Graffiti, part of New York’s history for more than 50 years, is flourishing during the coronavirus pandemic, a sign of decadence for some, but vitality for others.As dusk becomes nightfall, graffiti artist Saynosleep takes a quick look around and then gets to work on a luxury store closed since it was looted in June during protests over George Floyd’s death.”If you’re not painting right now, I don’t know what you’re doing,” the 40-year-old said, adding an expletive. “There has never been a time like this.”The facades of hundreds of stores that have shut because of the pandemic are “an invitation” to artists, Marie Flageul, curator at New York’s Museum of Street Art (MoSA) said.Walls, bridges, sidewalks and subway cars — 34 of which have been painted since the beginning of the month — are canvases.”It’s a big surge, a renaissance of graffiti,” said Saynosleep, who uses a different pseudonym for his legal artwork.Graffiti was first accepted by the art world in the 1980s when it moved into galleries.Expressive street art then captured the imagination of the general public in the 2000s when it went from illegal to legal spaces.FILE – In this Feb. 22, 2006, photo, the 7 Train passes by the 5 Pointz Building in Long Island City, Queens, New York.But since March, it is the raw, illegal type of graffiti that has spread in a disorderly fashion.”Everybody wants to express themselves,” said Saynosleep, who said he has seen a woman in her 60s drawing graffiti. “People are bored. They need something to do.”The growth of the Black Lives Matter movement following Floyd’s killing in the custody of a Minnesota police officer in May has accelerated the trend, with protesters scribbling racial justice slogans and demands on buildings.In a year when socializing has virtually stopped and streets no longer throng with activity, graffiti is artists’ way of saying: “‘It feels like New York is dead and you don’t see us, but we are still here,'” Flageul said.The creative impulses are not to everyone’s taste, however. New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the graffiti was “another sign of decay,” along with an increase in homicides and shootings in New York City.He indirectly blamed Mayor Bill de Blasio for supposedly taking a lax attitude toward it.Critics were also angry that the city government, because of budgetary constraints, cut its graffiti removal program that had cleaned almost 15,000 sites in 2019.”I think it’s horrible,” said Darcy Weber, who has recently settled in New York. “Some say it’s art, but did they get permission for that? No, so it’s vandalism.”FILE – In this Aug. 1, 2018, photo, artist Lynne Yun’s mural project on a corrugated metal shed is seen near One World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan in New York.For some, graffiti reminds them of the dark days of the 1970s and ’80s when New York was broke and crime was rife.”From the beginning of the shutdown, I’ve been seen by police and I kept going, multiple times,” without being arrested Saynosleep said.A spokesperson for the New York Police Department told Agence France-Presse the force is “fully aware of the importance of addressing graffiti-related crime,” and said such incidents were down 17% from last year.Flageul, who is also a spokesperson for the 5Pointz graffiti collective, says it’s “a bit of a cliche” to say that more graffiti means New York is regressing.Brooklyn President Eric Adams, who wants to become New York’s mayor next year, says tags spray-painted onto public and private property “is quickly destroying our borough’s landscape.””It costs home and business owners hundreds of thousands of dollars and tremendous efforts to erase it,” he added, drawing a distinction between “vandalism” and “amazing street murals.”Ken Lovett, an adviser to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman, noted that cleaning graffiti from trains is draining resources when the MTA is facing “the worst financial crisis” in its history.New Jersey resident Emile Fu says he’s not too bothered.”There’s other things to be concerned about,” she told AFP.Bryce Graham, who lives in the Chelsea neighborhood, said the graffiti would shock him in somewhere like Ottawa “where everything is super clean.””But here in New York, it’s a … mix of what is clean and what is dirty,” he said.
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In what is usually a festive Hanukkah holiday season, Israelis are facing a tough reality. The country may be heading toward a third COVID-19 lockdown and a fourth national election within the past two years. But even in these troubled times, Israelis enjoy their Hanukkah tradition of elaborate and fancy doughnuts. Linda Gradstein reports for VOA from Jerusalem.Videographer: Ricki Rosen
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Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Indians will be changing the team’s name after years of criticism and objections from Native American groups. The team has not officially announced the move, but multiple news organizations cited people familiar with the matter saying that could happen as early as this week. Cleveland had already taken the step of eliminating its use of a Native American caricature as the team’s logo during the 2019 season. In July, it pledged to examine the issue of the team name in light of local and national social justice protests. Renaming teams and ending the use of Indigenous mascots in both professional and scholastic sports in the United States have drawn praise from those saying their use is racist. The National Football League’s team in Washington changed its name this year, becoming the Washington Football Team after ending its use of the long-criticized Redskins name and logo. “Redskin” is a pejorative term for a Native American commonly used during America’s frontier period when settlers and Native Americans competed for land and resources. Such changes have drawn some criticism from people who defended the use of Indigenous names and imagery, and said the changes served to eliminate team history. President Donald Trump tweeted his objection to Cleveland’s change, calling it “Cancel culture at work!” Cleveland has used the Indians name since 1915.  It is not clear how quickly the name will be changed, or what the replacement will be. There are other high-profile teams that have faced calls to change their names, including baseball’s Atlanta Braves, football’s Kansas City Chiefs and the National Hockey League’s Chicago Blackhawks.  Each of those teams has said it has no plans to change its name. 
