe nomination for playing a troubled adolescent in 2003’s “Thirteen.”
For three seasons she has played Dolores Abernathy, a sentient android, on HBO’s “Westworld” and has been nominated for a Golden Globe and an Emmy Award for the role.
Manson, 52, became a household name in the mid-1990s with a series of hit rock albums and used a stage persona designed to shock and stoke controversy.
The Associated Press does not normally name people who say they were victims of sexual assault but is naming Wood because of her decision to speak out publicly.
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Tony Bennett has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease but it hasn’t quieted his legendary voice.
The singer’s wife and son reveal in the latest edition of AARP The Magazine that Bennett was first diagnosed with the irreversible neurological disorder in 2016. The magazine says he endures “increasingly rarer moments of clarity and awareness.”
Still, he continues to rehearse and twice a week goes through his 90-minute set with his longtime pianist, Lee Musiker. The magazine says he sings with perfect pitch and apparent ease.
A beloved interpreter of American standards, Bennett’s chart-topping career spans seven decades. “He’s not the old Tony anymore,” his wife, Susan, told the magazine. “But when he sings, he’s the old Tony.”
Bennett, 94, gained his first pop success in the early 1950s and enjoyed a career revival in the 1990s and became popular with younger audiences in part because of an appearance on “MTV Unplugged.” He continued recording and touring constantly, and his 2014 collaboration with Lady Gaga, “Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga: Cheek to Cheek,” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard charts.
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The abstract figures of naked women gyrating to the rhythms of a five-piece band had shocked many people almost 60 years ago as they eyed the artwork for the first time on the walls of a popular restaurant-nightclub in Cyprus.   The valuable and very rare concrete relief by Christoforos Savva, Cyprus’ most avant-garde artist of the 1960s, had lain hidden for decades in the underground recesses of the Perroquet nightclub in abandoned Varosha — an inaccessible ghost town that had been under Turkish military control since a 1974 war ethnically cleaved the island nation.   But with Varosha’s controversial partial opening last November, the artwork has again come to light following a report by local newspaper Politis. Now, the man who says he commissioned the art from Savva is asking authorities for help to have it removed and transported to the country’s national gallery for all to see.   Former Perroquet owner Avgerinos Nikitas, 93, a Greek Cypriot, has appealed to a committee composed of both Greek and Turkish Cypriots that’s tasked with protecting Cyprus’ cultural treasures on both sides of the divide to help remove the 13 sections.   “In return, I pledge to cede these pieces to the National Collection as a small contribution to Christoforos Savva’s huge body of work,” Nikitas said in a letter obtained by The Associated Press, addressed to the committee as well as Cyprus’ education ministry.   But the whole venture could be derailed as the Greek Cypriot family that owns the Esperia Tower hotel that hosted the Perroquet club insist that the artwork legally belongs to them. They say they won’t allow their “private property” to be removed and transferred and are warning of legal action.   Speaking on behalf of his family, Panayiotis Constantinou told the AP that their lawyer has advised them that the hotel, the club and everything inside it belongs to the family, regardless of the Savva artwork’s cultural value.   “We respect and value culture, but this is private property about which we haven’t been asked anything about removing it, and on top of that, someone else lays claim to it,” Constantinou said.   Art historians credit Savva as one of the most influential artists of the time who brought the country’s inward-looking, traditionalist art world into modernity in the years immediately after Cyprus gained independence from British colonial rule in 1960.   A painter and sculptor, Savva shifted away from the established, representational art styles by encompassing influences like cubism, which he picked up during his stays in London and Paris through the 1950s, into his voluminous artwork. He died in 1968.   “Savva was an innovator who always sought to break new ground and challenge the conservative times in which he lived,” said Andre Zivanari, director of the Point Center for Contemporary Art.   Savva’s work reflected the joie de vivre of Varosha, which at the time was Cyprus’ most progressive, popular tourist resort — a favorite with visitors from Europe and beyond, said Yiannis Toumazis, an art history professor and a Greek Cypriot member of the committee on culture.   That all changed in the summer of 1974 when Turkey invaded following a coup by supporters of union with Greece. Turkish armed forces took over an empty Varosha and kept it virtually sealed off until last November, when breakaway Turkish Cypriot authorities re-opened a stretch of beach to the public.   The move caused much consternation among the suburb’s Greek Cypriot residents and protests from the island’s internationally recognized government amid concerns that the Turkish Cypriot north’s hardline leadership aimed to place the entire area under its control.   Cyprus’ former first lady and cultural committee co-chair Androulla Vassiliou told the AP that the body would look at bringing the reliefs to the island’s southern part, once new Turkish Cypriot members are appointed.   The previous Turkish Cypriot committee members collectively resigned last December for what they said was a divergence of views with the new Turkish Cypriot leadership over its aim to steer talks to resolve Cyprus’ division away from a federation-based arrangement.   The reclamation of artwork that disappeared amid the confusion of war isn’t without precedent. Last February, the culture committee successfully engineered the return of 219 paintings — including some of the most significant works produced by Greek Cypriot artists — that were thought lost or stolen in the north.   In return, Turkish Cypriots received rare archival footage from state broadcaster CyBC of Turkish Cypriot cultural and sporting events dating from 1955 to the early 1960s. The swap was hailed as a tangible way of bolstering trust among Greek and Turkish Cypriots.   Toumazis said the return of Savva’s reliefs would be another trust-boosting milestone, but better still would be if people could return to their properties in Varosha.   “It would be nice if people themselves returned to what they owned, rather than having any artwork being transferred to them,” he said. 
 
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