ROME — Pope Francis continued his recovery from double pneumonia Sunday after doctors reported some positive news: After more than three weeks in the hospital, the 88-year-old pope is responding well to treatment and has shown a “gradual, slight improvement” in recent days.

In the early Sunday update, the Vatican said Francis was resting after a quiet night. For the fourth Sunday in a row, the pope will not appear for his weekly noon blessing, though the Vatican planned to distribute the text he would have delivered if he were well enough.

The Argentine pope, who has chronic lung disease and had part of one lung removed as a young man, has remained stable, with no fever and good oxygen levels in his blood for several days, doctors reported in a Vatican statement Saturday.

The doctors said that such stability “as a consequence testifies to a good response to therapy.” It was the first time the doctors had reported that Francis was responding positively to the treatment for the complex lung infection that was diagnosed after he was hospitalized on Feb. 14.

But they kept his prognosis as “guarded,” meaning he’s not out of danger.

In his absence, the Vatican’s day-to-day operations continued alongside celebrations of its Holy Year, the once-every-quarter-century Jubilee that brings millions of pilgrims to Rome. On Sunday, Canadian Cardinal Michael Czerny, who is close to Francis, celebrates the Holy Year Mass for volunteers that Francis was supposed to have celebrated.

Francis has been using high flows of supplemental oxygen to help him breathe during the day and a noninvasive mechanical ventilation mask at night.

Francis was hospitalized Feb. 14 for what was then just a bad case of bronchitis. The infection progressed into a complex respiratory tract infection and double pneumonia that has sidelined Francis for the longest period of his 12-year papacy and raised questions about the future. 
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ASHBOURNE, ENGLAND — This ancient form of football has a rule forbidding players from murdering each other.

Every year, thousands of people descend on a small town in the English countryside to watch a two-day game of mass street football that, to the casual observer, could easily be mistaken for a riot. This is Royal Shrovetide — a centuries-old ball game played in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, that, frankly, looks nothing like the world’s most popular sport. Or any other game for that matter.

“It’s like tug of war without the rope,” says Natalie Wakefield, 43, who lives locally and has marshaled the event in the past. “It’s mad in the best possible way.”

Hundreds of players

Played between two teams of hundreds of players, the aim is to “goal” at either end of a 5-kilometer sector that could take the match through rivers, hedgerows, high streets and just about anything or anywhere except for churchyards, cemeteries and places of worship. The ball is thrown into a crowd that moves like a giant herd, as each team tries to carry it toward their desired goal.

Rules are limited but “no murder” was an early stipulation for the game that dates back to at least the 1600s. Good players need to be “hard, aggressive and authoritative,” says Mark Harrison, who “goaled” in 1986 and is one of multiple generations of scorers in his family.

“You can’t practice,” the 62-year-old Harrison adds. He stopped competing seven years ago and now serves up burgers to throngs of spectators from a street food truck.

“You’ve just got to get in there and be rough. I am a rugby player … I’m also an ex-boxer so that helps.”

Royal approval

Harrison had the honor of carrying the then-Prince Charles on his shoulder when in 2003 the now-King of England opened that year’s game. “He loved it!” Harrison says.

Played over Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday each year, the event is a source of immense pride for the people of Ashbourne in Derbyshire’s Peak District.

Yet, such a unifying tradition is actually based upon splitting the town into two halves between the “Up’ards” and the “Down’ards,” determined by whether players are born on the north or south of the River Henmore.

Don’t park there

On any other days, Ashbourne, around a three-hour drive from London, is quiet and picturesque with a high street lined by antique shops, cafes and traditional pubs. Visitors include hikers, cyclists and campers.

For two days that all changes.

Large timber boardings are nailed up to protect shop fronts. Doorways are barricaded. “Play Zone” signs are strapped to lampposts, warning motorists not to park there for fear of damage to vehicles, which can be shoved out of the way by the force of the hoards of players trying to move the ball.

In contrast, colorful bunting is strewn high above from building to building and revelers congregate, eating and drinking as if it is a street party. Parents with babies in strollers watch on from a safe distance. School holidays in the area have long since been moved to coincide with the festival.