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A beloved meeting spot for generations of New Yorkers, the Waldorf Astoria clock has recently undergone a meticulous restoration and is on view at the New York Historical Society. Vladimir Lenski has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.Camera: Max Avloshenko 
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John le Carre, the spy-turned-novelist whose elegant and intricate narratives defined the Cold War espionage thriller and brought acclaim to a genre critics had once ignored, has died. He was 89.Le Carre died Saturday in Cornwall, southwest England, Saturday after a short illness, his literary agency, Curtis Brown, said Sunday. The death was not related to COVID-19.In such classics as “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,” “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy” and “The Honorable Schoolboy,” Le Carre combined terse but lyrical prose with the kind of complexity expected in literary fiction. His books grappled with betrayal, moral compromise and the psychological toll of a secret life. In the quiet, watchful spymaster George Smiley, he created one of 20th-century fiction’s iconic characters — a decent man at the heart of a web of deceit.For le Carre, the world of espionage was a “metaphor for the human condition.”Born David Cornwell, le Carre worked for Britain’s intelligence service before turning his experience into fiction in works including “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy” and “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.””I’m not part of the literary bureaucracy if you like that categorizes everybody: Romantic, Thriller, Serious,” le Carre told The Associated Press in 2008. “I just go with what I want to write about and the characters. I don’t announce this to myself as a thriller or an entertainment.”I think all that is pretty silly stuff. It’s easier for booksellers and critics, but I don’t buy that categorization. I mean, what’s ‘A Tale of Two Cities?’ — a thriller?”His other works included “Smiley’s People,” “The Russia House” and, in 2017, the likely Smiley farewell, “A Legacy of Spies.” Many novels were adapted for film and television, notably the 1965 productions of “Smiley’s People’ and “Tinker, Tailor” featuring Alec Guinness as Smiley.Le Carre was drawn to espionage by an upbringing that was superficially conventional but secretly tumultuous.Born David John Moore Cornwell in Poole, southwest England, on Oct. 19, 1931, he appeared to have a standard upper-middle-class education: the private Sherborne School, a year studying German literature at the University of Bern, compulsory military service in Austria — where his tasks involved interrogating Eastern Bloc defectors — and a degree in modern languages at Oxford University.It was an illusion: his father, Ronnie Cornwell, was a con man who was an associate of gangsters and spent time in jail for insurance fraud. His mother left the family when David was 5; he didn’t meet her again until he was 21.It was a childhood of uncertainty and extremes: one minute limousines and champagne, the next eviction from the family’s latest accommodation. It bred insecurity, an acute awareness of the gap between surface and reality — and a familiarity with secrecy that would serve him well in his future profession.  “These were very early experiences, actually, of clandestine survival,” le Carre said in 1996. “The whole world was enemy territory.”  After university, which was interrupted by his father’s bankruptcy, he taught at the prestigious boarding school Eton before joining the foreign service.  Officially a diplomat, he was in fact an operative with the domestic intelligence service MI5 — he’d started as a student at Oxford — and then its overseas counterpart MI6, serving in Germany, then on the Cold War front line, under the cover of second secretary at the British Embassy.  His first three novels were written while he was a spy, and his employers required him to publish under a pseudonym. He remained “le Carre” for his entire career. He said he chose the name — square in French — simply because he liked the vaguely mysterious, European sound of it.  “Call for the Dead” appeared in 1961 and “A Murder of Quality” in 1962. Then in 1963 came “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,” a tale of an agent forced to carry out one last, risky operation in divided Berlin. It raised one of the author’s recurring themes — the blurring of moral lines that is part and parcel of espionage, and the difficulty of distinguishing good guys from bad. Le Carre said it was written at one of the darkest points of the Cold War, just after the building of the Berlin Wall, at a time when he and his colleagues feared nuclear war might be imminent.  “So I wrote a book in great heat which said, ‘a plague on both your houses,'” le Carre told the BBC in 2000.It was immediately hailed as a classic and allowed him to quit the intelligence service to become a full-time writer.  His depictions of life in the clubby, grubby, ethically tarnished world of “The Circus” — the books’ code-name for MI6 — were the antithesis of Ian Fleming’s suave action-hero James Bond and won le Carre a critical respect that eluded Fleming.  Smiley appeared in le Carre’s first two novels and in the trilogy of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy,” “The Honorable Schoolboy,” and “Smiley’s People.”  Le Carre said the character was based on John Bingham — an MI5 agent who wrote spy thrillers and encouraged le Carre’s literary career — and the ecclesiastical historian Vivian Green, the chaplain of his school and later his Oxford college, “who became effectively my confessor and godfather.” The more than 20 novels touched on the sordid realities of spycraft but le Carre always maintained there was a kind of nobility in the profession. He said in his day spies had seen themselves “almost as people with a priestly calling to tell the truth.””We didn’t shape it or mold it. We were there, we thought, to speak truth to power.”  
“The Perfect Spy,” his most autobiographical book, looks at the formation of a spy in the character of Magnus Pym, a boy whose criminal father and unsettled upbringing bear a strong resemblance to le Carre’s own. His writing continued unabated after the Cold War ended and the front lines of the espionage wars shifted. Le Carre said in 1990 that the fall of the Berlin Wall had come as a relief.  “For me, it was absolutely wonderful,” he said. “I was sick of writing about the Cold War. The cheap joke was to say, ‘Poor old le Carre, he’s run out of material; they’ve taken his wall away.’ The spy story has only to pack up its bags and go where the action is.”  That turned out to be everywhere. “The Tailor of Panama” was set in Central America. “The Constant Gardener,” which was turned into a film starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz, was about the pharmaceutical industry’s machinations in Africa.  “A Most Wanted Man,” published in 2008, looked at extraordinary rendition and the war on terror. “Our Kind of Traitor,” released in 2010, took in Russian crime syndicates and the murky machinations of the financial sector.  In 1954, le Carre married Alison Sharp, with whom he had three sons before they divorced in 1971. In 1972 he married Valerie Eustace, with whom he had a son, the novelist Nick Harkaway.  Although he had a home in London, le Carre spent much of his time near Land’s End, England’s southwestern most tip, in a clifftop house overlooking the sea. He was, he said, a humanist but not an optimist.  “Humanity — that’s what we rely on. If only we could see it expressed in our institutional forms, we would have hope then,” he told the AP. “I think the humanity will always be there. I think it will always be defeated.”
