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Tony Bennett, the eminent and timeless stylist whose devotion to classic American songs and knack for creating new standards such as “I Left My Heart In San Francisco” graced a decadeslong career that brought him admirers from Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga, died Friday. He was 96, just two weeks short of his birthday.

Publicist Sylvia Weiner confirmed Bennett’s death to The Associated Press, saying he died in his hometown of New York. There was no specific cause, but Bennett had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016.

The last of the great saloon singers of the mid-20th century, Bennett often said his lifelong ambition was to create “a hit catalog rather than hit records.” He released more than 70 albums, bringing him 19 competitive Grammys — all but two after he reached his 60s — and enjoyed deep and lasting affection from fans and fellow artists.

Bennett didn’t tell his own story when performing; he let the music speak instead — the Gershwins and Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern. Unlike his friend and mentor Sinatra, he would interpret a song rather than embody it. If his singing and public life lacked the high drama of Sinatra’s, Bennett appealed with an easy, courtly manner and an uncommonly rich and durable voice — “A tenor who sings like a baritone,” he called himself — that made him a master of caressing a ballad or brightening an up-tempo number.

“I enjoy entertaining the audience, making them forget their problems,” he told The Associated Press in 2006. “I think people … are touched if they hear something that’s sincere and honest and maybe has a little sense of humor. … I just like to make people feel good when I perform.”

Bennett was praised often by his peers, but never more meaningfully than by what Sinatra said in a 1965 Life magazine interview: “For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business. He excites me when I watch him. He moves me. He’s the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more.”

He not only survived the rise of rock music but endured so long and so well that he gained new fans and collaborators, some young enough to be his grandchildren. In 2014, at age 88, Bennett broke his own record as the oldest living performer with a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart for “Cheek to Cheek,” his duets project with Lady Gaga. Three years earlier, he topped the charts with “Duets II,” featuring such contemporary stars as Gaga, Carrie Underwood and Amy Winehouse, in her last studio recording. His rapport with Winehouse was captured in the Oscar-nominated documentary “Amy,” which showed Bennett patiently encouraging the insecure young singer through a performance of “Body and Soul.”

His final album, the 2021 release “Love for Sale,” featured duets with Lady Gaga on the title track, “Night and Day” and other Porter songs.

For Bennett, one of the few performers to move easily between pop and jazz, such collaborations were part of his crusade to expose new audiences to what he called the Great American Songbook.

“No country has given the world such great music,” Bennett said in a 2015 interview with Downbeat Magazine. “Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern. Those songs will never die.”

Ironically, his most famous contribution came through two unknowns, George Cory and Douglass Cross, who in the early ’60s provided Bennett with his signature song at a time his career was in a lull. They gave Bennett’s musical director, pianist Ralph Sharon, some sheet music that he stuck in a dresser drawer and forgot about until he was packing for a tour that included a stop in San Francisco.

“Ralph saw some sheet music in his shirt drawer … and on top of the pile was a song called ‘I Left My Heart In San Francisco.’ Ralph thought it would be good material for San Francisco,” Bennett said. “We were rehearsing and the bartender in the club in Little Rock, Arkansas, said, ‘If you record that song, I’m going to be the first to buy it.'”

Released in 1962 as the B-side of the single “Once Upon a Time,” the reflective ballad became a grassroots phenomenon staying on the charts for more than two years and earning Bennett his first two Grammys, including record of the year.

By his early 40s, he was seemingly out of fashion. But after turning 60, an age when even the most popular artists often settle for just pleasing their older fans, Bennett and his son and manager, Danny, found creative ways to market the singer to the MTV Generation. He made guest appearances on “Late Night with David Letterman” and became a celebrity guest artist on “The Simpsons.” He wore a black T-shirt and sunglasses as a presenter with the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the 1993 MTV Music Video Awards, and his own video of “Steppin’ Out With My Baby” from his Grammy-winning Fred Astaire tribute album ended up on MTV’s hip “Buzz Bin.”

That led to an offer in 1994 to do an episode of “MTV Unplugged” with special guests Elvis Costello and k.d. lang. The evening’s performance resulted in the album, “Tony Bennett: MTV Unplugged,” which won two Grammys, including album of the year.