“There are people who come and they have a drink and they’re just like, ‘This is a bit of a crazy thing and it’s a spectacle, and now I’ve seen it, box ticked off,'” says Wakefield, who also used to report on Royal Shrovetide for the local newspaper. “And there are people who are absolutely enthralled by it all, and they get the beauty and complexity of the game and those people follow it year on year.”

Where’s the ball?

Play begins with an opening ceremony in a car park, no less, in the center of town. The national anthem and Auld Lang Syne are sung. Competitors are reminded, “You play the game at your own risk.” A leather ball, the size of a large pumpkin, filled with cork and ornately painted, is thrown into what is called a “hug” of players. And they’re off.

As a spectator sport, it can be confusing. There can be little to see for long periods during the eight hours of play each day from 2 p.m. local time. Players wear their own clothes — such as random football or rugby jerseys — rather than matching uniforms.

On Tuesday, it took more than 45 minutes to move the ball out of the car park. Onlookers stand on bins, walls and park benches, craning their necks to look down alleyways to try to get a better view. “Can you see the ball?” someone will ask. The answer is often “No.”

One person thinks it might be in line with a tree over to the right of the car park, but can’t be sure. Later that day there had been no sight of the ball for almost two hours until rumors started to circulate that the Down’ards scored what turned out to be the only goal over the two days of play for a 1-0 victory.

Deception and cunning

With so many players, the hug can be difficult to maneuver but gathers pace quickly, prompting crowds of spectators who’d previously been trying to get a closer look to suddenly run away from the action. The ball can be handled and kicked. Play can be frantic, with players racing after a loose ball wherever it may take them, diving into the river and up and out the other side.

While strength is needed in the hug, speed is required from runners if the ball breaks free. Royal Shrovetide, however, can be as much about deception and cunning as speed and strength, it seems.

“There’s a bit of strategy involved in that somebody’s pretending they’ve still got the ball in the middle of the hug,” Wakefield says. “And they’re quietly passing it back out to the edge to get it to a runner who has to sneak away in a kind of, I imagine, very nonchalant manner and then leg it down an alleyway.”

A famous goal in 2019 came as a result of the hug not realizing it didn’t have the ball until it was too late. Hidden by two schoolboys standing meters away, the ball was passed to a player who ran, largely unimpeded, for 2 1/2 kilometers before scoring.

A ball is goaled when it is hit three times against one of the millstones at either end of the town in Clifton or Sturston.

The beautiful game

Scorers have likened the achievement to winning Olympic gold. They are carried on shoulders, paraded through the town and celebrated like heroes.

“If you can imagine playing for Manchester United in their heyday and they’re at Wembley in a cup final. You score the winner. You’re there,” Harrison says. Scorers also get to keep the balls, which are repainted and become treasured family possessions.

It is the game, however, that is treasured most of all. “I just live and breathe it,” says Janet Richardson, 75, from Ashbourne, who has been going to Royal Shrovetide since she was a 1-year-old. “I can’t sleep because I’m excited. It’s so lovely to think that all these people still want to come here and watch this beautiful game that we’ve got in our town.” 
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WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday he was appointing Fox News host Laura Ingraham and Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo to the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

In February, weeks after taking office, Trump fired the center’s president, replaced the board of trustees and named himself chairman of the organization.

The moves represented a takeover by Trump of a cultural institution that is known for its signature Kennedy Center Honors performances and is home to the National Symphony Orchestra and the Washington National Opera.

“This completes our selection,” Trump said on social media after announcing the appointments of Ingraham and Bartiromo. Trump said last month special U.S. envoy Richard Grenell will serve as the interim executive director of the center.

Since taking office on Jan. 20, Trump, a Republican, has embarked on a massive government makeover, firing and sidelining hundreds of civil servants and top officials at agencies in his first steps toward downsizing the bureaucracy and installing more loyalists.

During his first term in office, Trump declined to attend the annual Kennedy Center Honors, considered the top award for achievement in the arts. In December, at the last show attended by former President Joe Biden, the center’s leaders made clear Trump was welcome to come in the future.