 
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Charley Pride, country music’s first Black star whose rich baritone on such hits as “Kiss an Angel Good Morning” helped sell millions of records and made him the first Black member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, has died. He was 86.Pride died Saturday in Dallas of complications from COVID-19, according to Jeremy Westby of the public relations firm 2911 Media.”I’m so heartbroken that one of my dearest and oldest friends, Charley Pride, has passed away. It’s even worse to know that he passed away from COVID-19. What a horrible, horrible virus. Charley, we will always love you,” Dolly Parton tweeted.Pride released dozens of albums and sold more than 25 million records during a career that began in the mid-1960s. Hits besides “Kiss an Angel Good Morning” in 1971 included “Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone,” “Burgers and Fries,” “Mountain of Love” and “Someone Loves You Honey.”FILE – Charley Pride poses with the Pioneer Award he received at the 29th Academy of Country Music Awards show in Universal City, Calif., May 3, 1994. In 2000, Pride was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.He received three Grammy Awards, had more than 30 No. 1 hits between 1969 and 1984, won the Country Music Association’s Top Male Vocalist and Entertainer of the Year awards in 1972 and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2000.The Smithsonian in Washington acquired memorabilia from Pride, including a pair of boots and one of his guitars, for the National Museum of African American History and Culture.Singer Ronnie Milsap called him a pioneer and said that without his encouragement, Milsap might never gone to Nashville.”To hear this news tears out a piece of my heart,” he said in a statement.Until the early 1990s, when Cleve Francis came along, Pride was the only Black country singer signed to a major label.In 1993, he joined the Grand Ole Opry cast in Nashville.’Skin hang-ups'”They used to ask me how it feels to be the ‘first colored country singer,’ ” he told The Dallas Morning News in 1992. “Then it was ‘first Negro country singer,’ then ‘first Black country singer.’ Now I’m the ‘first African-American country singer.’ That’s about the only thing that’s changed. This country is so race-conscious, so ate up with colors and pigments. I call it ‘skin hang-ups’ — it’s a disease.”Pride was raised in Sledge, Mississippi, the son of a sharecropper. He had seven brothers and three sisters.In 2008 while accepting a Lifetime Achievement Award as part of the Mississippi Governor’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts, Pride said he never focused on race.”My older sister one time said, ‘Why are you singing THEIR music?’ ” Pride said. “But we all understand what the y’all-and-us-syndrome has been. See, I never as an individual accepted that, and I truly believe that’s why I am where I am today.”As a young man before launching his singing career, he was a pitcher and outfielder in the Negro American League with the Memphis Red Sox and in the Pioneer League in Montana.FILE – Brad Paisley and Charley Pride perform “Kiss an Angel Good Morning” at the 50th annual CMA Awards at the Bridgestone Arena, Nov. 2, 2016, in Nashville, Tenn.After playing minor league baseball a couple of years, he ended up in Helena, Montana, where he worked in a zinc smelting plant by day and played country music in clubs at night.After a tryout with the New York Mets, he visited Nashville and broke into country music when Chet Atkins, head of RCA Records, heard two of his demo tapes and signed him.To ensure that Pride was judged on his music and not his race, his first few singles were sent to radio stations without a publicity photo. After his identity became known, a few country radio stations refused to play his music.WelcomedFor the most part, though, Pride said he was well-received. Early in his career, he would put white audiences at ease when he joked about his “permanent tan.””Music is the greatest communicator on the planet Earth,” he said in 1992. “Once people heard the sincerity in my voice and heard me project and watched my delivery, it just dissipated any apprehension or bad feeling they might have had.”Throughout his career, he sang positive songs instead of sad ones often associated with country music.”Music is a beautiful way of expressing oneself and I truly believe music should not be taken as a protest,” he told The Associated Press in 1985. “You can go too far in anything — singing, acting, whatever — and become politicized to the point you cease to be an entertainer.”In 1994, he wrote his autobiography, “Pride: The Charley Pride Story,” in which he disclosed he was mildly manic depressive.He had surgery in 1997 to remove a tumor from his right vocal cord.He received the Living Legend award from The Nashville Network/Music City News, recognizing 30 years of achievement, in 1997.”I’d like to be remembered as a good person who tried to be a good entertainer and made people happy, was a good American who paid his taxes and made a good living,” he said in 1985. “I tried to do my best and contribute my part.”
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Concert trade publication Pollstar says the live events industry’s revenue is off more than $30 billion in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.Pollstar released its year-end report Friday, explaining that the live events industry should have hit a record-setting $12.2 billion this year but instead incurred $9.7 billion in losses. The company added that the projected $30 billion figure in losses includes “unreported events, ancillary revenues, including sponsorships, ticketing, concessions, merch, transportation, restaurants, hotels and other economic activity tied to the live events.” Those losses accounted for more than $8 billion.In March, hundreds of artists announced their current or upcoming tours would need to be postponed or canceled because of the pandemic. While a small number of performers have played drive-in concerts and others have held digital concerts, the majority of artists have not played live in 2020.With just a few months on the road, Elton John’s “Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour” tops the year’s Top 100 Worldwide Tours list with $87.1 million grossed from November 30 through March 7. John’s tour ranked No. 2 last year with $212 million grossed.Celine Dion came in second this year with $71.2 million, followed by Trans-Siberian Orchestra ($58.2 million), U2 ($52.1 million) and Queen + Adam Lambert ($44.6 million). Post Malone, Eagles, Jonas Brothers, Dead & Company and Andrea Bocelli rounded out the Top 10.”It’s been an extraordinarily difficult year for the events industry, which has been disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus. As painful as it is to chronicle the adversity and loss our industry and many of our colleagues faced, we understand it is a critical undertaking toward facilitating our recovery, which is thankfully on the horizon,” Ray Waddell, president of Oak View Group’s Media & Conferences Division, which oversees Pollstar and VenuesNow, said in a statement Friday.”With vaccines, better testing, new safety and sanitization protocols, smart ticketing and other innovations, the live industry will be ramping up in the coming months, and we’re sure that at this time next year we’ll have a very different story to tell.”
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Time magazine has jointly named President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris its 2020 “Person of the Year.”  
Time’s editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal says Biden and Harris won the honor for “changing the American story, for showing that the forces of empathy are greater than the furies of division, for sharing a vision of healing in a grieving world.”
Felsenthal notes, “Every elected President since FDR has at some point during his term been a Person of the Year, nearly a dozen of those in a presidential election year. This is the first time we have included a Vice President.”
Time’s other Person of the Year candidates were President Donald Trump; frontline health care workers and Dr. Anthony Fauci; and the movement for racial justice.
 
Time named Trump Person of the Year for 2016, the year he won the presidency, writing that Trump had “upended the leadership of both major political parties and effectively shifted the political direction of the international order.”
Also Thursday, Time named the Korean boy band BTS its Entertainer of the Year and named Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James its Athlete of the Year.
