YCLOAK

Ronnie Spector, the cat-eyed, beehived rock ‘n’ roll siren who sang such 1960s hits as “Be My Baby,” “Baby I Love You” and “Walking in the Rain” as the leader of the Ronettes, has died. She was 78. 

Spector died Wednesday after a brief battle with cancer, her family said. 

“Ronnie lived her life with a twinkle in her eye, a spunky attitude, a wicked sense of humor and a smile on her face. She was filled with love and gratitude,” a statement said. No other details were included. 

Tributes flooded social media, from Stevie Van Zandt, who said it was an honor to produce her music, to Brian Wilson, who wrote on Twitter: “I loved her voice so much and she was a very special person and a dear friend.” Diane Warren called her “the voice of a million teenage dreams including mine.” 

The Ronettes’ sexy look and powerful voices — plus songwriting and producing help from Phil Spector — turned them into one of the premier acts of the girl-group era, touring England with the Rolling Stones and befriending the Beatles. 

Spector, alongside her sister Estelle Bennett and cousin Nedra Talley, scored hits with pop masterpieces like “Baby, I Love You,” “Walking in the Rain,” “I Can Hear Music” and “Be My Baby,” which was co-written by Spector, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. 

“We weren’t afraid to be hot. That was our gimmick,” Spector said in her memoir. “When we saw the Shirelles walk on stage with their wide party dresses, we went in the opposite direction and squeezed our bodies into the tightest skirts we could find. Then we’d get out on stage and hike them up to show our legs even more.” 

Spector, born Veronica Bennett, and her multiracial bandmates grew up in the Washington Heights area of Manhattan. They began singing and dancing in clubs as Ronnie and the Relatives, becoming noteworthy for their liberal use of eyeliner and mascara. 

“The louder they applauded, the more mascara we put on the next time,” she wrote in her memoir. “We didn’t have a hit record to grab their attention, so we had to make an impression with our style. None of it was planned out; we just took the look we were born with and extended it.” 

In March 1963, Estelle Bennett managed to arrange an audition in front of Phil Spector, known for his big, brass-and-drum style dubbed the “wall of sound.” They were signed to Philles Records in 1963. After being signed, they sang backup for other acts until Spector had the group record “Be My Baby” and “Baby I Love You.”

The group’s debut album, “Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica,” was released in 1964. Five of its 12 tracks made it to the U.S. Billboard charts. 

“Nothing excites me more than just being onstage, having fun and flirting and winking to the guys and stuff like that,” she told People magazine in 2017. “I just have so much fun. It’s just the best feeling when I go out and they say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen’ … my heart stops for a minute …‘Ronnie Spector and the Ronettes!’ Then I just go out there and the crowd reacts the way they react and I can go on singing forever.” 

After touring Germany in 1967, the Ronettes broke up. Spector married Ronnie in 1968, after which she said he kept her locked in their Beverly Hills mansion. Her 1990 autobiography Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts and Madness, tells an unhappy story of abuse. The couple divorced in 1974. Phil Spector was sent to prison in 2009 for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson and died in 2020.

Ronnie Spector’s influence was felt far and wide. Brian Wilson became obsessed with “Be My Baby” and Billy Joel wrote “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” in Spector’s honor. Amy Winehouse frequently cited Spector as an idol.

Martin Scorsese used “Be My Baby” to open his 1973 film Mean Streets and the song appears in the title sequence of Dirty Dancing and the closing credits of Baby Mama. It also appeared on TV in Moonlighting and The Wonder Years.

When the Ronettes were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones remembered opening for the trio in England in the mid-1960s. 

 “They could sing all their way right through a wall of sound,” Richards said. “They didn’t need anything. They touched my heart right there and then and they touch it still.” 

After the Ronettes broke up, Spector continued to tour and make music, including “Take Me Home Tonight” with Eddie Money, recording Joel’s “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, and recording the 1999 EP She Talks to Rainbows, which included her first ever recording of “Don’t Worry Baby,” written for her by Brian Wilson. 

She is survived by her husband, Jonathan Greenfield, and two sons, Jason and Austin. 
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U.S. prosecutors have charged a man with supplying performance-enhancing drugs to athletes at the Tokyo Olympics, a first under a federal law allowing criminal charges against doping conspirators at events involving U.S. athletes, broadcasters and sponsors. 

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan said Eric Lira, 41, distributed drugs, including human growth hormone, “for the purpose of corrupting” the Tokyo Games. 

Lira obtained misbranded versions of prescription drugs used to boost production of red blood cells from Central and South America and distributed them to two athletes, prosecutors said. 

One of the athletes believed to be discussed in the criminal complaint but not identified there by name is Nigerian sprinter Blessing Okagbare. 

She was provisionally banned by an international anti-doping entity, the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), after testing positive for human growth hormone. 

Lira was charged under the Rodchenkov Act, a law enacted at the end of 2020 and named for Russian whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov. It lets prosecutors seek prison terms of up to 10 years and fines of up to $1 million for offenders. 

The charges against Lira marked the first U.S. criminal accusations of doping related to the Tokyo Games, which were scheduled for 2020 but delayed to the summer of 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“The Games offered thousands of athletes validation after years of training,” Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, said in a statement. “Eric Lira schemed to debase that moment by peddling illegal drugs.” 

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which had voiced concerns about the Rodchenkov Act, said in an email to Reuters it, “Welcomes efforts by governments to penalize those who are trafficking or distributing prohibited substances.” 

The head of the AIU, Brett Clothier, said, “Collaboration between law enforcement and anti-doping agencies can considerably strengthen the ability to detect serious doping, as is alleged in this case.” 

Lira, a therapist based in El Paso, Texas, was arrested Wednesday. 

Appearing via Zoom before U.S. Magistrate Judge Miguel Torres in El Paso, Lira, wearing a dark blue button-down T-shirt and surgical face mask, said he was “not very aware of the charges” and was in the process of hiring a private lawyer. 

Torres scheduled a bail hearing for January 18 and turned Lira over to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service. 

‘Huge win’ 

Travis Tygart, chief executive of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, in a statement called the charges “a huge win for all clean athletes and those who value fair sport.” 

Prosecutors said they had obtained encrypted messages in which Lira and one of the athletes discussed the athlete’s performance running the 100 meters, suggesting the athlete was a sprinter involved in the athletics competition. 

“Eric my body feel so good (sic), I just ran 10.63 with a 2.7 wind, I’m so happy,” the athlete wrote to Lira on June 22, 2021, according to one of the messages obtained by prosecutors. “Whatever you did, is working so well.” 

Some details in the complaint, including race dates and times and the athlete’s suspension, correspond with Okagbare, who had won a silver medal in the long jump at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. 

Okagbare did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. 

She had competed in the 100-meter heats at the Tokyo Olympics and was scheduled to run in the semifinal before being suspended. 

The AIU said Okagbare had previously tested positive and charged her with the presence and use of a prohibited substance following the detection of human growth hormone.

 
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Africa Cup of Nations – Day 3, Jan. 11, 2022

Algeria vs Sierra Leone | 0-0

Nigeria vs Egypt | 1-0

Sudan vs Guinea Bissau | 0-0

 
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A group of Indigenous people is prepping a bid to bring the 2030 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games to Vancouver, Canada. It would be the first time any Olympics was hosted by Indigenous people and could lead to further reconciliation with Canada’s First Nations.

The group was known as the “Four Host First Nations” when Vancouver hosted the Winter Olympics and Paralympics in 2010.  

The Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh are from the area around the present-day city of Vancouver. The Lil Wat are near the present-day village of Whistler, the famed ski resort about 120 kilometers north of downtown Vancouver. 