Earlier this week, the hit musical Hamilton canceled its run at the center after Trump’s takeover. 
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SRINAGAR, INDIA — Viral social media posts threw cat lovers in Indian-controlled Kashmir into a tizzy.

Panic spread and local veterinarians saw a surge in pet owners coming in with their cats — all because of posts that went viral on social media. It began with a warning in January from veterinarians in the disputed Himalayan region, where the cat population has soared over the past years, partly because of stray cats roaming free and pet stores bringing in ever more costly breeds to keep up with local demand.

The vets said there’s been an uptick in infections among the feline population due to lack of vaccination and mishandling of strays.

What was meant to be a cautionary note was misinterpreted. Video clips and news reports started claiming that cats transmit potentially deadly infections to humans, and that cat-borne diseases can cause miscarriages among women.

Days later, the region’s animal husbandry department issued a statement saying there’s no harm in keeping cats as pets as long as proper hygiene is maintained. But the statement did little to calm pet owners in Kashmir, where cats have been long revered in Islamic folklore for their cleanliness and considered noble and intelligent creatures.

Mir Mubashir, a local businessman who lives on the outskirts of Srinagar, the region’s main city, said the posts and reports made him worried. His heart heavy, he took Liger, his Persian kitty, to her vet to make sure she was fine.

“I felt really scared,” he said. Only after the vet’s assurances that all was well did he calm down.

Reflecting the level of concern, Altaf Gilani, the head of the main Srinagar animal hospital, said they had examined 2,594 cats in the first seven weeks of this year, compared to a total of 1,010 cats in January and February last year. If regular deworming, vaccinations and hygiene protocols are followed, pet owners are not at risk, he said.

Keeping cats, much like raising pigeons in Kashmir, is seen as a stress buster and mood elevator in a region long plagued by conflicts. Split between Pakistan and India but claimed by both in its entirety, Kashmir has recently seen two harsh lockdowns, first in 2019, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government stripped the region’s semi-autonomy, and again in 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic.

More and more people began adopting stray cats during the lockdowns. Children were encouraged to play with them — experts called it pet therapy.

“Cats entice you to love them and you get attached once you spend time with them,” said Mujtaba Hussain, another cat owner.  
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SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO — Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman was in an advanced state of Alzheimer’s and died of heart disease and other factors likely days after his wife, Betsy Arakawa, died of a rare virus spread by mice, according to autopsy results released Friday in New Mexico.

Hackman, 95, Arakawa, 64, and one of their dogs were found dead Feb. 26 in separate rooms of the couple’s Santa Fe home.

Hackman’s heart disease and the hantavirus pulmonary syndrome that caused Arakawa’s death were announced at a press conference at the Santa Fe sheriff’s office.

Hackman’s wife died a week before he did, results showed. A reporter asked Sheriff Adan Mendoza if Hackman’s advanced Alzheimer’s had hindered him from perceiving her death.

“I would assume that is the case,” Mendoza told reporters.

“He was in an advanced state of Alzheimer’s, and it is quite possible he was not aware she was deceased,” Heather Jarrell, chief medical investigator at the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator, told reporters.

Arakawa is believed to have died around Feb. 11, authorities said Friday, citing the date of her last email.

Jarrell determined Hackman died on Feb. 18, based on his pacemaker activity.

Hantavirus is a rare disease in the U.S., with most cases concentrated in the western states of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah. In northern New Mexico, the virus is predominantly spread through the droppings and urine of deer mice.

The virus is often transmitted through the air when people sweep out sheds or clean closets where mice have been living. It begins with flu-like symptoms and can lead to heart and lung failure, with around 38% to 50% of cases resulting in death.

New Mexico has experienced between one and seven cases annually in recent years, according to health data.

State health inspectors found no particular sign of rodents inside Hackman’s home but did detect rodent activity in structures outside the house, State Veterinarian Erin Phipps told reporters.

Hackman and Arakawa, a pianist, had called Santa Fe home since the 1980s and were active in the city’s art community and culinary scene. In recent years, the couple were seen less often in town as Hackman’s health deteriorated. They lived a very private life before their deaths, Mendoza said.