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As a way to wrap up 2020, Washington’s Artechouse – the first US museum of digital and experiential art – transformed its space into a unique exhibition designed to help people combat COVID-19 anxiety. Maxim Moskalkov has the story.Camera: Artyom Kokhan, Sergey Sokolov   
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Players have taken a knee, unfurled slogans and demanded tougher action only to find soccer — their working environment — remains infected with racism.
The tipping point might just have come, with elite players in Paris taking the extraordinary step of refusing to continue playing.
At the end of a year of striking gestures against racial injustice and discrimination, the Champions League produced one of soccer’s most powerful shows of solidarity against racism on Tuesday when players from Paris Saint-Germain and Istanbul Basaksehir left the field and didn’t return.
“The walk off by both Basaksehir and PSG together lays down a marker in Europe,” Piara Powar, executive director of the anti-discrimination Fare network, told The Associated Press. “Many players are fed up with half measures to tackle racism and are more prepared than ever to exercise their right to stop a match.”
The flashpoint came 14 minutes into the game when the fourth official — Sebastian Coltescu of Romania — was accused of using a racial term to identify Basaksehir assistant coach Pierre Webo before sending him off for his conduct on the sidelines. Webo is Black.
“You are racist,” Basaksehir coach Okan Buruk said to Coltescu.
An enraged Webo demanded an explanation from Coltescu, repeating at least six times: “Why you say negro?”
The exchanges were broadcast live around the world from soccer’s biggest club competition.
“Why when you mention a Black guy, you have to say ‘This Black guy?'” asked Basaksehir substitute Demba Ba, who is Black.
The Fare network helps UEFA prosecute discriminatory acts like Tuesday’s incident at the Parc des Princes.
“Our colleagues at the Romanian state anti-discrimination organization have confirmed it is racist in Romanian to refer to a player by using his race as an identifier,” Powar said. “There is no ambiguity. This incident shows the need for much better training of match officials. Unintentional racism is still racism.”
Racism at soccer games has typically come from the stands, but matches in countries such as France are being played without fans because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The high-profile incidents tend to highlight the inadequate responses, like in the Portuguese league in February.
Porto striker Moussa Marega tried to walk off the field after being the target of racist abuse from fans in a game against Guimarães and demanded to be substituted. But he faced attempts by his own teammates and opposing players to prevent him from leaving the field.
The referee then gave Marega a yellow card for refusing to continue in the game — the type of action that dissuades players from walking off.
The Romanian referee who was in charge of the game in Paris on Tuesday — Ovidiu Hategan — was in the same role for the 2013 Champions League game when Manchester City player Yaya Toure complained about the lack of action against monkey noises he heard from CSKA Moscow fans.
“If officials cannot set the standards by their own behavior,” Powar said, “they cannot be relied on to deal with racism on the pitch or in the stands.”
Referees have often been criticized for not leading players off the field, instead leaving them to take the decision themselves. England’s national team decided to continue playing a game in Montenegro last year after Callum Hudson-Odoi and Danny Rose were targeted with monkey chants.
The Champions League game in Paris will resume on Wednesday with a new refereeing team.
“The players walking off is a step in the right direction,” former Manchester United defender Rio Ferdinand said on Britain’s BT Sport television. “But it can’t just be left to them.”
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Athari Alkhaldi stands out amid a sea of men and falcons at the Middle East’s top falconry competition: the first Saudi woman to qualify and participate in the event.
“With my participation … I proved I am here, that women can join this field, that it’s not only restricted to men,” she said, alongside her falcon Ma’aned.
Falconry is an important part of the desert heritage of Arabs of Saudi Arabia and neighboring countries going back thousands of years.
The two-week King Abdulaziz Falconry Festival, which gathers more than 4,000 falcons from the Gulf and further afield, honored Alkhaldi’s presence with an award for the first female to make a qualifying competition flight with her bird.
Alkhaldi first participated last year, but her bird refused to take flight. Determined, she returned this year and her bird successfully flew.
“Dealing with the birds, it is not easy … they are sensitive and need special treatment,” she said, adding that it requires patience and persistence.
“Falconry has been a well-known heritage since ancient times. We take pride in it.” she said.
The government-backed festival, in its third-year, has 22.7 million Saudi riyals ($6 million) in prize money to give out during beauty and flying contests.
Depending on the breed, falcon flight speeds can exceed 300 km (186 miles) an hour.
Alkhaldi said her passion for falcons first began 10 years ago and she has been developing her skills with the hunting birds ever since.
Festival spokesman Waleed Al-Taweel said the festival wants to promote the falconry culture among women and men.
“Honoring (Alkhaldi) is a continuation of the Kingdom’s efforts to empower women in all areas,” he said of the participation award given to her.
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Bob Dylan’s entire catalog of songs, which reaches back 60 years is being acquired by Universal Music Publishing Group.  The catalog contains 600 song copyrights including “Blowin’ In The Wind,” “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” and “Tangled Up In Blue.”The influence of Dylan’s body of work may only be matched by that of the Beatles.  Financial terms were not disclosed Monday, but the catalog may be the most prized in the music industry. Four years ago, when Michael Jackson’s estate sold the remaining half-share that it owned in the artist’s catalog, it fetched $750 million.”Brilliant and moving, inspiring and beautiful, insightful and provocative, his songs are timeless—whether they were written more than half a century ago or yesterday,” said Sir Lucian Grainge, CEO of Universal Music Group, in a prepared statement.  Dylan’s songs have been recorded more than 6,000 times, by various artists from dozens of countries, cultures and music genres, including the Jimi Hendrix version of “All Along The Watchtower.”The transaction’s announcement comes a few weeks after the singer-songwriter’s musings about anti-Semitism and unpublished song lyrics sold at auction for a total of $495,000.Dylan, first entered the public consciousness with New York City’s Greenwich Village folk scene during the early 1960s. When he brought an electric guitar on stage in 1965, he split the music community in what was considered a radical departure for an artist.  Dylan then produced three albums back to back in just over a year that changed the course of rock ‘n’ roll that decade, starting with “Bringing It All Back Home.”Dylan has sold more than 125 million records globally. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, the first songwriter to receive such a distinction. 
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A plea from Dr. Anthony Fauci for people to “wear a mask” to slow the spread of the coronavirus tops a Yale Law School librarian’s list of the most notable quotes of 2020.
The list assembled by Fred Shapiro, an associate director at the library, is an annual update to “The Yale Book of Quotations,” which was first published in 2006.