They have signed a memorandum of understanding with the municipal governments of both Vancouver and Whistler to take the lead on making the bid for the same Games in 2030.

The First Nations played a prominent role in the 2010 Games and during the opening and closing ceremonies.

Wilson Williams, a council member and spokesperson for the Squamish Nation, fondly recalls the Vancouver area hosting the Winter Games and how it brought together over 300 Indigenous youth from across Canada in what came to be known as “The Gathering.”

He said in the years since, the United Nations Declaration on Indigenous Peoples has come into effect and Canada has entered an era of reconciliation involving historic human rights abuses committed against First Nations people.

Wilson said the Winter Games in 2030 would allow for the stories of First Nations people from across Canada to be told.

“So I think, you know, there’s a real hunger for sharing stories of who we are, where we come from, you know, there’s always that political eagerness to share the landscape in the visions of that, but I think the real story is paving a story that’s a vision for generations down the road,” he said. 

Wiliams said hosting the Games would also set a healthy example for Indigenous youth and help build a better relationship with non-First Nations Canadians.

“I think a First Nation, especially Squamish nation, really trying to pave a healthy path for our future, and setting up our “mun-mun” (children), we call it, our children for success in the future. And living a strong, vibrant and harmoniously with, with our peers, not just with First Nations community, but the community at large, you know, and I think that’s something that we’re really going to take pride in,” Williams said. 

Salt Lake City, Utah, which hosted the Winter Olympics in 2002, is also contending for the 2030 Games. Other bids could follow.

Montreal-based lawyer Dick Pound, the longest serving member of the International Olympic Committee and the founding president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, says, with Los Angeles, California set to host the Summer Games in 2028, it is less likely the United States will be picked for the 2030 Winter Games, boosting the chances that Vancouver’s First Nations-led bid will succeed.

“It’s the indigenous issue is one that now resonates a lot more strongly internationally. And the IOC is certainly alert to that. And of course, then they know the involvement in Vancouver to 2010.  So, no, I don’t think it’s cutesy (a stunt) at all, I think it’s a very good way of involving an important part of the community, particularly in B.C. (British Columbia),” Pound said.

The next step is for a formal collaboration agreement to be ironed out between First Nations and municipal governments, and then a feasibility study, which will detail the costs and sources of funding for the Games.

It is hoped this will happen in the next few months.   

Almost all major venues still exist from the 2010 Games and would not need to be built. 
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Novak Djokovic, the world’s top-ranked male tennis player, says errors were made on his entry documents about his activities in the weeks before traveling to Australia, adding another layer of controversy in his fight to compete in the year’s first major “Grand Slam” tennis tournament. 

The Serbian star issued a statement Wednesday saying his assistants had incorrectly declared that he had not traveled anywhere in the 14-days before departing for Melbourne last week. Reports have surfaced showing he traveled to Serbia and Spain. 

Djokovic also said he did not know he tested positive for COVID-19 on December 16 until the next day, after he appeared at a tennis event in Belgrade to present awards to children. He also admitted that he should have canceled a planned magazine interview and photoshoot the day after learning of his status.  

The 34-year-old Djokovic has been at odds with Australian officials since his arrival in Melbourne last Wednesday to begin preparations for the Australian Open, which begins next Monday, January 17. An open skeptic of COVID-19 vaccines, he said he had received a medical exemption from two medical panels and Tennis Australia, the tournament’s organizer, from the government’s requirement that all visitors should be vaccinated against COVID-19.  

But the government rejected Djokovic’s exemption and revoked his visa amid a public uproar in Australia, which is battling with a huge spike in new coronavirus cases driven by the omicron variant. He was placed in immigration detention until a judge overruled the government in a hearing Monday and reinstated his visa. 

But Immigration Minister Alex Hawke still could decide to expel Djokovic from Australia because he is not vaccinated against COVID-19. 

Djokovic is seeking his second consecutive Australian Open men’s title and his 10th overall. It would also be his 21st career Grand Slam win, which would break the tie he shares with his closest rivals, Rafeal Nadal of Spain and Roger Federer of Switzerland.    

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters and  Agence France-Presse.  
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A Ugandan author who wrote critical comments about President Yoweri Museveni’s son has been charged with offensive communications. Kakwenza Rukirabashaija’s lawyer says he was tortured in detention.  

Award-winning writer Kakwenza Rukirabashaija appeared before a court Tuesday and was charged with two counts of offensive communication.

Rukirabashaija was arrested on December 28 and taken from his Kampala home. The government says he was using his Twitter account to offend President Yoweri Museveni and his son, Commander of Land Forces Lieutenant General Muhoozi Kainerugaba.

The writer’s lawyer, Eron Kiiza, tells VOA he was not made aware of his client’s court appearance until later.

“This was a clandestine move intended to deny him an opportunity for legal representation and an opportunity to pursue his legal remedies like bail and opposing the charges which are bogus,” said Kiiza.

Rukirabashaija’s court appearance comes a day after the high court issued an order for it to take place before the close of business Wednesday.

The magistrate Tuesday also issued an order for him to be subjected to a medical examination by prison authorities to ascertain his health status.

During a January 3rd search at his home in Iganga district in the Eastern region, the writer reportedly whispered to his wife that he had been tortured. Photos of his blood-stained undergarments were later posted on social media. 

The author was allegedly detained at the Special Forces Command facility in Entebbe, a claim the army vehemently denied.

The award-winning writer has been remanded to a prison facility until January 21, when he reappears before a court.

This is the third time he has been arrested. The first time was in April 2020 for his novel, The Greedy Barbarian, a fictional account of high-level corruption. He was again arrested the following September for his second novel titled Banana Republic, which detailed torture. 

He won the PEN Pinter Prize International Writer of Courage Award in 2021.
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The world number one tennis player Novak Djokovic has won his case against deportation from Australia on the country’s strict COVID-19 vaccination rules.  

Djokovic’s fans celebrated Monday outside an immigration hotel in Melbourne where he had been detained. Federal Court Judge Anthony Kelly said the Australian government’s decision to cancel his visa was “unreasonable.”

He said that the Serbian tennis star was not given enough time to speak with tournament organizers or his legal advisers after he was detained Wednesday at Melbourne airport, a standard treatment for an “unlawful non-citizen” according to Australian law.

He had flown to Australia believing he had an exemption from the country’s COVID-19 vaccination regulations, which state all foreign nationals entering the country must fully be inoculated or have a medical waiver.

Djokovic said he had contracted coronavirus in December, which gave him the right to apply for an exemption. However, Australian border authorities had said that the tennis star had not met immigration regulations and would be deported.

But his lawyers told the court that the decision to revoke his visa was “illogical, irrational and legally unreasonable.”

“This is the outcome I expected, yes,” Immigration lawyer John Findlay told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. “Mr. Djokovic’s lawyers put a very compelling case. The main thing that the court was concerned about was the unfairness — the manifest unfairness — to Mr. Djokovic about the way the officers at Melbourne airport conducted themselves.”

Djokovic has been released from detention and will likely be allowed to defend his Australian Open title. He has won the event nine times.

Should he triumph at this year’s tournament he will become the most successful men’s grand slam champion with 21 titles. However, Australia’s immigration minister Alex Hawke has the ability to intervene again and order his deportation.

Under Australian law, the minister has exceptional authority and discretion to cancel a visa.
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“The Power of the Dog” and “West Side Story” on Sunday won the top film prizes at an untelevised Golden Globes that was largely ignored by Hollywood, with awards unveiled via a live blog without any of the usual A-list glamour.   

Jane Campion’s dark Western “The Power of the Dog” became only the second film directed by a woman to win the best drama prize. The film also won for best director and best supporting actor for Kodi Smit-McPhee.   

Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story” remake claimed top honors for best comedy or musical, as well as lead and supporting actress prizes for stars Rachel Zegler and Ariana DeBose.   

Will Smith and Nicole Kidman won the prizes for best actor and actress in film dramas for their turns in “King Richard” and “Being the Ricardos.”   

But none of the stars were present as usual at the Beverly Hilton, with the ceremony held behind closed doors.   

The awards, which are usually closely followed for the immediate boost to box office tallies and Oscar hopes that a Globes win can provide, were hugely overshadowed by a long-brewing row over ethical lapses by the organizers. 

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a group of 100-odd entertainment writers with links to foreign publications, has been accused of a litany of failings from corruption to racism. 

The Globes are traditionally billed as Tinseltown’s biggest party — in past years, the event was watched by TV audiences of millions, and spawned frenzied debate and memes on social media.   

This year, NBC scrapped its broadcast, the HFPA did not offer a livestream, and the event failed to take off on Twitter, where pop culture fans were more preoccupied with the death of US comedian Bob Saget. 

‘Work to be done’ 

The young stars of “West Side Story” took to Twitter to mark their wins, with Zegler noting that she had been awarded her Globe exactly three years after being cast as an unknown by Spielberg from among 30,000 hopefuls.   

“Life is very strange,” she wrote. 

DeBose thanked the HFPA while cautioning that further reform is needed.   

“There is still work to be done, but when you’ve worked so hard on a project — infused with blood, sweat, tears and love — having the work seen and acknowledged is always going to be special,” she tweeted.    

A Los Angeles Times expose last year found the HFPA had no Black members, opening the floodgates for criticism from across Hollywood including from A-list stars such as Tom Cruise.    

Since the scandal broke, the HFPA has rushed through reforms, admitting its biggest ever annual intake, including several Black and other minority members. 

It has banned members from accepting lavish gifts and hotel stays from studios courting their votes, and highlighted its philanthropic work. 

During the behind-closed-doors ceremony on Sunday, the HFPA tweeted pre-recorded videos from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis praising the group’s community work.   

“I’m proud to be associated with them in this venture,” said Curtis, referring to funding by the HFPA for community programs.   

But celebrities were otherwise conspicuously absent from the proceedings, leaving the Golden Globes website’s live blog to inform readers: “No other awards community shows as much love and generosity to others quite like the HFPA!”  

Oscar hopefuls

Despite the subdued atmosphere surrounding the Globes, three wins apiece for “The Power of the Dog” and “West Side Story” confirm their credentials as contenders for an award season that culminates in March with the Oscars. 

Campion’s “Power of the Dog,” starring Benedict Cumberbatch, which tackles toxic masculinity in 1920s Montana and was released by Netflix with a limited theatrical run, has received rave reviews.   

Spielberg’s “West Side Story” remake flopped at the box office but was also adored by critics. 

Kenneth Branagh, whose black-and-white account of the outbreak of sectarian violence during the late 1960s in “Belfast” is considered a strong award season contender and had jointly topped the nominations, won only for best screenplay.  

Andrew Garfield won best actor in a comedy of musical for “tick, tick … Boom!”, which is based on the semi-autobiographical musical of the same name written by “Rent” composer Jonathan Larson.   

“Succession,” HBO’s tale of about a media tycoon’s warring family, topped the television side with three prizes including best drama. 
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Bob Saget, a comedian and actor known for his role as a widower raising a trio of daughters in the sitcom “Full House,” has died, according to authorities in Florida. He was 65.

The Orange County, Florida, sheriff’s office was called Sunday about an “unresponsive man” in a hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando, according to a sheriff’s statement on Twitter.

“The man was identified as Robert Saget” and death was pronounced at the scene, the statement said, adding that detectives found “no signs of foul play or drug use in this case. A “#BobSaget” concluded the tweet.

Saget was in Florida as part of his “I Don’t Do Negative Comedy Tour,” according to his Twitter feed.

His publicist didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Saget was also the longtime host of “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”
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If the Golden Globe Awards aren’t on television, will anyone care?

That’s just one of the uneasy questions facing the embattled Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which is proceeding with its film awards Sunday night without a telecast, nominees, celebrity guests, a red carpet, a host, press or even a livestream. In a year beset by controversy, the self-proclaimed biggest party in Hollywood, has been reduced to little more than a Twitter feed.

Members of the HFPA and some recipients of the group’s philanthropic grants are gathering at the Beverly Hilton Hotel for a 90-minute private event starting at 9 p.m. ET Sunday. The names of the film and television winners will be revealed to the world in real time on the organization’s social media feeds and website. Special emphasis, they say, will be given to their charitable efforts over the years.

That the organization is proceeding with any kind of event came as a surprise to many in Hollywood. The HFPA came under fire after a Los Angeles Times investigation revealed in February ethical lapses and a stunning lack of diversity — there was not a single Black journalist in the 87-person group. Studios and PR firms threatened to boycott. Tom Cruise even returned his three Golden Globes, while other A-listers condemned the group on social media. 

They pledged reform last year, but even after a public declaration during the 78th show, their longtime broadcast partner NBC announced in May that it would not air the 2022 Golden Globes because, “Change of this magnitude takes time and work.” The broadcaster typically pays some $60 million for the rights to air the show, which ranks among the most-watched awards shows behind the Oscars and the Grammys.

Though often ridiculed, Hollywood had come to accept the Golden Globes as a legitimate and helpful stop in a competitive awards season. And for audiences around the world, it was a reasonably lively night, with glamorous fashion, major stars, the promise of champagne-fueled speeches, and hosts — from Tina Fey and Amy Poehler to Ricky Gervais — that regularly poked fun at the HFPA. 

After the NBC blow, it was widely expected that the HFPA would simply sit the year out. Hollywood studios and publicists also largely opted out from engaging with the group as they had in years past, with some declining to provide screeners of films for consideration. When nominees were announced last month, few celebrated publicly.

This year Kenneth Branagh’s semi-autobiographical drama “Belfast,” about growing up during the Troubles, and Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog,” a gothic Western set in 1925 Montana with Kirsten Dunst and Benedict Cumberbatch, both received a leading seven nominations, including best picture. HBO’s “Succession” led the TV side with five nominations, including nods for best drama.

Many A-listers got acting nominations as well, including Will Smith (“King Richard”), Kristen Stewart (“Spencer”), Leonardo DiCaprio (“Don’t Look Up”), Denzel Washington (“The Tragedy of Macbeth”), Ben Affleck (“The Tender Bar”) and Lady Gaga (“House of Gucci”). In a normal year, the nomination would be added to promotional campaigns and advertisements, but this year most chose to not acknowledge the nod.

The press association claims that in the months since its 2021 show, it has remade itself. The group has added a chief diversity officer; overhauled its board; inducted 21 new members, including six Black journalists; brought in the NAACP on a five-year partnership; and updated its code of conduct.
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Greece this week takes delivery of an ancient fragment that once adorned the Parthenon temple, the country’s most important archeological site. The return from a museum in Italy is being seen as the strongest nudge yet to the British Museum, which holds the largest collection of Parthenon Sculptures and has refused for centuries to return the antiquities to their ancient home.

The marble fragment will be unveiled at the Acropolis Museum Monday, displayed in a full-size representation of the Parthenon’s frieze.

The return is part of a groundbreaking loan deal signed between the Acropolis Museum and the Antonio Salinas Regional Archeological Museum in Sicily, where the artifact has been on display since the 19th century.