A caretaker at their gated community discovered the couple dead. Sheriff’s deputies found Hackman in the kitchen. Arakawa and a dog were found in a bathroom.

Both Hackman and Arakawa appeared to have suddenly fallen to the floor, and neither showed signs of blunt force trauma.

Arakawa had picked up one of her dogs in a crate on Feb. 9 from a Santa Fe veterinarian, which may explain why the animal was found dead in the crate in the couple’s home on Feb. 26, Mendoza said. Phipps said the dog may have died of starvation.

Hackman, a former Marine known for his raspy voice, appeared in more than 80 films, as well as on television and the stage during a lengthy career that started in the early 1960s.

He earned his first Oscar nomination for his breakout role as the brother of bank robber Clyde Barrow in 1967’s “Bonnie and Clyde.” He won an Oscar for best actor in 1972 for his portrayal of detective Popeye Doyle in “The French Connection,” and in 1993 won an Oscar for best supporting actor for “Unforgiven.”
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JOHANNESBURG — A new play about anti-apartheid icon Winnie Madikizela-Mandela seeks to highlight the struggles of Black women in South Africa who had to wait years for their husbands’ return from exile, prison or faraway work during decades of white minority rule.

The play about the late former wife of Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first Black president, is adapted from the novel The Cry of Winnie Mandela by Njabulo Ndebele. It explores themes of loneliness, infidelity and betrayal.

At the height of apartheid, Madikizela-Mandela was one of the most recognizable faces of South Africa’s liberation struggle while her husband and other freedom fighters spent decades in prison.

That meant constant harassment by police. At one point, she was banished from her home in Soweto on the outskirts of Johannesburg and forcefully relocated to Brandfort, a small rural town she had never visited nearly 350 kilometers away.

Even after she walked hand-in-hand with her newly freed husband in 1990 and raised her clenched fist, post-apartheid South Africa was tumultuous for her.

Madikizela-Mandela, who died in 2018 aged 81, was accused of kidnapping and murdering people she allegedly suspected of being police informants under apartheid. She also faced allegations of being unfaithful to Mandela during his 27 years in prison.

Those controversies ultimately led to her divorce from Mandela, while their African National Congress political party distanced itself from her. The isolation and humiliation inspired Ndebele to write about Madikizela-Mandela for South Africa’s post-apartheid generations.

“How can they implicate Winnie in such horrendous events? She is the face of our struggle,” Ndebele’s character, played by South African actor Les Nkosi, wonders as he describes his thoughts upon hearing the news of the ANC distancing itself. “The announcement invokes in me a moral anguish from which I’m unable to escape. Is she a savior or a betrayer to us?”

A key scene addresses Madikizela-Mandela’s appearance before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a body formed to investigate human rights abuses during apartheid. She denied murder and kidnapping allegations and declined a request to apologize to families of alleged victims.

“I will not be the instrument that validates the politics of reconciliation, because the politics of reconciliation demands my annihilation. All of you have to reconcile not with me, but the meaning of me. The meaning of me is the constant search for the right thing to do,” she says in a fictional monologue in the novel.

The play also reflects how the Mandelas’ divorce proceedings played out in public, with intimidate details of their marriage and rumors of her extramarital affair.

For the play’s director, Momo Matsunyane, it was important to reflect the role of Black women in the struggle against apartheid who also had to run their households and raise children, often in their husbands’ long absence.

“It’s also where we are seeing Black women be open, vulnerable, sexual and proud of it, not shying away. I think apartheid managed to dismantle the Black family home in a very terrible way. How can you raise other Black men and women when our household is not complete?” Matsunyane said.

In the play, one Black woman tells a group of friends how her husband ended their marriage when he returned home after 14 years abroad studying to be a doctor and found she had given birth to a child who was now 4 years old.

Another woman tells the same group — who call themselves “Ibandla Labafazi Abalindileyo” (Organization of Women in Waiting in the isiXhosa language) — that her husband returned from many years in prison but left her to start a new family with a white woman.

Madikizela-Mandela, played by Thembisa Mdoda, gets to answer questions about her life and the decisions she made during an encounter with the women.