Also on the list is “I can’t breathe,” the plea George Floyd made repeatedly to police officers holding him down on a Minneapolis street corner. Several quotes from the presidential campaign appear including Joe Biden telling a student: “You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier.”
Shapiro said he picks quotes that are not necessarily admirable or eloquent, but rather because they are famous or particularly revealing of the spirit of the times.The List 
1. “Wear a mask.” — Dr. Anthony Fauci, CNN interview, May 21.
2. “I can’t breathe.” — George Floyd, plea to police officer, Minneapolis, May 25.
3. “One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear,” President Donald Trump, referring to the coronavirus in remarks at an African American History Month reception at the White House, Feb. 27.
4. “I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning?” — Trump, in remarks at a White House Coronavirus Task Force news briefing, April 23.
5. “I will never lie to you. You have my word on that.” — White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, at her first press briefing, May 1.
6. “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.” — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, statement dictated to granddaughter Clara Spera, September.
7. “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black.” — Joe Biden, in an interview with “The Breakfast Club” radio program, May 22.
8. “The science should not stand in the way of this.” — McEnany, referring to school reopenings in a news briefing, July 16.
9. “You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier.” — Biden, in a remark to student at campaign event, Hampton, N.H., Feb. 9.
10. “We are all Lakers today.” — Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers, in a remark to reporters after the death of Kobe Bryant, Orlando, Fla., Jan. 26.
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Against the backdrop of a pandemic’s blight and wounds from an acrimonious election, a group of acclaimed actors on Sunday will gather online for a reading of a religious text with remarkable relevance to the current moment: the Book of Job.Audience members may be drawn to the production by the casting of Bill Murray as Job, the righteous man tested by the loss of his health, home and children, but the real star is the format. Staged on Zoom, it’s aimed at Republican-leaning Knox County, Ohio, with participation from locals including people of faith, and designed to spark meaningful conversations across spiritual and political divides.After the performance, a half-dozen people from the area will be asked to share their perspective on the ancient story in a virtual discussion. It’s then thrown open to others, and ultimately to some of the tens of thousands of people signed in, no matter their location.  The structure of a dramatic reading followed by open-ended dialogue is a fixture of Theater of War Productions, the company behind the event. Artistic director Bryan Doerries is an alumnus of Kenyon College in Knox County and chose the area to focus on bridging rifts opened by the election and sharing the pain of a pandemic that’s tied to more than 281,000 U.S. deaths.By using Job’s story “as a vocabulary for a conversation, the hope is that we can actually engender connection, healing,” Doerries said. “People can hear each other’s truths even if they don’t agree with them.”The performance is headlined by Murray and features other noted actors such as Frankie Faison and David Strathairn. The cast includes Matthew Starr, mayor of the Knox County town of Mount Vernon, who will play Job’s accuser. He said the timing is perfect for the moment the country is going through, given the pandemic, the heated election and racial justice protests.  His hope is that the event and the dialogue afterward lead to less shouting and more listening. And a good story like that of Job can do so more effectively than a new law or a new directive, by changing people’s hearts, said Starr, a Republican and supporter of President Donald Trump who founded an independent film company before going into politics.”God does not say that bad things aren’t going to happen, but He does tell us, when they do, we’re not alone,” Starr said. “That’s the hope, for me, is that we get a chance to lean into our faith, we get a chance to lean into our neighbors, we get a chance to lean into each other, our family, a little bit more.”Knox County, a largely rural community of about 62,000 residents including a medium-size Amish population, lies about an hour east of the state capital, Columbus. Despite its numerous farms, most people in the county work blue-collar manufacturing jobs at several local factories.The county, which is 97% white, is a conservative stronghold that voted for Trump by a nearly 3-1 margin in November and went overwhelmingly for him in 2016.An exception is Kenyon College, a small liberal arts school perched on a hill a few miles outside of Mount Vernon. Voters in the precincts comprising the college and the village of Gambier voted 8-1 for President-elect Joe Biden.To help prompt more locals to engage in the post-reading conversation, Doerries worked with leaders from multiple faith traditions. Among them is Marc Bragin, Jewish chaplain at Kenyon, who said he hopes the experience can help people who share bigger values look beyond their differences.Bragin, administrator of a project backed by the nonprofit Interfaith Youth Core that partners Kenyon students with counterparts at nearby Mount Vernon Nazarene University, said he’s hopeful they will attend the discussion and take away an important lesson: “Surround yourself with people who aren’t like you,” he said, “and you can have such a bigger impact on your community, your world.”Pastor LJ Harry, who has also been recruiting people for the virtual conversation, does not believe Knox County is as divided as other places in the country. The police chaplain and pastor at the Apostolic Christian Church in Mount Vernon said most in the area are united in their support for Trump and for law enforcement, with protests after the death of George Floyd spirited but peaceful.Harry said the community’s biggest point of contention is over mask-wearing, with many resisting Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s statewide mandate. He likened Knox County’s need for healing to that of a hospital patient who has left intensive care but remains in a step-down unit, and said he hopes the performance will drive home God’s central role in Job’s story.”That’s the message I’m hoping our church family, our community, hears,” Harry said. “God has this in control, even though it feels like it’s out of control.”In the biblical tale, God allows for Job’s massive losses as a means to share broader truths about suffering. The story ends with the restoration of what was taken from him, plus more.Theater of War held its first Job reading in Joplin, Missouri, a year after a tornado killed more than 160 people there in 2011. The company has performed more than 1,700 readings worldwide, harnessing Greek drama and other resonant texts to evoke deeper dialogues about an array of issues.Doerries acknowledged that his company’s readings always have the potential to fall flat if a genuine back-and-forth doesn’t develop. Still, he’s betting that Sunday’s event will create space for people from different backgrounds, in Ohio and beyond, to engage with each other.  “Our hope is not that there’s going to be a group hug at the end of the thing, or that we’re going to resolve all our political differences, but that we can remind people of our basic humanity…what it requires to live up to basic values such as treating our neighbor as ourselves,” Doerries said.