The Parthenon fragment, depicting the foot of a goddess, will be lent for a four-year period in exchange for a fifth century B.C. headless statue of the goddess Athena and an eighth century B.C. amphora as part of an extensive cultural exchange agreement. The loan period may be extended a further four years, and the fragment’s move to Greece could eventually become permanent.

Sicily’s councilor for culture, Alberto Samonà, said this is an important cultural exchange that can pave the way for even bigger international exhibits organized by the Salinas museum and the Acropolis museum.

Experts in Greece say the loan deal adds to mounting pressure on Britain to follow suit with the so-called Elgin Marbles, a massive collection of sculptures assembled by Thomas Bruce, the seventh earl of Elgin, who in the early 1800s was the British ambassador to the Ottoman empire, which then controlled Greece. Britain bought them from Elgin in 1816 after a parliamentary inquiry into the legitimacy of his ownership.

The dispute marks one of the longest-standing cultural rows in history, with Athens demanding for decades that the British Museum return the marble masterpieces to Greece. Greeks have accused the late British aristocrat of cultural theft.

Last week, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mistotakis made a new bid for the return of the sculptures as the Acropolis Museum installed 10 fragments of the Parthenon frieze stored in the capital’s archeological Museum.

The return of the Parthenon Sculptures from the British museum, he said, is a political and ethical issue with international implications. The prime minister said the return is all about healing a wound created violently and illegally by Elgin.

Mitsotakis raised the issue in talks with his British counterpart, Boris Johnson, late last year, offering to lend some Greek historical treasures to the British Museum.

The prime minister’s office has since said the offer is a matter for the British Museum to decide. It added, however, that the marbles were bound to remain in Britain, arguing they were legally acquired and not the subject of an ownership dispute. 
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Verdell Blackmon showed up for a recent NFL game and left no doubt who she was cheering for that afternoon.

Blackmon’s hair, makeup, nails and dress were bright hues of blue, and Detroit Lions Women of the Pride was printed on her black shirt.

The Lions season ticket holder was one of about 50 women in the team’s Women of the Pride group who attended a pregame party at Ford Field and witnessed Detroit’s first win of the season against Minnesota last month.

Earlier this season, the Women of the Pride had access to the turf before Detroit played at Green Bay and watched the game against the Packers on TVs in a club at Lambeau Field. The group will gather again later this month for a football clinic at Ford Field.

“Female fans are not recognized like they should be in the NFL, and it’s about time that’s starting to happen,” Blackmon said. “We love our teams just as much as the guys do.”

The NFL is starting to recognize that.

More than half of the league’s 32 teams have female fan clubs, according to the NFL, and that doesn’t count Philadelphia and its annual Eagles Academy for Women.

“With women making up just under half of the NFL fanbase, it’s so important for women, at all age ranges, to feel that they belong in football, whether that’s through playing, coaching or fandom,” said Sam Rapoport, the NFL’s senior director of diversity, equity and inclusion. “Though there’s still work to be done across the league in this space, the clubs that do have programming for women and female fan clubs are showing that representation matters and women are and will continue to be an imperative part of the NFL.”

The defending Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers started the Women of Red six years ago and more than 1,000 women have attended a day at training camp dedicated to them.

Buccaneers co-owner Darcie Glazer Kassewitz, a champion of diversity and inclusion, has made the group a priority. The franchise has made star tight end Rob Gronkowski, coach Bruce Arians and general manager Jason Licht available to the women for on-field drills and Q&A sessions and hasn’t charged a fee for Women of Red membership.

“This sport brings people together, and we take great pride in the connections we’re continually building with our female fans,” said Tara Battiato, Buccaneers vice president of community impact. “Whether through our annual Women of Red events, or how the organization is advancing gender equality through girls’ flag football, college scholarships and career development programs, we believe that football is for everyone.”

In Detroit, female fans paid $129 for Women of the Pride membership and received a ticket for the game against the Vikings, along with a pregame gathering, other events and networking opportunities.

“It’s important to us to reach our fans in all the ways we can and there was an opportunity to tap into what is oftentimes an underserved and powerful subset of our base,” said Emily Griffin, Lions vice president of marketing.

Jacki Jameson was all-in when she received an email from the Lions, even though she lives nowhere near the Motor City.

“I drove 2 1/2 hours to get here and I couldn’t be happier actually,” Jameson said, standing on the turf at Ford Field after getting access to the Lions’ locker room. “This is great, meeting ladies who have the same love for the sport that I do.

“It’s pretty wonderful that they give people this opportunity to go behind the scenes because there’s a lot of female fans out there that honestly deserve some extra perks after being overlooked for so long.”
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Marilyn Bergman, the Oscar-winning lyricist who teamed with husband Alan Bergman on The Way We Were, How Do You Keep the Music Playing? and hundreds of other songs, died at her Los Angeles home Saturday. She was 93.

She died of respiratory failure not related to COVID-19, according to a representative, Jason Lee. Her husband was at her bedside when she died.

The Bergmans, who married in 1958, were among the most enduring, successful and productive songwriting partnerships, specializing in introspective ballads for film, television and the stage that combined the romance of Tin Pan Alley with the polish of contemporary pop. They worked with some of the world’s top melodists, including Marvin Hamlisch, Cy Coleman and Michel Legrand, and were covered by some of the world’s greatest singers, from Frank Sinatra and Barbra Streisand to Aretha Franklin and Michael Jackson.

“If one really is serious about wanting to write songs that are original, that really speak to people, you have to feel like you created something that wasn’t there before — which is the ultimate accomplishment, isn’t it?” Marilyn Bergman told The Huffington Post in 2013. “And to make something that wasn’t there before, you have to know what came before you.”

Their songs included the sentimental Streisand-Neil Diamond duet You Don’t Bring Me Flowers, Sinatra’s snappy Nice ’n’ Easy and Dean Martin’s dreamy Sleep Warm.

They helped write the up-tempo themes to the 1970s sitcoms Maude and Good Times and collaborated on words and music for the 1978 Broadway show Ballroom.

But they were best known for their contributions to films, turning out themes sometimes remembered more than the movies themselves. Among the highlights: Stephen Bishop’s It Might Be You, from Tootsie; Noel Harrison’s The Windmills of Your Mind, from The Thomas Crown Affair; and, for Best Friends, the James Ingram-Patti Austin duet How Do You Keep the Music Playing?

‘The Way We Were’

Their peak was The Way We Were, from the Streisand-Robert Redford romantic drama of the same name. Set to Hamlisch’s moody, pensive melody, with Streisand’s voice rising throughout, it was the top-selling song of 1974 and an instant standard, proof that well into the rock era the public still embraced an old-fashioned ballad.

Fans would have struggled to identify a picture of the Bergmans, or even recognize their names, but they had no trouble summoning the words to The Way We Were: “Memories, may be beautiful and yet / What’s too painful to remember / We simply choose to forget / So it’s the laughter / We will remember / Whenever we remember / The way we were.”

The Bergmans won three Oscars — for The Way We Were, Windmills of Your Mind and the soundtrack to Streisand’s Yentl — and received 16 nominations, three of them in 1983 alone. They also won two Grammys and four Emmys and were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Fellow composer Quincy Jones called news of her death crushing. “You, along with your beloved Alan, were the epitome of Nadia Boulanger’s belief that ‘an artist can never be more or less than they are as a human being,’” he tweeted.

“To those of us who loved the Bergmans’ lyrics, Marilyn takes a bit of our hearts and souls with her today,” tweeted Norman Lear, creator of Maude and Good Times.

Marilyn Bergman became the first woman elected to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and later served as the chair and president. She was also the first chair of the National Recorded Sound Preservation Board of the Library of Congress.

Streisand worked with them throughout her career, recording more than 60 of their songs and dedicating an entire album, What Matters Most, to their material. The Bergmans met her when she was 18, a nightclub singer, and soon became close friends.