The play, which also draws on the protest music of that period, opened at The Market Theatre in Johannesburg and will run until March 15.
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JERUSALEM — In the first Friday prayers of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, about 90,000 Palestinians prayed at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City under tight security by Israeli forces.

Thousands made their way from the West Bank into Jerusalem after Israel allowed men over 55 and women over 50 to enter from the occupied territory for the prayers. Tensions have risen in the West Bank in the past weeks amid Israeli raids on militants. But there was no immediate sign of frictions on Friday.

For many Palestinians, it was their first chance to enter Jerusalem since last Ramadan about a year ago, when Israel also let in worshippers under similar restrictions. Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023, the Israeli government blocked Palestinians in the West Bank from crossing to Jerusalem or visiting Israel.

Last Ramadan, the war was raging, but this time, a fragile ceasefire is in place since mid-January — although its future is uncertain. Since Sunday, Israel has barred all food, fuel, medicine and other supplies from entering Gaza for some 2 million people, demanding that U.S.-designated terror group Hamas accept a revised deal.

In Gaza, thousands gathered for the Friday communal prayers in the shattered concrete husk of Gaza City’s Imam Shafi’i Mosque, heavily damaged by Israeli forces during fighting. During Ramadan, Muslims fast from dawn until sunset as a sign of humility, submission to God and sympathy for the poor and hungry.

On Thursday evening, Palestinians strung festive Ramadan lights around the rubble of destroyed buildings surrounding their tent camp in Gaza City and set up long communal tables for hundreds of people where aid groups served up iftar, the meal that breaks the daily fast.

Prayers at Dome of the Rock

At Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, Nafez Abu Saker said he left his home in the village of Aqraba in the northern West Bank at 7 a.m., taking three hours to make the 45-kilometer trip through Israeli checkpoints to reach Jerusalem. “If the people from the West Bank will be permitted to come, people from all the cities, villages and camps will come to Al-Aqsa to pray,” he said.

“The reward of prayer here is like 500 prayers — despite the difficulty of the road to get here. It brings a great reward from God,” said Ezat Abu Laqia, who is also from Aqraba.

The faithful formed rows to listen to the Friday sermon and kneel in prayer at the foot of the golden Dome of the Rock on the sprawling mosque compound. The Islamic Trust, which oversees the Al-Aqsa compound, said 90,000 attended the prayers. The Israeli police said it deployed thousands of additional officers around the area.

The compound, revered by Jews as the Temple Mount, and the surrounding area of Jerusalem’s Old City have been the site of clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police in the past. The Old City is part of east Jerusalem, captured by Israel along with the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast War. Israel has since annexed the sector, although Palestinians seek it and the territories for an independent state.

Tight security, checkpoint delays

Thousands of Palestinians coming from the West Bank lined up at the Qalandia checkpoint on the edge of Jerusalem to attend the prayers. But some were turned away, either because they didn’t have the proper permits or because the checkpoint closed. Israeli police said authorities had approved the entry of 10,000 Palestinians from the West Bank but did not say how many made it into Jerusalem.

“All the young people, elderly people and women were waiting here. They refused to let anyone cross at the checkpoint,” said Mohammed Owaisat, who arrived to find the crossing closed.

The first phase of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire brought the release of 25 Israeli hostages held by militants in Gaza and the bodies of eight others in exchange for the freeing of nearly 2,000 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

But an intended second phase of the deal — meant to bring the release of remaining hostages and a lasting truce and full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza — has been thrown into doubt. Israel has balked at entering negotiations over the terms of the second phase. Instead, it has called for Hamas to release half its remaining hostages in return for an extension of the ceasefire and a promise to negotiate a lasting truce.

It says its bar on aid to Gaza will continue and could be escalated until Hamas accepts the proposal — a move rights groups and Arab countries have decried as a “starvation tactic.” Hamas has demanded implementation of the original ceasefire deal.

A Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo on Friday to discuss the implementation of the deal and to push for the second phase, Egypt’s State Information Service said.

Israel’s military offensive has killed over 48,000 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were militants.