 
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Christmas tradition won out over the coronavirus in Prague on Saturday with a COVID-19-compliant, socially distanced St. Nicholas giving out presents to excited children.Under normal circumstances, St. Nicholas, a bearded man accompanied by the devil and an angel, would give children in the Czech Republic presents in exchange for a song or a poem.But with coronavirus measures around the world throwing up obstacles to festive celebrations, Prague-based circus company Cirk La Putyka opted for a drive-through solution.”Over the past nine months we have been looking for different ways to approach the audience,” company director Rosta Novak told AFP.”This is just another way to do that at a time when theaters can’t play and bands cannot perform,” he added.Members of circus company Cirk La Putyka dressed as devils entertain people during their drive-through performance, Dec. 5, 2020, in Prague.In line with tradition, cars first drove through “hell,” with devils performing acrobatic tricks and fire shows.Then they proceeded to “heaven” with angels and finally to St. Nicholas himself.The children received presents at the final stop, many of them sticking their heads out of windows to relish the experience.Driving a van full of children, Ondrej Prachar said they had all been thrilled.”It was absolutely perfect,” he said, adding that it had also been a tad less frightening than the traditional version, when children are sometimes scared by the idea of the devil carrying a bag in which he puts naughty kids.The St. Nicholas tradition dates to the Middle Ages, and St. Nicholas Day is celebrated in many countries.Born in Turkey around 280, St. Nicholas, the patron saint of sailors, tradesmen, pilgrims and children, handed out a sizable portion of his wealthy parents’ property to the poor after their death.
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After interviewing Dan Quayle in Arizona for his documentary on the vice presidency, filmmaker Jeffrey Roth was rushing to the airport to catch a flight to Wyoming, where he had an appointment with Dick Cheney the next morning.He had little time to spare. Suddenly, traffic halted for a motorcade to pass. It was Vice President Mike Pence and his entourage.Roth appreciates the irony. At least, he can now. He made his flight, “President in Waiting” is finished and set to debut on CNN Saturday at 9 p.m. Eastern.He interviewed all six living vice presidents and four presidents about a job that for much of American history was considered a joke, an appendage to government with few real duties other than being available to become the world’s most powerful figure at a moment’s notice.”Ben Franklin, when the Constitution was written, said, ‘we should refer to the vice president as ‘his superfluous excellency,'” President-elect Joe Biden, who served eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president, says in the film.Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney (2008 photo)Roth’s doc includes several similar quotes, including the classic by John Nance Garner, Franklin Roosevelt’s first vice president, who said the job was “not worth a bucket of warm piss.” Cheney said Gerald Ford described it as the worst nine months of his life and urged him not to become George W. Bush’s running mate.So why would Roth want to devote three years of his life to making it?”For whatever reason, I was always fascinated by the office of the vice presidency and I thought there was an intriguing story behind it,” he said.Achieving access was his most important task. Two or three veeps wouldn’t do. He needed them all, and each wanted to know the others were participating. Walter Mondale was his first interview; Al Gore and Pence took a year and a half to set up, he said.Ultimately, his only scheduling failure was Donald Trump.Roth also didn’t want to make the type of film that would unspool in a high school social studies class, putting all the students to sleep.”It’s a tough bunch of people to squeeze comedy out of,” said Courtney Sexton, senior vice president of CNN Films.But it has moments, like when Obama and Biden both struggle to edit the language of some of their conversations for public consumption. Both Cheney and his boss, George W. Bush, tell a funny story about their dogs clashing at Camp David.Cheney is a revelation in the film, considering he knows he was considered the Darth Vader of the Bush administration. He’s engaging and entertaining, with a keen awareness of his own role and the job’s spot in history.His insider look at what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, as well as Biden’s description of the deliberations before the killing of Osama bin Laden, are particularly illuminating.Walter Mondale told Jimmy Carter he’d only become his running mate if given a meaningful role in the administration and an office in the White House.The film also describes the role of Mondale and his president, Jimmy Carter, in essentially creating the modern vice presidency. It’s a turning point many viewers are likely unaware of; Roth said it was news to him.Mondale, a Minnesota senator, knew how Hubert Humphrey felt about his treatment at the hands of President Lyndon Johnson, and “President in Waiting” contains audio of Johnson essentially treating Humphrey as a lapdog. He told Carter he’d only become his running mate if given a meaningful role in the administration and an office in the White House. He composed a memo outlining his ideas that’s still referenced today.Vice presidents lost their invisibility. Biden talks about being in the room when key decisions are made and being copied in on internal correspondence. It’s difficult to imagine a repeat of 1945, when Harry Truman succeeded Roosevelt and didn’t know that the United States had developed an atomic bomb.Still, the limitations are visible when you listen to Bush. His vice president, Cheney, is widely considered the most powerful vice president, or close to it.”I don’t know what the definition of a powerful vice president is,” Bush says in the film. “I think people have got to recognize that the vice president is empowered by the president.”That’s also stated explicitly by Pence, whose role in the Trump administration gets little examination in the film. Whatever the modern precedent, a president can easily render the vice president’s role meaningless again.In another month, the first woman, Kamala Harris, will join the vice president’s club.Considering its title, the film spends surprisingly little time talking about the most important part of the job. No American under age 60 has any memory of a vice president suddenly elevated because of a president’s death. Ford took over upon the resignation of President Richard Nixon 46 years ago.How did that knowledge change each man’s life? How did they keep prepared for the possibility?Roth said none of the politicians had much illuminating to say on the topic.”There was not much of a story to be told there,” he said.  
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In a sign of just how much coronavirus lockdowns have affected the movie industry, Warner Bros. announced Thursday that it would make its entire roster of 2021 movies available for streaming on HBO Max in the U.S. the same day they are released in theaters.After a month on HBO Max, the movies will be shown only in theaters.Some of the upcoming titles include The Matrix 4, Godzilla vs. Kong and In the Heights.The move may have been sparked by the disappointing performance of the action-thriller Tenet, which was released in theaters in September.Many of the nation’s movie theaters reopened in late summer, but not in the key markets of New York and Los Angeles. The Associated Press reported that since their reopening, 60% of theaters have closed again.“No one wants films back on the big screen more than we do,” Ann Sarnoff, chief executive of WarnerMedia Studios, said in a statement. “We know new content is the lifeblood of theatrical exhibition, but we have to balance this with the reality that most theaters in the U.S. will likely operate at reduced capacity throughout 2021.”Warner Bros., the second-biggest studio in terms of market share, called the move a “unique one-year plan.”