“I just love their words, I love the sentiment, I love their exploration of love and relationships,” Streisand told The Associated Press in 2011.

On Saturday, she posted a picture of herself with the Bergmans on Twitter, saying they were like family, as well as brilliant lyricists.

“We met over 60 years ago backstage at a little nightclub, and never stopped loving each other and working together,” Streisand wrote. “Their songs are timeless, and so is our love. May she rest in peace.”

The Bergman partnership

Like Streisand, the Bergmans were Jews from lower-middle-class families in Brooklyn.

They were born in the same hospital, Alan four years earlier than Marilyn, whose unmarried name was Katz, and they were raised in the same neighborhood and were fans of music and movies since childhood. They both moved to Los Angeles in 1950 — Marilyn had studied English and psychology at New York University — but didn’t meet until a few years later, when they were working for the same composer.

The Bergmans appeared to be free of the boundaries and tensions of many songwriting teams. They likened their chemistry to housework (one washes, one dries) or to baseball (pitching and catching), and were so in tune with each other that they struggled to recall who wrote a given lyric.

“Our partnership as writers or as husband and wife?” Marilyn told The Huffington Post when asked about their relationship. “I think the aspects of both are the same: Respect, trust, all of that is necessary in a writing partnership or a business partnership or in a marriage.”

Besides her husband, Bergman is survived by their daughter, Julie Bergman. 

 
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Whether you’re looking to fly through the air with the greatest of ease, explore the aerial arts, or just raise your spirits, the Trapeze School in Washington, DC, will make sure things are looking up. Maxim Moskalkov visited the school and met its many instructors.
Camera: David Gogokhia
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In Egypt, Christmas celebrations are officially sanctioned by Islamic clerics for people of all faiths, despite objections from some conservative Muslims. On Friday, January 7, the holiday season concluded with Coptic Christmas, observed by the vast majority of Christians in Egypt. For VOA, Hamada Elrasam has this photo essay, with words by Elle Kurancid. 
…

Sidney Poitier, who broke through racial barriers as the first Black winner of the best actor Oscar for his role in Lilies of the Field, and inspired a generation during the civil rights movement, has died at age 94, an official from the Bahamian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Friday. 

Eugene Torchon-Newry, acting director general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, confirmed Poitier’s death. 

Poitier created a distinguished film legacy in a single year with three 1967 films at a time when segregation prevailed in parts of the United States. 

In Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner he played a Black man with a white fiancee, and In the Heat of the Night he was Virgil Tibbs, a Black police officer confronting racism during a murder investigation. He also played a teacher in a tough London school that year in To Sir, With Love. 

Poitier had won his history-making best actor Oscar for Lilies of the Field in 1963, playing a handyman who helps German nuns build a chapel in the desert. Five years before that Poitier had been the first Black man nominated for a lead actor Oscar for his role in The Defiant Ones.

His Tibbs character from In the Heat of the Night was immortalized in two sequels — They Call Me Mister Tibbs! in 1970 and The Organization in 1971 — and became the basis of the television series In the Heat of the Night starring Carroll O’Connor and Howard Rollins. 

His other classic films of that era included A Patch of Blue in 1965 in which his character is befriended by a blind white girl, The Blackboard Jungle and A Raisin in the Sun, which Poitier also performed on Broadway. 

Poitier was born in Miami on February 20, 1927, and raised on a tomato farm in the Bahamas, and had just one year of formal schooling. He struggled against poverty, illiteracy and prejudice to become one of the first Black actors to be known and accepted in major roles by mainstream audiences. 

Poitier picked his roles with care, burying the old Hollywood idea that Black actors could appear only in demeaning contexts as shoeshine boys, train conductors and maids. 

“I love you, I respect you, I imitate you,” Denzel Washington, another Oscar winner, once told Poitier at a public ceremony. 

As a director, Poitier worked with his friend Harry Belafonte and Bill Cosby in Uptown Saturday Night in 1974, and Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder in 1980’s Stir Crazy.

Started on stage

Poitier grew up in the small Bahamian village of Cat Island and in Nassau before he moved to New York at 16, lying about his age to sign up for a short stint in the Army and then working at odd jobs, including dishwasher, while taking acting lessons. 

The young actor got his first break when he met the casting director of the American Negro Theater. He was an understudy in Days of Our Youth and took over when the star, Belafonte, who also would become a pioneering Black actor, fell ill. 

Poitier went on to success on Broadway in Anna Lucasta in 1948 and, two years later, got his first movie role in No Way Out with Richard Widmark. 

In all, he acted in more than 50 films and directed nine, starting in 1972 with Buck and the Preacher in which he co-starred with Belafonte. 

In 1992, Poitier was given the Life Achievement Award by the American Film Institute, the most prestigious honor after the Oscar, joining recipients such as Bette Davis, Alfred Hitchcock, Fred Astaire, James Cagney and Orson Welles. 

“I must also pay thanks to an elderly Jewish waiter who took time to help a young Black dishwasher learn to read,” Poitier told the audience. “I cannot tell you his name. I never knew it. But I read pretty good now.” 

In 2002, an honorary Oscar recognized “his remarkable accomplishments as an artist and as a human being.” 

Poitier married actress Joanna Shimkus, his second wife, in the mid-1970s. He had six daughters with his two wives and wrote three books — This Life (1980), The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography (2000) and Life Beyond Measure: Letters to My Great-Granddaughter (2008). 

“If you apply reason and logic to this career of mine, you’re not going to get very far,” he told the Washington Post. “The journey has been incredible from its beginning. So much of life, it seems to me, is determined by pure randomness.” 

Poitier wrote three autobiographical books and in 2013 published Montaro Caine, a novel that was described as part mystery, part science fiction. 

Poitier was knighted by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II in 1974 and served as the Bahamian ambassador to Japan and to UNESCO, the U.N. cultural agency. He also sat on Walt Disney Co’s board of directors from 1994 to 2003. 

In 2009, Poitier was awarded the highest U.S. civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, by President Barack Obama. 

The 2014 Academy Awards ceremony marked the 50th anniversary of Poitier’s historic Oscar and he was there to present the award for best director. 

 
…

Midday queues snake out to the street in an upmarket Shanghai neighborhood, but it’s not lunch at the city’s hottest restaurant that people are lining up for — it’s cosmetic “micro-procedures”, which are surging in popularity in China.    

The “lunchtime facelift” and other “medical aesthetics” procedures are booming as a new generation of Chinese consumers grapple with the pressure to look good on social media as well as in person.   

Kayla Zhang has never actually gone under the knife for cosmetic reasons, but she’s had laser treatments, injections and a thread lift — a barbed string inserted under the skin and pulled up to “lift” the face.  

“I’m not changing my nose or my eyes, which would be an extreme change in my looks,” the 27-year-old told AFP, adding that she’s seeking a “better version” of herself rather than “a totally new face.”    

Already popular in the West because they are less invasive and more affordable than traditional cosmetic surgery, micro-procedures — from laser facials and fillers to thread lifts — are fast becoming the norm in China’s cities where disposable incomes have jumped in the past decade.    

The Chinese Association of Plastics and Aesthetics estimates, overall, the cosmetic industry will grow to $46 billion this year compared to around $6.5 billion in 2013. 

Micro-procedures are now an expanding segment of that market, while traditional surgery’s growth rates slow, according to data from consulting firm Frost and Sullivan.   

Changing values 

But a government crackdown looms over the boom.   

The ruling Communist Party is pushing a broad campaign to “purify” social values, which includes taking aim at mounting youth pressure to go under the knife. 

