Mary J. Blige is dancing into the Golden Globe Awards as a double nominee — for her acting and songwriting — while Mariah Carey, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood and Nick Jonas are some of the other popular singers also nominated.

Blige earned nominations Monday for her work in the Dee Rees’ period film Mudbound. She’s up for best supporting actress in a motion picture and best original song for “Mighty River,” which she co-wrote.

“I feel so good. I’ve been thanking God all morning long. I’ve been up since my phone has been ringing,” the 46-year-old singer said in a phone interview with The Associated Press.

Mudbound, released on Netflix last month, follows two neighboring families — one black, one white — on a hardscrabble farm in 1940’s Mississippi. Blige plays the role of Florence Jackson, a mother and sharecropper’s wife.

They filmed last summer in New Orleans, around the time Blige announced she was divorcing from her husband and former manager. She said she took all of the emotion from her personal life and put it into the film.

“I would come over to [my acting coach’s] house and I would be going through it. And she would say, ‘Take all of that mess and give it to Florence. Give everything to Florence.’ And I just gave Florence everything that was good, bad, vulnerable, that was strong, that was sad, that was disappointing,” she said.

Blige detailed the very public breakup and infidelity claims on her album, Strength of a Woman, released in April.

“2016 was the year that I didn’t know what the heck was going on. As women we have intuition, we don’t know exactly what’s happening, we just feel everything. I know I feel everything. And I just gave … everything I was feeling to Florence,” she added.

Blige, who grew up in New York, said trips to the South to visit her family also helped her connect to the character: “I would see my grandmother and my aunts and they were this woman Florence, so I saw this woman a lot. I think I probably have her in my DNA.”

She also said it was tough transforming from Mary J. Blige, the 9-time Grammy-winning R&B superstar, to Mary J. Blige, the actress.

“I wear a lot of wigs and weaves and things like that, but for this I had to wear my own textured hair, which I was never really wanting to do, especially without a perm,” Blige said. “And [Dee Rees] was like, ‘No, I want nappy edges. I want Florence to look like she’s a sharecropper’s wife,’ and it was a little hard disconnecting from Mary J. Blige because she’s been around for a minute. So it was hard to get rid of her. But once I got rid of her, Florence actually liberated Mary. So it was sad but beautiful at the same time.”

Blige’s two nominations are the only ones Mudbound earned Monday.

The singer shares her best original song nomination with Taura Stinson and Raphael Saadiq, the singer-songwriter-producer who has worked on hits for Solange, D’Angelo, Erykah Badu and himself.

Blige’s competition includes Carey, who is nominated for the Christmas tune “The Star,” from the animated movie of the same name.

“Listen, I’ve been a fan of Mariah Carey since Mariah Carey came out. It’s a beautiful thing to see all of your peers at the same time being blessed and nominated and recognized for our work,” Blige said.

Jonas is also up for best original song for “Home” from the animated film Ferdinand. Jonas and Carey are first-time Globe nominees; Blige was up for an award at the 2012 show for “The Living Proof” from the film, The Help.

Other best original song nominees include Oscar-winning composers. Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, the husband-and-wife songwriting duo behind “Let It Go” from Frozen, are nominated for “Remember Me” from the film Coco, while Benj Pasek and Justin Paul — who earned an Oscar this year for “City of Stars” from La La Land, are up for “This Is Me” from The Greatest Showman.

Greenwood earned a nomination for best original score for Phantom Thread. Other nominees include Hans Zimmer for Dunkirk, Alexandre Desplat for The Shape of Water, Carter Burwell for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and John Williams for The Post.

The 75th annual Golden Globes will air live on January 7, 2018.
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Olympic gold medalist Lindsey Vonn is warning young athletes in next year’s Pyeongchang winter Olympic Games not to underestimate the older competitors.

Vonn, who won gold in the downhill skiing at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, broke a bone in her arm last year but is training hard for Pyeongchang. She missed the Olympic Games in Sochi through injury.

“I have been anxiously awaiting these Olympic for the last eight years. I have been training especially hard this summer, you know really trying to make sure I don’t miss anything from my diet to my travel and of course my workouts, my skiing, everything I have done has been in preparation for these Olympics so right now I am trying to stay healthy going in,” she said.

“So far it’s not going very well but I feel that I am saving all of my luck for February and hopefully everything will work out how it is supposed to.”