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Even in Africa’s most vibrant cinematic market,Ife stands out. The tale of love between two Nigerian women is so controversial the filmmakers scrapped plans to release it locally.  VOA‘s Anita Powell has more from Johannesburg.Videographer: Zaheer Cassim, Producer:  Zeheer Cassim, Marcus Harton
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Rafer Johnson, who won the decathlon at the 1960 Rome Olympics and helped subdue Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin in 1968, died Wednesday. He was 86.He died at his home in the Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, according to family friend Michael Roth. No cause of death was announced.Johnson was among the world’s greatest athletes from 1955 through his Olympic triumph in 1960, winning a national decathlon championship in 1956 and a silver medal at the Melbourne Olympics that same year.His Olympic career included carrying the U.S. flag at the 1960 Games and lighting the torch at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to open the 1984 Games. Johnson set world records in the decathlon three different times amid a fierce rivalry with his UCLA teammate C.K. Yang of Taiwan and Vasily Kuznetsov of the former Soviet Union.Johnson won a gold medal at the Pan American Games in 1955 while competing in just his fourth decathlon. At a welcome home meet afterward in Kingsburg, California, he set his first world record, breaking the mark of his childhood hero, two-time Olympic champion Bob Mathias.Devoted to KennedyOn June 5, 1968, Johnson was working on Kennedy’s presidential campaign when the Democratic candidate was shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Johnson joined former NFL star Rosey Grier and journalist George Plimpton in apprehending Sirhan Sirhan moments after he shot Kennedy, who died the next day.”I knew he did everything he could to take care of Uncle Bobby at his most vulnerable moment,” Kennedy’s niece, Maria Shriver, said by phone. “His devotion to Uncle Bobby was pure and real. He had protected his friend. Even after Uncle Bobby’s death he stayed close.”Johnson later called the assassination “one of the most devastating moments in my life.”Born Rafer Lewis Johnson on August 18, 1934, in Hillsboro, Texas, he moved to California in 1945 with his family, including his brother Jim, a future NFL Hall of Fame inductee. Although some sources cite Johnson’s birth year as 1935, the family has said that is incorrect.They eventually settled in Kingsburg, near Fresno in the San Joaquin Valley. It was less than 25 miles from Tulare, the hometown of Mathias, who would win the decathlon at the 1948 and 1952 Olympics and prove an early inspiration to Johnson.Johnson was a standout student and played football, basketball, baseball and track and field at Kingsburg Joint Union High. At 6-foot-3 and 200-plus pounds, he looked more like a linebacker than a track and field athlete.FILE – This Sept. 6, 1960, photo shows the top three finishers in the decathlon of the 1960 Rome Summer Olympics at Olympic Stadium in Rome: Rafer Johnson, Yang Chuan and Vasili Kuznetsov.During his junior year of high school, Johnson’s coach took him to Tulare to watch Mathias compete in a decathlon, an experience Johnson later said spurred him to take up the grueling 10-event sport.As a freshman at UCLA, where he received academic and athletic scholarships, Johnson won gold at the 1955 Pan Am Games and set a world record of 7,985 points.After winning the national decathlon championship in 1956, Johnson was the favorite for the Olympics in Melbourne but pulled a stomach muscle and strained a knee while training. He was forced to withdraw from the long jump, for which he had also qualified, but tried to gut out the decathlon.Johnson’s teammate Milt Campbell, a virtual unknown, gave the performance of his life, finishing with 7,937 points to win gold, 350 ahead of Johnson.It was the last time Johnson would ever come in second.Johnson, Yang and Kuznetzov dominated the record books between the 1956 and 1960 Olympics.Kuznetzov, a two-time Olympic bronze medalist whom the Soviets called their “man of steel,” broke Johnson’s world record in May 1958 with 8,016 points.Later that year at a U.S.-Soviet dual meet in Moscow, Johnson beat Kuznetzov by 405 points and reclaimed the world record with 8,302 points. Johnson won over the Soviet audience with his gutsy performance in front of what had been a hostile crowd.A car accident and subsequent back injury kept Johnson out of competition during 1959, but he was healthy again for the Olympics in 1960.Final event dramaYang was his primary competition in Rome. Yang won six of the first nine events, but Johnson led by 66 points going into the 1,500 meters, the decathlon’s final event.Johnson had to finish within 10 seconds of Yang, which was no small feat as Yang was much stronger running at distance than Johnson.Johnson finished just 1.2 seconds and six yards behind Yang to win the gold. Yang earned silver and Kuznetsov took bronze.At UCLA, Johnson played basketball for coach John Wooden, becoming a starter on the 1958-59 team. In 1958, he was elected student body president, the third Black to hold the office in school history.”He stood for what he believed in and he did it in a very classy way with grace and dignity,” Olympic champion swimmer Janet Evans said by phone.Evans last saw Johnson, who attended her 2004 wedding, at a luncheon in his honor in May 2019.”We were all there to fete him and he just didn’t want to be in the spotlight,” she said. “That was one of the things I loved about him. He didn’t want credit.”Johnson retired from competition after the Rome Olympics. He began acting in movies, including appearances in “Wild in the Country” with Elvis Presley, “None But the Brave” with Frank Sinatra and the 1989 James Bond film “License to Kill.” He worked briefly as a TV sportscaster before becoming a vice president at Continental Telephone in 1971.FILE – Rafer Johnson joins thousands at Piedmont Park to support the fight against HIV/AIDS at the 28th annual Atlanta AIDS Walk & 5K Run, Oct. 21, 2018, in Atlanta.In 1984, Johnson lit the Olympic flame for the Los Angeles Games. He took the torch from Gina Hemphill, granddaughter of Olympic great Jesse Owens, who ran it into the Coliseum.”Standing there and looking out, I remember thinking, ‘I wish I had a camera,’ ” Johnson said. “My hair was standing straight up on my arm. Words really seem inadequate.”Throughout his life, Johnson was widely known for his humanitarian efforts.He served on the organizing committee of the first Special Olympics in Chicago in 1968, working with founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Johnson founded California Special Olympics the following year at a time when positive role models for the intellectually and physically disabled were rare.”Rafer really paved the path for many of us to understand the responsibilities that come with being a successful athlete and the number of lives you can impact and change,” Evans said.’An extraordinary man’Maria Shriver recalled meeting Johnson for the first time at age 10 or 11 through her mother, Eunice.”He and I joked that I’ve been in love with him ever since,” she said. “He really was an extraordinary man, such a loving, gracious, elegant, humble man who handled his success in such a beautiful way and stayed so true to himself throughout his life.”Peter Ueberroth, who chose Johnson to light the Olympic torch in 1984, called him “just one great person, a marvelous human being.”Johnson worked for the Peace Corps, March of Dimes, Muscular Dystrophy Association and American Red Cross. In 2016, he received the UCLA Medal, the university’s highest award for extraordinary accomplishments. The school’s track is named for Johnson and his wife, Betsy.His children, Jenny Johnson Jordan and Josh Johnson, were athletes themselves. Jenny was a beach volleyball player who competed in the 2000 Sydney Olympics and is on the coaching staff of UCLA’s beach volleyball team. Josh competed in javelin at UCLA, where he was an All-American.Besides his wife of 49 years and children, he is survived by son-in-law Kevin Jordan and four grandchildren.