The government has banned industry advertising practices that contribute to “appearance anxiety” such as before-and-after images, and has levied tens of millions of dollars in fines this year over various infractions.  

Model Li Li already gets monthly laser treatments to correct skin blemishes but admits she feels social pressure to continually fix her appearance.    

After friends said her face was out of proportion she opted for a “chin filler,” which makes the chin more prominent.  

“I went to get it immediately,” the 27-year-old confessed.

But Li and Zhang insist that micro-procedures — which can cost on average a third of the price of cosmetic surgery, according to research by Deloitte — are a less-invasive alternative to traditional surgery and are being unfairly stigmatized.   

“Everyone had the same standard of beauty before, but now it feels like this norm is being tipped over,” added Zhang, who likens micro-procedures to skincare, but faster.   

A decade ago, cosmetic doctor Yang Kaiyuan said customers often came to him with a picture of a celebrity, telling him: “I want to look like this.” 

“Nowadays, people just hope to make slight improvements on what they already have,” Yang explained.   

Unrestrained growth

But the government is concerned by the rise in unlicensed, unregulated providers.   

In 2019, 15 percent of the 13,000 licensed beauty clinics in China were operating outside of their business scope and only 28 percent of doctors in the industry were certified, according to iResearch.   

Its report added that for every up-to-standard needle used, two unapproved ones were in circulation.  

Earlier this year, a Chinese actress shared cautionary photos online of a botched operation that left her nose badly infected. 

But Ken Huang, CEO at beauty clinic PhiSkin, says the societal factors pushing young Chinese to seek cosmetic adjustments to advance their careers or to boost social media popularity remain strong.   

“Good-looking people will have more opportunities than others,” Huang said.    

“If you don’t look good on the outside, even if you have an interesting personality, people might not get the chance to see it.” 

Still in her twenties, Zhang already opts for monthly micro-procedures and will keep this routine until she feels her appearance leaves her “no choice but to go under the knife.”   

She explained: “Then I may need stronger methods to be able to return to a younger state.” 
…

Peter Bogdanovich, the ascot-wearing cinephile and director of 1970s black-and-white classics like The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon, has died. He was 82.

Bogdanovich died early Thursday morning at his home in Los Angeles, said his daughter, Antonia Bogdanovich. She said he died of natural causes. 

Considered part of a generation of young “New Hollywood” directors, Bogdanovich was heralded as an auteur from the start, with the chilling lone shooter film Targets and soon after The Last Picture Show, from 1971, his evocative portrait of a small, dying town that earned eight Oscar nominations, won two (for Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman) and catapulted him to stardom at age 32. He followed The Last Picture Show with the screwball comedy What’s Up, Doc?, starring Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal, and then the Depression-era road trip film Paper Moon, which won 10-year-old Tatum O’Neal an Oscar as well. 

His turbulent personal life was also often in the spotlight, from his well-known affair with Cybill Shepherd that began during the making of The Last Picture Show while he was married to his close collaborator, Polly Platt, to the murder of his Playmate girlfriend Dorothy Stratten and his subsequent marriage to her younger sister, Louise, who was 29 years his junior.

Reactions came in swiftly at the news of his death. 

“Oh, dear, a shock. I am devastated. He was a wonderful and great artist,” said Francis Ford Coppola in an email. “I’ll never forgot attending a premiere for The Last Picture Show. I remember at its end, the audience leaped up all around me bursting into applause lasting easily 15 minutes. I’ll never forget, although I felt I had never myself experienced a reaction like that, that Peter and his film deserved it. May he sleep in bliss for eternity, enjoying the thrill of our applause forever.” 

Tatum O’Neal posted a photo of herself with him on Instagram, writing “Peter was my heaven & earth. A father figure. A friend. From Paper Moon to Nickelodeon he always made me feel safe. I love you, Peter.” 

Guillermo del Toro tweeted: “He was a dear friend and a champion of cinema. He birthed masterpieces as a director and was a most genial human. He single-handedly interviewed and enshrined the lives and work of more classic filmmakers than almost anyone else in his generation.” 

Born in Kingston, New York, in 1939, Bogdanovich started out as a film journalist and critic, working as a film programmer at the Museum of Modern Art, where through a series of retrospectives he endeared himself to a host of old guard filmmakers including Orson Welles, Howard Hawks and John Ford.

Clues 

“I’ve gotten some very important one-sentence clues, like when Howard Hawks turned to me and said, ‘Always cut on the movement and no one will notice the cut,’ ” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. “It was a very simple sentence but it profoundly affected everything I’ve done.” 

But his Hollywood education started earlier than that: His father took him at age 5 to see Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton movies at the Museum of Modern Art. He’d later make his own Keaton documentary, The Great Buster, which was released in 2018. 

Bogdanovich and Platt moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1960s, where they attended Hollywood parties and struck up friendships with director Roger Corman and Frank Marshall, then just an aspiring producer, who helped get the film Targets off the ground. And the professional ascent only continued for the next few films and years. But after Paper Moon, which Platt collaborated on after they had separated, he would never again capture the accolades of those first five years in Hollywood. 

Bogdanovich’s relationship with Shepherd led to the end of his marriage to Platt, with whom he shared daughters Antonia and Sashy, and a fruitful creative partnership. The 1984 film Irreconcilable Differences was loosely based on the scandal. He later disputed the idea that Platt, who died in 2011, was an integral part of the success of his early films.

He would go on to make two other films with Shepherd, an adaptation of Henry James’s Daisy Miller and the musical At Long Last Love, neither of which were particularly well-received by critics or audiences.

And he also passed on major opportunities at the height of his successes. He told entertainment news site Vulture that he turned down The Godfather, Chinatown and The Exorcist. 

“Paramount called and said, ‘We just bought a new Mario Puzo book called The Godfather. We’d like you to consider directing it.’ I said, ‘I’m not interested in the Mafia,’ ” he said in the interview. 

Headlines would continue to follow Bogdanovich for things other than his movies. He began an affair with Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten while directing her in They All Laughed, a romantic comedy with Audrey Hepburn and Ben Gazzara, in the spring and summer of 1980. Her husband, Paul Snider, murdered her that August. Bogdanovich, in a 1984 book titled The Killing of the Unicorn: Dorothy Stratten, 1960-1980, criticized Hugh Hefner’s Playboy empire for its alleged role in events he said ended in Stratten’s death. Then, nine years later, at 49, he married her younger sister Louise Stratten, who was just 20 at the time. They divorced in 2001, but continued living together, with her mother in Los Angeles. 

Relationships’ effects

In an interview with the AP in 2020, Bogdanovich acknowledged that his relationships had an impact on his career. 

“The whole thing about my personal life got in the way of people’s understanding of the movies,” Bogdanovich said. “That’s something that has plagued me since the first couple of pictures.” 

Despite some flops along the way, Bogdanovich’s output remained prolific in the 1980s and 1990s, including a sequel to The Last Picture Show called Texasville; the country music romantic drama The Thing Called Love, which was one of River Phoenix’s last films; and, in 2001, The Cat’s Meow, about a party on William Randolph Hearst’s yacht starring Kirsten Dunst as Marion Davies. His last narrative film, She’s Funny That Way, a screwball comedy starring Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston that he co-wrote with Louise Stratten, debuted to mixed reviews in 2014. 

Over the years he authored several books about movies, including Peter Bogdanovich’s Movie of the Week, Who the Devil Made It: Conversations with Legendary Film Directors and Who the Hell’s in It: Conversations with Hollywood’s Legendary Actors. 

He acted semi-frequently, too, sometimes playing himself (in Moonlighting and How I Met Your Mother) and sometimes other people, like Dr. Elliot Kupferberg on The Sopranos, and also inspired a new generation of filmmakers, from Wes Anderson to Noah Baumbach. 