Acting as ambassador for the 2020 Youth Olympic Games, Vonn met younger athletes, aged 14 to 18, in Lausanne on Sunday.

She said that young competitors at the Olympic Games should know the older athletes knew how to handle the pressure and had more experience of the sport.

“Most of the time younger athletes, I mean I was the same, underestimate the older athletes but the one thing I have is experience. I know how to handle the pressure and I just know a lot about the sport.”

Vonn has four World Cup overall titles in addition to gold and bronze Olympic medals.

She said the Olympic spirit was very important to her and she thought it was a great experience for the young athletes to meet others from different countries and cultures. She is taking the role of ambassador for the Youth Olympic Games for the third time.

“Well I think the Olympic spirit is something very important and I wish that I had had these Olympic Games when I was growing up. I think it is a great experience for the kids to meet other kids from different countries, different cultures. There is so much learning involved with all of these Olympic Games programs and I think it is very important. So I am proud to be an ambassador and I think Lausanne 2020 is going to be amazing.”

The meeting took place in St. Moritz where luge, skeleton, bobsled and speed skating events for the Youth Games will be held.
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Mixed messages from the United States and concerns of a North Korean provocation could undermine South Korea’s plans to use the upcoming PyeongChang Winter Olympics to further peace and reconciliation efforts.

On Sunday, Nikki Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said in an interview with Fox News that the full U.S. Olympic team would participate in the winter games to be held in South Korea in February. However, she again left open the possibility that heightened security concerns could force the U.S. to reconsider this commitment. Haley said, “We always look out for the best interests of United States citizens.”

Last week Haley said U.S. participation was an “open question” due to high tensions with North Korea over its continued missile and nuclear tests.

The White House and State Department have both expressed unqualified support for sending the full Olympics team and delegation. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders wrote on Twitter Thursday, “The protection of Americans is our top priority and we are engaged with the South Koreans and other partner nations to secure the venues.”

But Haley’s equivocal comments reflect increasing anxiety the U.S. nuclear standoff with North Korea could mar the games. 

H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s national security adviser, recently said the potential for military conflict between the U.S. and North Korea is “increasing every day,” as the Kim Jong Un government’s efforts to develop a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), able to target the U.S., constitute an unacceptable security threat.

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said that U.S. and South Korean large-scale military drills conducted last week made the outbreak of war “an established fact.” On Monday, Japan joined the U.S. and South Korea in two days of missile tracking drills.

South Korean anxiety

Officials in Seoul have opted to focus on the reassurance of Olympics participation offered by the White House.

“President Trump has said the U.S. team will participate in the PyeongChang Olympics in a phone call between two heads of South Korea and the U.S. on November 30th. Also, he promised to send high-level delegation during the Olympics,” said South Korean Unification spokesperson Lee Eugene on Friday.

But South Korean newspapers on Monday voiced alarm that the U.S. might withdraw from the Olympics, especially after the International Olympic Committee banned Russia from participating over state-sponsored athlete doping violations.

“Dark clouds are hanging over the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics,” wrote the Korea Joongang Daily in an editorial Monday. Adding, “We wonder what our government has been doing to reassure the United States.”

A Korean Herald editorial said it is “unusual and shocking” that a U.S. official would contemplate such a “worst case scenario” regarding a North Korean threat during the Olympics, and said it indicates “a grave (security) situation indeed.”

Peace Olympics

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has emphasized that the PyeongChang Olympic Games should be an “Olympics for Peace,” and his government has been urging North Korea to participate, to both insure there are no provocations during the games, and to help ease regional tensions.

A Korea Times editorial criticized Moon for focusing more on persuading its adversary in the North to come to the games while seeming to neglect the concerns of “our allies and traditional powerhouses in winters sports.”

The North Korean Olympic Committee missed the Oct. 30 deadline to register for the winter games, but the International Olympic Committee has indicated it is still not too late. Figure skaters Ryom Tae Ok and Kim Ju Sik are the only North Korean athletes to qualify for the Olympics so far.

North Korean provocation

The possibility that North Korea would attempt to disrupt the Olympics with a missile or nuclear test, a cyberattack or even launching a minor skirmish against South Korea is a credible threat, said Ahn Chan-il, a North Korean defector and analyst with the World Institute of North Korean Studies

“If North Korea decides not to participate and relations between North Korea and the U.S. worsen, it is possible North Korea may disturb our glorious event by provocation,” said Ahn. 