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Poverty, drugs, alcohol, frequent disappearances of young women and the absence of law enforcement are all issues plaguing the Pine Ridge Native American Reservation in South Dakota. But women there are trying to make the future better and brighter as they work to create “a girl society” that is aimed at helping girls aged 10 to 18.
Camera: Vladimir Badikov; Video Editor: Matvey Kulakov; Produced by: Joy Wagner 
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People magazine has named George Clooney, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Selena Gomez and Regina King as the “2020 People of the Year.”
The magazine revealed its list Wednesday morning as part of a year-end double issue with four covers. The four will be celebrated for their positive impact in the world during a challenging 2020.US actor and activist George Clooney speaks at a press conference about South Sudan in London, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2019. The largest multinational oil consortium in South Sudan is “proactively participating in the destruction” of the country, the…Clooney, Fauci, Gomez and King will be separately featured on the magazine covers of the issue, which is out Friday.
Clooney has received some Oscar buzz for his upcoming film “The Midnight Sky,” but the actor was also in spotlight for his advocacy work. He donated $500,000 to the Equal Justice Initiative in wake of George Floyd’s death and $1 million for COVID-19 relief efforts in Italy, London and Los Angeles.
As the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Fauci provided steady guidance during the turbulent pandemic. As the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, he has been one of the nation’s leading sources of information about the fight against COVID-19.FILE – Selena Gomez .Gomez released her chart-topping album “Rare” and hosted the cooking show “Selena + Chef” on HBO Max. But the pop superstar also spread her message of inclusion through her makeup brand Rare Beauty, which set the goal of raising $100 million in 10 years to help give people access to mental health initiatives.Regina King arrives at the Oscars on Sunday, Feb. 24, 2019, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.King, who won an Emmy in September, used her voice to encourage people to vote. The actor also called for support of marginalized communities during the pandemic and end police brutality of unarmed Black people. Her directorial debut, “One Night in Miami,” has also been talked about as a possible Oscar contender.
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If you were to choose a word that rose above most in 2020, which word would it be?
Ding, ding, ding: Merriam-Webster on Monday announced “pandemic” as its 2020 word of the year.
“That probably isn’t a big shock,” Peter Sokolowski, editor at large for Merriam-Webster, told The Associated Press.
“Often the big news story has a technical word that’s associated with it and in this case, the word pandemic is not just technical but has become general. It’s probably the word by which we’ll refer to this period in the future,” he said.
The word took on urgent specificity in March, when the coronavirus crisis was designated a pandemic, but it started to trend up on Merriam-Webster.com as early January and again in February when the first U.S. deaths and outbreaks on cruise ships occurred.
On March 11, when the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic, lookups on the site for pandemic spiked hugely. Site interest for the word has remained significantly high through the year, Sokolowski said.
By huge, Sokolowski means searches for pandemic on March 11 were 115,806% higher than lookups experienced on the same date last year.
Pandemic, with roots in Latin and Greek, is a combination of “pan,” for all, and “demos,” for people or population. The latter is the same root of “democracy,” Sokolowski noted. The word pandemic dates to the mid-1600s, used broadly for “universal” and more specifically to disease in a medical text in the 1660s, he said.
That was after the plagues of the Middle Ages, Sokolowski said.
He attributes the lookup traffic for pandemic not entirely to searchers who didn’t know what it meant but also to those on the hunt for more detail, or for inspiration or comfort.
“We see that the word love is looked up around Valentine’s Day and the word cornucopia is looked up at Thanksgiving,” Sokolowski said. “We see a word like surreal spiking when a moment of national tragedy or shock occurs. It’s the idea of dictionaries being the beginning of putting your thoughts in order.”
Merriam-Webster acted quickly in March to add and update entries on its site for words related to the pandemic. While “coronavirus” had been in the dictionary for decades, “COVID-19” was coined in February. Thirty-four days later, Merriam-Webster had it up online, along with a couple dozen other entries that were revised to reflect the health emergency.
“That’s the shortest period of time we’ve ever seen a word go from coinage to entry,” Sokolowski said. “The word had this urgency.”
Coronavirus was among runners up for word of the year as it jumped into the mainstream. Quarantine, asymptomatic, mamba, kraken, defund, antebellum, irregardless, icon, schadenfreude and malarkey were also runners up based on lookup spikes around specific events.
Particularly interesting to word nerds like Sokolowski, a lexicographer, is quarantine. With Italian roots, it was used during the Black Death of the 1300s for the period of time a new ship coming into port would have to wait outside a city to prevent disease. The “quar” in quarantine derives from 40, for the 40 days required.
Spikes for mamba occurred after the January death of Kobe Bryant, whose nickname was the Black Mamba. A mass of lookups occurred for kraken in July after Seattle’s new National Hockey League franchise chose the mythical sea monster as its name, urged along by fans.
Country group Lady Antebellum’s name change to Lady A drove dictionary interest in June, while malarkey got a boost from President-elect Joe Biden, who’s fond of using the word. Icon was front and center in headlines after the deaths of U.S. Rep. John Lewis and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
The Merriam-Webster site has about 40 million unique monthly users and about 100 million monthly page views.
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