“They call me ‘Pop,’ and I allow it,” he told Vulture.

At the time of the AP interview in 2020, coinciding with a podcast about his career with Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz, he was hard at work on a television show inspired by Dorothy Stratten, and wasn’t optimistic about the future of cinema. 

“I just keep going, you know. Television is not dead yet,” he said with a laugh. “But movies may have a problem.” 

Yet even with his Hollywood-sized ego, Bogdanovich remained deferential to those who came before. 

“I don’t judge myself on the basis of my contemporaries,” he told The New York Times in 1971. “I judge myself against the directors I admire — Hawks, [Ernst] Lubitsch, Buster Keaton, Welles, Ford, [Jean] Renoir, [Alfred] Hitchcock. I certainly don’t think I’m anywhere near as good as they are, but I think I’m pretty good.” 
…

Vaccinated, masked and ready-to-revel New Orleans residents will usher in Carnival season Thursday with a rolling party on the city’s historic streetcar line, an annual march honoring Joan of Arc in the French Quarter and a collective, wary eye on coronavirus statistics.

Carnival officially begins each year on Jan. 6 — the 12th day after Christmas — and, usually, comes to a raucous climax on Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, which falls on March 1 this year. Thursday’s planned festivities come two years after a successful Mardi Gras became what officials later realized was an early Southern superspreader of COVID-19; and nearly a year after city officials, fearing more death and more stress on local hospitals, canceled parades and restricted access to the usually raucous Bourbon Street.

This year, the party is slated to go on despite rapidly rising COVID-19 cases driven by the omicron variant.

In what has become a traditional kickoff to the season, the Phunny Phorty Phellows will gather at a cavernous streetcar barn and board one of the historic St. Charles line cars along with a small brass band. Vaccinations were required in keeping with city regulations and seating on the streetcar was to be limited and spaced. And, in addition to the traditional over-the-eye costume masks, riders were equipped with face coverings to prevent viral spread.

Larger, more opulent parades will follow in February as Mardi Gras nears and the city attempts to leaven the season’s joy with caution.

“It was certainly the right thing to do to cancel last year,” said Dr. Susan Hassig, a Tulane University epidemiologist who also is a member of the Krewe of Muses, and who rides each year on a huge float in the Muses parade. “We didn’t have vaccines. There was raging and very serious illness all over the place.”

Now, she notes, the vaccination rate is high in New Orleans. While only about 65% of the total city population is fully vaccinated, according the city’s statistics, 81% of all adults are fully vaccinated. And the overall percentage is expected to increase now that eligibility is open to younger children.

And, while people from outside the city are a big part of Mardi Gras crowds, Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s anti-virus measures include proof of vaccination or a negative test for most venues. “The mayor has instituted a vaccine requirement and/or negative test to get into all the fun things to do in New Orleans — the food, the music,” said Hassig. She adds, however, that she’d like to see a federal requirement that air travelers be vaccinated.

Sharing Hassig’s cautious optimism is Elroy James, president of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, a predominantly Black organization whose Mardi Gras morning parade is a focal point of Carnival. Early in the pandemic, COVID-19 was blamed for the death of at least 17 of Zulu’s members. Compounding the tragedy: Restrictions on public gatherings meant no traditional jazz funeral sendoff for the dead.

“I think most krewes, particularly, I know, for Zulu, we’ve been very proactive, leaning in, with respect to all of the safety protocols that have been in place since the onset of this thing,” James said Wednesday. “Our float captains are confirming our riders are vaccinated. And part of the look for the 2022 Mardi Gras season is face masks.”

Statistics still show reason for concern in a state where the pandemic has claimed more than 15,000 lives over the past two years. Louisiana health officials reported more than 1,287 hospitalizations as of Tuesday — a sharp increase from fewer than 200 in mid-December. Still, reports nationwide indicate the omicron-driven illnesses are milder than previous cases. Hassig notes that a lower percentage of patients require ventilators, a sign of less-severe illness.

And dedicated parade participants aren’t stopping precautions at masks and shots. Muses founder Staci Rosenberg said the krewe had planned to gather at a bar a couple of blocks off the streetcar route to await the passing of the Phunny Phorty Phellows’ procession. Now, they’ve moved that party to an outside parking lot.

Hassig, meanwhile, says she doesn’t plan to attend any indoor gatherings. She, is, however, determined to ride in the Feb. 24 parade — vaccinated, face covered with an N95 mask and knowing that outdoor activities are generally less likely to spread disease.

It’s important to Hassig. She rode in her first parade in 2006 as the city fought to recover from catastrophic flooding following Hurricane Katrina. And she wants to participate in the tourist-dependent, tradition-loving city’s recovery from the economic ravages of the virus.

“It’s incredibly important, financially, for the city that this go well,” she said.
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The Grammy Awards were postponed Wednesday due to what organizers called “too many risks” due to the omicron variant. No new date has been announced.

The ceremony had been scheduled for January 31 in Los Angeles with a live audience and performances. The Recording Academy said it made the decision “after careful consideration and analysis with city and state officials, health and safety experts, the artist community and our many partners.”

“Given the uncertainty surrounding the omicron variant, holding the show on January 31st simply contains too many risks,” the academy said in a statement.

Last year, like most major awards shows in early 2021, the Grammys were postponed due to coronavirus concerns. The show was moved from late January to mid-March and was held with a spare audience made up of mostly nominees and their guests in and around the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Many performances were pre-taped, and none were in front of significant crowds.

The Grammys had been scheduled this year to return to its traditional home next door, the Crypto.com Arena, formerly the Staples Center.

“We look forward to celebrating Music’s Biggest Night on a future date, which will be announced soon,” the academy statement said.

Finding that date could be complicated, with two professional basketball teams and a hockey team occupying the arena. The academy made no mention of a possible venue change in its statement.

The move was announced around the same time the Sundance Film Festival canceled its in-person programming that was set to begin on January 20 and shifted to an online format.

The multitalented Jon Batiste is the leading nominee for this year’s honors, grabbing 11 nods in a variety of genres, including R&B, jazz, American roots music, classical and music video.

Justin Bieber, Doja Cat and H.E.R. are tied for the second-most nominations with eight apiece.

The Grammys’ move could be the beginning of another round of award-show rescheduling, with the Screen Actors Guild Awards planned for February and the Academy Awards for March.
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Exactly two years after the World Health Organization issued an alert about “a cluster of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause” in the central Chinese city of Wuhan that evolved into the global COVID-19 pandemic, the world is now struggling under the weight of the fast-moving omicron variant of the coronavirus that sparked the disease.

In Brazil, a surge of new COVID-19 cases driven by the omicron variant has prompted authorities in Rio de Janeiro to cancel its iconic Carnival street festival for the second consecutive year. 

Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes announced the cancellation Tuesday during a speech carried live online. Paes said the “nature” and “democratic aspect” of Carnival makes it impossible to control the potential spread of the virus. 

But Mayor Paes said the traditional procession of Rio’s samba schools into the city’s Sambadrome stadium will take place next month, as authorities are able to impose mitigation efforts on the spectators. 

New COVID restrictions in Hong Kong

In Hong Kong, chief executive Carrie Lam on Wednesday announced a two-week ban on flights from eight nations to blunt a possible fifth wave of COVID-19 infections driven by omicron. The ban on incoming flights from Australia, Britain, Canada, France, India, Pakistan, the Philippines and the United States takes effect Sunday. 

Authorities in the semi-autonomous Chinese financial hub are keeping about 2,500 passengers of a Royal Caribbean cruise ship on board the vessel after discovering that nine passengers were close contacts of an omicron cluster in the city.