In the last two years, North Korea has conducted numerous missile launches and three nuclear tests, despite facing increasing international sanctions for its provocative actions.

After a long range Hwasong-15 missile test in November, which reportedly reached an altitude of 4,475 kilometers and flew 950 kilometers, Pyongyang claimed it successfully reached operational ICBM capability. But the U.S. and South Korea dispute the operational aspect of this claim and expect further tests in the future.

Youmi Kim in Seoul contributed to this report.
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Simeon Booker, a trail-blazing journalist and the first full-time African-American reporter at The Washington Post, has died at the age of 99.

Booker died Sunday in Solomons, Maryland, according to a Post obituary, citing his wife Carol.

Booker served for decades as the Washington bureau chief for the African-American publications Jet weekly and Ebony monthly. He is credited with bringing to national prominence the death of Emmett Till, the 14-year old African-American boy whose brutal murder in Mississippi became a galvanizing point for the nascent civil rights movement.

Booker was born in Baltimore and raised in Youngstown, Ohio. He joined the Post in 1952, but moved on two years later to found the Washington bureau for Jet and Ebony.

In 2016, he received a career George Polk Award in journalism.
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A rare painting by Albert Namatjira, one of Australia’s most iconic Aboriginal artists, is to be sold to raise money for kidney patients in remote parts of central Australia. Indigenous people suffer kidney disease at 15 times the national average.

Albert Namatjira was a trailblazer. Born in 1902 near Alice Springs in Australia’s rugged Northern Territory, he did not start painting seriously until he was 32-years old.

His Western-inspired watercolors were a radical departure from traditional Indigenous art’s symbols and design, and he became a household name in Australia. The renowned Aboriginal artist was even featured on an Australian postage stamp in the late 1960s.

His famous painting, called “Mount Hermannsburg”, is considered to be one of the most valuable examples of his work. It has been donated by an Aboriginal group to a renal center in Alice Springs to raise money to help indigenous patients receive treatment nearer to home rather than travel hundreds of kilometers.

Sarah Brown, the head of The Purple House, the kidney unit that has been given the Namatjira painting, says it is an incredible gesture.

“So I got a phone call saying ‘hey Sarah, the Ngurratjuta [Aboriginal Corporation] board has met, we would like you to come to the Araluen Arts Center [in Alice Springs] and choose an Albert Namatjira painting.’ And I thought I am never going to have a phone call like that ever again. Central Australia is really the center of the universe for kidney failure, there is well over 350 people in Central Australia who need dialysis, which is usually hemodialysis, which is three days a week, five-hours a session,” said Brown.

Namatjira’s ‘Mount Hermannsburg’ painting is expected to fetch about $75,000 at auction.

The painter died in 1959 at the age of 57.

Australia’s Aboriginal people are by far the country’s most disadvantaged group, suffering high rates of ill health, poverty, imprisonment and unemployment. They make up about 3 per cent of Australia’s population of almost 25 million people.

 
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A sculptor who produced the image of Queen Elizabeth used on Britain’s coins has been chosen to create a new statue of Princess Diana, the office of Princes William and Harry said Sunday, to commemorate 20 years since her death.

Ian Rank-Broadley, whose effigy of the Queen has appeared on all UK and Commonwealth coinage since 1998, will design the statue, which will not be unveiled until 2019.

“Ian is an extremely gifted sculptor and we know that he will create a fitting and lasting tribute to our mother,” Prince William and his younger brother, Harry, said in a statement.

In January, the brothers commissioned a statue in honor of their mother, who died in a Paris car crash 20 years ago, to be erected outside their official London home Kensington Palace.

Diana, the first wife of the heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles, was killed when the limousine carrying her and her lover Dodi al-Fayed crashed in a Paris tunnel in August 1997.

William was 15 and Harry was 12 at the time.

“We have been touched by the kind words and memories so many people have shared about our mother over these past few months,” the brothers said. “It is clear the significance of her work is still felt by many in the UK and across the world, even 20 years after her death.”

It had been hoped that the statue would be unveiled before the end of the year to mark the anniversary, but Kensington Palace said that it was now envisaged that the statue would be unveiled in 2019.

The first permanent memorial to her, a 210-meter (689-foot) long fountain was unveiled in Hyde Park in 2004 after years of bureaucratic wrangling and squabbling over the design.
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