Bennett would win Grammys for his tributes to female vocalists (“Here’s to the Ladies”), Billie Holiday (“Tony Bennett on Holiday”), and Duke Ellington (“Bennett Sings Ellington — Hot & Cool”). He also won Grammys for his collaborations with other singers: “Playin’ With My Friends — Bennett Sings the Blues,” and his Louis Armstrong tribute, “A Wonderful World” with lang, the first full album he had ever recorded with another singer. He celebrated his 80th birthday with “Duets: An American Classic,” featuring Barbra Streisand, Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder among others.

“They’re all giants in the industry, and all of a sudden they’re saying to me ‘You’re the master,'” Bennett told the AP in 2006.

Long associated with San Francisco, Bennett would note that his true home was Astoria, the working-class community in the New York City borough of Queens, where he grew up during the Great Depression. The singer chose his old neighborhood as the site for the “Fame”-style public high school, the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, that he and his third wife, Susan Crow Benedetto, a former teacher, helped found in 2001.

The school is not far from the birthplace of the man who was once Anthony Dominick Benedetto. His father was an Italian immigrant who inspired his love of singing, but he died when Anthony was 10. Bennett credited his mother, Anna, with teaching him a valuable lesson as he watched her working at home, supporting her three children as a seamstress doing piecework after his father died.

“We were very impoverished,” Bennett said in a 2016 AP interview. “I saw her working and every once in a while she’d take a dress and throw it over her shoulder and she’d say, ‘Don’t have me work on a bad dress. I’ll only work on good dresses.'”

He studied commercial art in high school, but had to drop out to help support his family. The teenager got a job as a copy boy for the AP, performed as a singing waiter and competed in amateur shows. A combat infantryman during World War II, he served as a librarian for the Armed Forces Network after the war and sang with an army big band in occupied Germany. His earliest recording is a 1946 air check from Armed Forces Radio of the blues “St. James Infirmary.”
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STOCKHOLM — A recent string of public desecrations of the Quran by a handful of anti-Islam activists in Sweden has sparked an angry reaction in Muslim countries and raised questions – including in Sweden – about why such acts are allowed.

In the latest such incident, an Iraqi living in Sweden on Thursday stomped on and kicked Islam’s holy book in a two-man rally outside the Iraqi Embassy in Stockholm. The protest was authorized by Swedish police, who kept a handful of agitated counterdemonstrators at a safe distance.

The same Iraqi man burned a Quran outside a Stockholm mosque last month in a similar protest that was approved by police. And at the start of the year, a far-right activist from Denmark carried out a similar stunt outside the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm.

Here’s a look at how Swedish authorities have been dealing with these acts.

Is desecrating the Quran allowed in Sweden?

There is no law in Sweden specifically prohibiting the burning or desecration of the Quran or other religious texts. Like many Western countries, Sweden doesn’t have any blasphemy laws.

It wasn’t always that way. As late as the 19th century, blasphemy was considered a serious crime in Sweden, punishable by death. But blasphemy laws were gradually relaxed as Sweden became increasingly secularized. The last such law was taken off the books in 1970.

Can Swedish authorities stop such acts?

Many Muslim countries have called on the Swedish government to stop protesters from burning the Quran. But in Sweden it is up to police, not the government, to decide whether to authorize demonstrations or public gatherings.

The freedom of speech is protected under the Swedish constitution. Police need to cite specific grounds to deny a permit for a demonstration or public gathering, such as risks to public safety.

Stockholm police did just that in February when they denied two applications for Quran-burning protests, citing assessments from the Swedish Security Service that such acts could increase the risk of terror attacks against Sweden. But a court later overturned those decisions, saying police need to cite more concrete threats to ban a public gathering.

Can Quran-burning be considered hate speech?

Sweden’s hate speech law prohibits incitement against groups of people based on race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity.

Some say burning the Quran constitutes incitement against Muslims and should therefore be considered as hate speech. Others say such acts are targeting the religion of Islam rather than practitioners of the faith, and that criticism of religion must be covered by freedom of speech, even when some consider it offensive.

Seeking guidance from the justice system, Swedish police have filed preliminary hate crime charges against the man who burned the Quran outside a mosque in Stockholm in June and desecrated Islam’s holy book again Thursday. It’s now up to prosecutors to decide whether to formally indict him.

Are Swedish authorities singling out Muslims and the Quran?

Some Muslims in Sweden who were deeply hurt by recent Quran burnings questioned whether Swedish police would allow the desecration of holy books from other religions.

One Muslim man apparently decided to put that to the test and applied for permission to stage a protest Saturday outside the Israeli Embassy in which he said he intended to burn the Torah and the Bible.