The Spectrum of the Seas returned to Hong Kong Wednesday just days after leaving on a short cruise. The nine passengers were taken off the ship and placed into a quarantine center, where they have all tested negative. The remaining passengers and the ship’s 1,200 crew will have to undergo testing before they are allowed to disembark.

CDC revised guidelines

Meanwhile, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has added the Caribbean island nation of Aruba on its list of destinations considered as “very high” risk of exposure to COVID-19. The CDC designates as “Level 4” any destination with more than 500 cases per 100,000 residents over the past 28 days. 

The CDC issued a statement Tuesday on its controversial new guidelines for people who have been infected with COVID-19. The federal agency came under fire last week when it cut the amount of time infected Americans should quarantine from 10 days to five as long as they have no symptoms, while also stating that testing was not necessary after that five-day period. 

Independent health experts urged the CDC to revise the guidelines to include a recommendation to seek testing after the five-day isolation periods amid the ever-growing omicron outbreak. But the agency instead issued documents supporting its new recommendations, while saying at-home rapid tests are not a reliable indication that a person is no longer contagious.

The CDC is recommending that people wear face masks everywhere for five days after emerging from isolation.

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
…

Mali is well known for its mudbrick Sudano-Sahelian architecture, which is also seen in buildings in the capital, Bamako, one of the fastest growing cities in Africa.  But rapid modernization is also threatening the unique structures and the face of the city, as Annie Risemberg reports from Bamako.
…

Hollywood closed out 2021 with more fireworks at the box office for “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” which topped all films for the third straight week and already charts among the highest grossing films ever. But even with all the champagne popping for “No Way Home,” the film industry heads into 2022 with plenty of reason for both optimism and concern after a year that saw overall ticket revenue double that of 2020, but still well off the pre-pandemic pace.

Movie theaters began the year mostly shuttered but ended it with a monster smash. Sony Pictures’ Marvel sequel “No Way Home” grossed an estimated $52.7 million over the weekend to bring its three-week total to $609.9 million. That ranks 10th all-time in North America. Worldwide, it’s made $1.37 billion, a total that puts it above “Black Panther” and makes it the 12th-highest-grossing film globally. 

“No Way Home,” Tom Holland’s third standalone film as the webslinger, gave a huge lift to the box-office recovery that started in earnest last spring when U.S. cinemas opened after a year of COVID-19 closures. Marvel films dominated the turbulent year, accounting for the top four movies of 2021: “No Way Home,” “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” and “Black Widow.” 

The North American box office in 2021 amounted to $4.5 billion, according to data firm ComScore. That’s about 60% down from 2019 — back before the days of masked moviegoers, social distancing and virus variants like the currently surging omicron. 

Whether the movies will ever reach those pre-pandemic totals again is uncertain, given that exclusive theatrical windows have since shrunk, studios have experimented with hybrid releases and little besides superhero films are packing theaters. Partly due to COVID-19 disruptions, the 2022 release schedule is unusually packed with potential blockbusters, including “The Batman,” “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Jurassic World: Dominion,” “Thor: Love and Thunder” and “Avatar 2.” 

Second place over the weekend went to Universal Picture’s animated sequel “Sing 2.” It took in $19.6 million in its second weekend to bring its two-week total to $89.7 million. That’s a steady result given that family movies and films skewing toward older moviegoers have been the slowest to bounce back during the pandemic. “Sing 2” added another $54.9 million internationally. Its trajectory should make it the top animated release of the pandemic. 

But after “No Way Home” and “Sing 2,” there was little that appealed to moviegoers over the holiday weekend. 

“The King’s Man,” the third installment in Matthew Vaughn’s “Kingsman” series, grossed a modest $4.5 million in its second week after a lackluster debut. But that was still good enough for third place. The Disney release, produced by 20th Century Studios, has made $47.8 million globally. 

Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story” sold $2.1 million in tickets in its fourth weekend. While holding well (the film dropped 26% from the week prior), the once-envisioned holiday upswing for the acclaimed musical hasn’t materialized. “West Side Story” has grossed a disappointing $29.6 million domestically. 

After flopping on its debut last week, Warner Bros.’ “The Matrix Resurrections” dropped a steep 64% in its second weekend with $3.8 million. The film is simultaneously streaming on HBO Max, a 2021 practice that the studio has pledged to end in 2022. The long-in-coming “Matrix” reboot was even edged by the second week of the Kurt Warner NFL drama “American Underdog,” which grossed $4.1 million for Lionsgate. 

One of the only new releases of the week was Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Memoria,” with Tilda Swinton. Its distributor, Neon, has laid out a novel strategy for the art-house release, playing the film in only one theater at a time, with no plans for a future streaming or physical release. “Memoria” started its quixotic, cross-country journey with $52,656 since opening Dec. 16 at New York’s IFC Center. 

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday. 

1. “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” $52.7 million.  

2. “Sing 2,” $19.6 million.  

3. “The King’s Man,” $4.5 million.  

4. “American Underdog,” $4.1 million.  

5. “The Matrix Revolutions,” $3.8 million.  

6. “West Side Story,” $2.1 million.  

7. “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” $1.4 million.  

8. “Licorice Pizza,” $1.2 million.  

9. “A Journal for Jordan,” $1.2 million.  

10. “Encanto,” $1.1 million.
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Britain recognized the scientists and medical chiefs at the forefront of the battle against COVID-19 in Queen Elizabeth’s annual New Year’s honors list, while James Bond actor Daniel Craig was given the same award as his famous onscreen character. 

Craig, who bowed out from playing the fictional British spy after five outings following the release of “No Time to Die” this year, was made a Companion in The Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG) in recognition of his outstanding contribution to film. 

Bond was also a CMG, so the honor means Craig has now matched all his titles, having been made an honorary Commander in the Royal Navy in September. 

There were also major honors for the high-profile officials and others involved in tackling the coronavirus pandemic. 

The chief medical officers for England, Scotland and Wales – Chris Whitty, Gregor Smith and Frank Atherton – were given knighthoods. There were also honors for the deputy medical officers for England, with Jonathan Van-Tam knighted and Jenny Harries made a dame. 

The government’s chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance, who had previously been knighted, was made a Knight Commander of The Order of The Bath. 

There were also awards for those involved in producing vaccines including Pfizer Chief Development Officer Rod MacKenzie, Sean Marett, the chief business and commercial officer at BioNTech, and Melanie Ivarsson, the chief development officer at Moderna. 

Cyclist Jason Kenny, who achieved his seventh gold medal at the Tokyo Olympic Games, more than any other Briton has won, was also knighted. His wife, Laura, who is the nation’s most successful female Olympic athlete and became the first to win gold at three successive Games, received a damehood. 

Among the 78 Olympian and Paralympians to be included in the list were gold medal winners swimmer Adam Peaty and diver Tom Daley, who received OBEs. 

Emma Raducanu, who stunned the tennis world by becoming the first qualifier to win a Grand Slam title with victory in the U.S. Open, was another sporting figure to be honored with an MBE. 

Songwriter Bernie Taupin, best known for his collaborations with Elton John including his 1997 reworking of “Candle in the Wind” that John sang at the funeral of Princess Diana, was awarded a CBE. 

There were also damehoods for veteran actresses Joanna Lumley and Vanessa Redgrave for their services to drama, entertainment and charity. 

The New Year’s honors have been awarded since Queen Victoria’s reign in the 19th century and aim to recognize not just well-known figures but people who have contributed to national life through often unsung work over many years. 

“These recipients have inspired and entertained us and given so much to their communities in the UK or in many cases around the world,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.

 
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