The campaign was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 23, 2023, terror attack on southern Israel, in which militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took a total of 251 people hostage. Most have been released in ceasefire agreements or other arrangements. Hamas is believed to still have 24 living hostages and the bodies of 34 others.
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LOS ANGELES — The day after her house burned down, Lara Ganz sent a group message to the youth theater troupe she runs: They would not let the Los Angeles firestorm stop their upcoming show.

“So many of our castmates have lost everything,” wrote Ganz, the director of youth theater at a beloved playhouse in the Pacific Palisades. “We will continue with rehearsals. I am confident we will find a stage.”

The devastating Jan. 7 fire gutted every inch of the 125-seat Pierson Playhouse, from the basement to the roof, leaving behind only a mangled steel skeleton. Many of the young actors watched it burn on live TV. About half of the show’s 45 cast members, aged 8 to 17, lost their homes or can’t yet return because of severe damage. Many also lost their schools to the fire.

But the show did go on. A two-week run of the musical Crazy for You opened last weekend, in a nearby school auditorium, marking a triumphant return to the stage for a community determined to see its theater rise from the ashes. Five more shows are scheduled for this weekend.

The experience lifted the young performers of Theatre Palisades Youth from an unfathomable low point, teaching them the healing power of art in the face of disaster.

“The first time I felt happy after the fire was when I walked into that first rehearsal,” said Callum Ganz, 17, the director’s son, who plays a tap-dancing cowboy in the show. “When I’m singing or dancing, I forget about everything else. I don’t think about the fire. All I feel is happiness.”

“It’s always a shock,” he said, “when it comes back to me and I remember, ‘Oh, right. My house is gone.'”

More than 6,800 homes and other structures were flattened in the Palisades fire. Places of worship, shops and schools were destroyed, along with favorite student hangouts downtown — the local skate shop, a pizza place, the Yogurt Shoppe, where the young performers would walk after shows for a celebratory treat.

The idea of rebuilding is still a distant dream. The fire destroyed the theater’s performance space and everything else — hundreds of costumes and shoes in the downstairs wardrobe department, vintage and new props, their piano and other musical instruments, lights and sound equipment.

Parents took to social media, posting pleas for donations. They were met with an outpouring of generosity from the artistic community, stretching from Hollywood to Broadway.

Emmy-award winning hairstylist Joy Zapata saw one of the posts, emailed the mother who wrote it to make sure it wasn’t a scam, and then put out a call to friends in the business.

“I have done horror films with 100 extras running down the Pacific Coast Highway. But this time, the story was real, and it blew me away,” Zapata said. She held a tutorial for the cast during dress rehearsals and then returned for opening night with a team of seven Hollywood hair and makeup artists.

“I wanted these kids to walk away feeling beautiful,” Zapata said, as she curled and sprayed the hair of showgirls into upswept buns. Cowgirls got braided pigtails.

A few weeks earlier, Broadway actress Kerry Butler, a Tony-nominated star of Beetlejuice, had invited the kids to sing with her during a concert in Orange County, south of Los Angeles. Then, she spent a day leading them in a master class on character development and vocal technique.

“I will never forget my time with them,” Butler wrote on Instagram. “I met people who lost their homes, schools. But they told me when they heard the theatre was gone — that was when they felt the deepest loss.”

The group also received wireless mics from Guitar Center and costumes from neighboring schools. The Paul Revere Charter Middle School, for now, has become the troupe’s home.

“Home” is a charged word in a community where so many have lost theirs. Yet for these young actors and their families, it fits.

“I’m learning that a home is not a physical thing. It’s the people,” said Scarlett Shelton, a 16-year-old from nearby Culver City who has been part of the theater since middle school.

It’s the type of small-town playhouse that no longer exists in many parts of the country. Kids join young and stay until high school, often leaving with dreams of Broadway. About half of the kids in the cast lived nearby in Pacific Palisades, and the rest come from all over the Los Angeles area.

On opening night in a new venue, much of the pre-show jitters and rituals felt the same. The big kids helped calm the nerves of “the littles,” as the young actors are affectionately called. Before the show, the entire cast circled up behind the curtain and took turns giving inspirational pep talks. “Knock their socks off!” said one child. Another stepped up to say: “Everyone, dance the night away!”