Though Israeli government officials and Jewish groups condemned the planned act and called on Swedish authorities to stop it, police approved the man’s request. However, once at the scene the man backed away from his plans, saying that as a Muslim he was against the burning of all religious books.

How is blasphemy viewed in other parts of the world?

Blasphemy is criminalized in many countries. A Pew Research Center analysis found that 79 countries and territories out of the 198 studied had laws or policies on the books in 2019 that banned blasphemy, defined as “speech or actions considered to be contemptuous of God or of people or objects considered sacred.” In at least seven countries – Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia – it carried a potential death sentence.

In the Middle East and North Africa, 18 of the 20 countries studied had laws criminalizing blasphemy, although not in most cases punishable by death.

In Iraq, publicly insulting a symbol or a person that is held sacred, revered, or respected by a religious sect is a crime punishable by up to three years in prison.

Likewise in religiously diverse Lebanon, where sectarian divisions helped fuel a 15-year civil war from 1975-90, any act “intended to or resulting in” provoking “sectarian strife” is a crime punishable by up to three years in prison.

In the United States, under the freedom of speech protections in the First Amendment of the Constitution, it’s not illegal to burn copies of the Quran or other holy books.

For example, authorities were appalled by Florida pastor Terry Jones’ threat in 2010 to burn a copy of the Quran on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but were unable to take legal action. Jones didn’t go through with that plan, but he led a Quran-burning in Florida the next year. 
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SYDNEY/AUCKLAND – Australia and New Zealand will open the ninth Women’s World Cup co-hosted by the two nations Thursday, despite a shooting near the Norwegian team hotel in New Zealand’s largest city of Auckland that left three dead and six injured.

Police said the shooter was among those killed and the danger from the incident was over, while New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said there was no risk to national security.

New Zealand’s Football Ferns will open the tournament as planned at Eden Park in the city against Norway on Thursday at 7 p.m. local time (0700 GMT), in what is likely to surpass the host nation’s previous biggest crowd for an international soccer match.

“Everyone woke up pretty quickly when the helicopter hovered outside the hotel window and a large number of emergency vehicles arrived – at first we didn’t know what was going on, but eventually there were updates on TV and the local media,” Norway captain Maren Mjelde was quoted as saying by newspaper Verdens Gang.

A statement from football’s governing body FIFA said it was supporting teams in the vicinity of the incident.

“FIFA has been informed that this was an isolated incident that was not related to football operations and the opening match tonight at Eden Park will proceed as planned,” the statement said.

The Matildas will begin their campaign against the Republic of Ireland at 1000 GMT in front of a

sellout crowd of around 70,000 fans at Stadium Australia in Sydney, a record attendance for a women’s soccer match in the country.Women were banned from official facilities in England, the home of the game, until 1970, and female players faced similar discrimination in many other countries.

But the sport has achieved greater prominence in recent years, with large increases in female players and spectators globally.

Tracey Taylor, a professor of sports management at RMIT University in Melbourne, said many members of grassroots football clubs expected the tournament to have a transformative effect for participation in women’s sport in Australia.

“They say it’s such a game changer for them in positioning the sport, not only globally, but also within the local community and raising awareness,” she said.

Still, conditions for female footballers remain well behind those for men in many countries.

The Matildas released a video this week criticizing the “disrespect” for the women’s game that forced teams to play on artificial pitches in the 2015 tournament and prize money that still lags the men’s World Cup.

Several participating nations, including tournament heavyweights England and Spain, have been in dispute with their administrators over working conditions and pay in recent months.

Demand Down Under

Players like talismanic striker Sam Kerr are household names in sport-mad Australia, with tickets for matches involving the home nation selling out months in advance.

“I’m sure that the whole of Australia will be behind the team tonight,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a radio interview with state broadcaster ABC on Thursday.

“I think that Australians are really realizing just how big this event is.”

In New Zealand, whose sporting culture is dominated by rugby union and its famous All Blacks, demand has been lower, with tickets remaining for many fixtures.

Fatma Samoura, FIFA’s secretary-general, said tickets sold had already exceeded the total number sold for the last tournament in France, but sales in New Zealand had lagged its much larger neighbor.

“We know that Kiwis are late ticket purchasers when it comes to tournaments that are played on their shores,” she told a news conference in Auckland on Wednesday.

“We still have tickets available for some matches. So, my only plea is don’t wait until the last moment.”

New Zealand Sports Minister Grant Robertson on Wednesday urged Kiwis to purchase what he said were “limited” remaining tickets for the opening match.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for many New Zealanders to experience a top-tier FIFA World Cup event,” he said. 
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Iran, largely shunned by western tourists, is making a push to attract visitors from wealthy Gulf Arab states and other nearby countries to boost its sanctions-hit economy.  

The Islamic republic is also drawing more visitors from Russia and China to its ancient sites that date back to the Persian empire and the fabled Silk Road, industry figures say.

Iran’s Beijing-brokered diplomatic thaw this year with Saudi Arabia paved the way for direct flights, and Tehran is also seeking closer ties with other countries from Egypt to Morocco.

The slow but steady change is noticeable at major tourist sights where more visitors can now be heard speaking not English, French or German, but Arabic, Chinese and Russian.

“In the past, we were receiving many tourists from Europe but now those numbers have seen a sharp decline,” said one Tehran travel agency owner, 46-year-old Hamid Shateri.

Europeans are “afraid of visiting Iran”, he said, after years of tensions over the country’s contested nuclear program and after Western government warnings against travelling there.

“These days, mostly Chinese and Russian people visit Iran’s historical sites and spectacular scenery and Arab tourists, especially from Iraq, come to attend religious ceremonies.”

Years of isolation

Iran has long attracted foreign visitors with its ancient splendors including the cities of Shiraz, Isfahan and Mashhad and its 2,500-year-old Persepolis complex.

It has deserts and snow-capped mountains as well as Gulf and Caspian Sea coastlines, and prides itself on its cuisine and tradition of hospitality.

A steady stream of mainly European visitors long kept coming despite the strict dress code for women and bans on alcohol and nightlife after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

As the largest Shiite Muslim power, Iran also hosts a steady stream of religious pilgrims, many from neighboring Iraq, to its ancient shrine cities of Mashhad and Qom.

There were high hopes for a lucrative boost to tourism after Iran and major powers struck a landmark deal in 2015 to restrict its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.

But those hopes were dashed three years later when the then US president Donald Trump unilaterally pulled out of the agreement.

Bad news has spiraled since, including the Covid pandemic that hit Iran early and hard.

Last year, mass protests rocked the country, sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini after her arrest for allegedly flouting the dress rules, before authorities put down the women-led “riots”, which they blamed on hostile forces abroad.

Iran has also jailed several Europeans, prompting multiple Western countries to advise their citizens against all travel there, many citing the risk of “arbitrary detention”.

Last year Iran attracted 4.1 million foreigners — less than half the figure for 2019 and accounting for just 0.4 percent of tourist trips worldwide, says the UN World Tourism Organization.

Tehran has now launched a push to rebuild tourism, including by drawing people from the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to the Gulf islands of Kish and Qeshm, which boast beaches, luxury hotels and cheap shopping. 

Renewed push

Iran has also sought to attract more visitors from neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan, despite recent tensions between Baku and Tehran.

“Setting up tourism exhibitions in other countries, advertising through their media and hosting international events are among the program to promote tourism,” said Majid Kiani, the CEO of northwest Iran’s Aras Free Zone.

UNESCO last month added the region’s colorful Aras rock formations to its Global Geoparks network.

The area around the geological park, also hailed for its diverse ecosystem, hosted “more than 1.2 million tourists” during this year’s Nowruz new year season, Kiani said.

Armenians are now visiting the 9th-century monastery of Saint Stepanos, a UNESCO World Heritage site with vivid murals of biblical scenes and ornate facades.

“Many Armenian tourists come to visit the historic church,” said local archbishop Krikor Chiftjian, prelate of the Diocese of the Iranian provinces of East and West Azerbaijan.

Tourism analyst Babak Babali said there was much potential, given that in the 2010s Azerbaijanis routinely visited the region for healthcare, creating “a sizeable medical tourism industry”.

More broadly, some observers see signs of easing tensions, pointing to Iran’s recent release of several European prisoners, although others remain in detention. 

Babali said that, while “these steps signal Tehran’s intention to deescalate tensions, it will take a while before this gets reflected in the number of tourists from Europe”.

Shateri, the Tehran tour guide, also said Iran has some way to go before western visitors return in great numbers.

“Iran needs to improve its international relations and show the world that it has a peace-seeking nature if it wants to attract more tourists,” he said.
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