Putting on the show was not the primary goal when Ganz sent out her group text, as her own family evacuated and then learned their home was gone.

“That day of the fires, her whole life was destroyed in a few hours. But it wasn’t, ‘Woe is me, I lost everything,’” said choreographer Rebecca Barragan. “She said: ‘We need to have rehearsal right away and get these kids back on their feet. And let them know that life isn’t over.'”

The original cast of 58 kids dwindled to 45, as families scattered to new homes. Many are mired in a post-wildfire bureaucracy of insurance and government assistance and still figuring out where to go next.

“To be with the other kids and create something and have a purpose has been the most healing thing for all of us,” said Wendy Levine, whose sixth grader, Tyler, is in the show.

“It’s been a light in the darkness,” said her husband, Eric Levine. The family had just finished remodeling their home and was unpacking boxes mid-morning Jan. 7, when they were ordered to evacuate. They learned that night the home was gone.

Ironically, Crazy for You is about a small-town theater struggling to survive, set to the music of George and Ira Gershwin. As the story goes, the townsfolk are energized by coming together to create a show after their hometown is hit with hard times.

That’s what real life felt like these past few weeks, said Sebastian Florido, 14, who plays the lead character and loved getting to perform one number in particular — I Can’t Be Bothered Now, which is about the power of song and dance to chase away bad news.

“One of the lines is, ‘I’m dancing and I can’t be bothered now,’” the teen said. “It’s really relatable. All this bad stuff was happening, but I’m tap dancing with my best friends. It was like a getaway to a little paradise.” 
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A World Economic Forum report says it will take roughly 130 years for the world to reach full gender parity, in which women and men contribute equally to all dimensions of life. In Colorado, Svitlana Prystynska has the story of two women making inroads. (Videographer: Svitlana Prystynska,
Video editor: Oksana Babenkova)
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LOS ANGELES — LeBron James became the first player in NBA history to score 50,000 combined points in the regular season and postseason Tuesday night.

James surpassed the mark with a 3-pointer early in the first quarter of the Los Angeles Lakers’ game against the New Orleans Pelicans.

James got to 49,999 points Sunday night when he scored 17 while the Lakers beat the Clippers 108-102 for their sixth consecutive win.

The 40-year-old James already is the top scorer in NBA history in both the regular season and the playoffs during a career in which he has rewritten all previous definitions of basketball longevity.

James reached 50,000 points deep into his 22nd season, which ties him with Vince Carter for the most played in NBA history. Lakers great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who played 20 seasons, is second in NBA history with 44,149 combined points.

And while nearly every other NBA player who lasted to his late 30s finished at a fraction of his peak powers, James’ game shows no significant signs of decline in his 40s. He was named the NBA’s Western Conference player of the month earlier Tuesday after he averaged 29.3 points, 10.5 rebounds, 6.9 assists and 1.2 steals in February while playing more than 35 minutes per game for the Lakers, who went 9-2 to surge into second place in the West.

James began Tuesday at third in NBA history with 1,547 regular-season games played, trailing only Robert Parish (1,611) and Abdul-Jabbar (1,560). If he stays healthy and elects to return for a record 23rd season, he will likely surpass Parish next winter.

James has also played in 287 postseason games, the most in NBA history. He became the league’s career playoff scoring leader on May 25, 2017, when he surpassed Michael Jordan’s total of 5,987 during the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Eastern Conference finals game at Boston.

James then became the top scorer in regular-season history on Feb. 7, 2023, when he topped Abdul-Jabbar’s record of 38,387 points during the Lakers’ game against Oklahoma City.

James’ prolific scoring is due in large part to his metronomic consistency. With his performance against the Clippers, he has scored at least 10 points in 1,277 consecutive games since Jan. 6, 2007 — by far the longest such streak in NBA history.

James’ player of the month award for February was his 41st, extending his own league record. He also became the oldest player to win the award, surpassing a 37-year-old Karl Malone in November 2000.
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