Rapper Kanye West, in his first event since declaring himself a presidential candidate, ranted against historical figure Harriet Tubman on Sunday, saying the Underground Railroad conductor “never actually freed the slaves, she just had them work for other white people,” comments that drew shouts of opposition from some in the crowd.West delivered a lengthy monologue, touching on topics from abortion and religion to international trade and licensing deals, before a crowd in North Charleston, South Carolina. Whether he is actually seeking the nation’s highest office remains a question.Tubman is one of the most respected figures of 19th century America. An African American who escaped slavery, she helped enslaved Black men and women travel north to freedom and fought for the Union during the Civil War. She later became a supporter of women’s suffrage.  On abortion, West said that while he believes it should be legal, financial incentives to help struggling mothers could be a way to discourage the practice.”Everybody that has a baby gets a million dollars,” he said as an example.Wearing a protective vest and with “2020” shaved into his head, the entertainer appeared on a livestream of the event. Several hundred people gathered in a venue, where gospel music played before West’s appearance.The event was reportedly for registered guests only, although a campaign website had no registration or RSVP information.Speaking without a microphone, West became tearful at one point while talking about his mother, who died following plastic surgery complications in 2007.West missed the deadline to qualify for the ballot in several states, and it was unclear if he was willing or able to collect enough signatures required to qualify in others. Last week, he qualified to appear on Oklahoma’s presidential ballot, the first state where he met the requirements before the filing deadline.West needed to collect 10,000 signatures by noon Monday to appear on the South Carolina ballot, according to state law. The entertainer tweeted out a list of locations around the Charleston area where petitions could be signed. Email to an address purportedly associated with the campaign was not returned Sunday afternoon.West, who is married to reality television star Kim Kardashian West, initially announced his candidacy on July 4. 
 
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Amber Heard began giving testimony at Britain’s High Court on Monday against ex-husband Johnny Depp, who she has accused of abusing her both physically and verbally during their tempestuous relationship.
Depp, 57, is suing News Group Newspapers, publisher of the Sun, and the paper’s executive editor, Dan Wootton, at the court in London over an April 2018 article that called him a “wife-beater.” The Hollywood star strongly denies abusing Heard. He was at the court to hear Heard’s evidence.
In the first session of her testimony that is expected to last for three days, Heard denied accusations that she was a heavy drug-taker and drinker as well as being controlling and abusive herself.  
She also described an incident in January 2015 in a hotel room in Tokyo over a prenuptial agreement between herself and Depp, and suggested there was an argument about it.
“There was an argument in a hotel room in Tokyo that resulted in Johnny kneeling on my back and hitting me on the back of the head,” she said.
In written testimony released as she took to the witness box, Heard said she worried Depp would kill her at various times during their relationship that saw her enduring “punching, slapping, kicking, head-butting and choking.” She also said “some incidents were so severe that I was afraid he was going to kill me, either intentionally or just by losing control and going too far.”  
According to the 34-year-old Heard, Depp “explicitly threatened to kill me many times, especially later in our relationship” and that he blamed his actions on “a self-created third party” that he referred to as “the monster.”  
Heard has been present throughout the trial, watching the proceedings as her ex-husband gave evidence over five days.  
She is facing questioning over 14 allegations of domestic violence that The Sun’s publisher News Group Newspapers is relying on in its defense of the April 2018 article.
Depp and Heard met in 2009 on the set of the film “The Rum Diary,” which was released two years later. They married in Los Angeles in February 2015. Heard filed for divorce the following year, and the divorce was finalized in 2017.
The Sun’s defense relies on the 14 allegations made by Heard of violence by Depp between 2013 and 2016, in settings including his private island in the Bahamas, a rented house in Australia and the couple’s downtown Los Angeles penthouse.
Depp claims Heard was the aggressor during their volatile relationship, which he has likened to “a crime scene waiting to happen.”
In nine days of testimony at the High Court, judge Andrew Nicol has heard from Depp and from several current or former employees who have backed his version of events.
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The Tokyo Olympics next year will use the same venues and follow an almost identical competition schedule as the one originally planned for this year before the event was postponed because of the novel coronavirus pandemic, organizers said Friday.However, organizers told an IOC session held by videoconference that it was too early to give details on coronavirus prevention measures during the games or on whether events would be in full or partly full stadiums, or behind closed doors.The International Olympic Committee and Japanese government decided in March to postpone the games until 2021 and organizers have been working to rearrange an event almost a decade in the making.The Olympics had been set to begin on July 24 this year.FILE – Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee CEO Toshiro Muto attends a news conference after a Tokyo 2020 executive board meeting in Tokyo, March 30, 2020.”Today, we are able to report that we have confirmed both the competition schedule and the use of all venues originally planned for this year, including the venue for the athletes village and the main press center,” said Tokyo 2020 CEO Toshiro Muto.The new schedule means women’s softball will get competition underway at 9 a.m. (0000 GMT) in Fukushima on July 21, two days before the games officially open, with all events taking place a day earlier than the 2020 schedule.There have also been some minor changes to session times.Biggest everThe games are set to be the biggest ever in terms of events, with a record 339 medals available before the closing ceremony on August 8, although organizers say they will be simplified.Muto said all of the 42 venues have been secured, overcoming one of the biggest hurdles for organizers as many had already been booked for 2021.This means the marathon and race walking events will remain in the northern city of Sapporo after being controversially moved out of Tokyo because of anticipated scorching summer heat.One of the biggest questions concerns how many people will be able to travel to the games and watch the events.”This is of course one of the scenarios we have to look into, because this has to do with travel restrictions and quarantine, and it’s too early to tell,” said IOC President Thomas Bach, speaking from the organization’s headquarters in Lausanne.”We would like to see stadiums full of enthusiastic fans to give them all the opportunity to live the Olympic experience, support the athletes, and this is what we are working for,” added Bach, who earlier said he was prepared to stand for reelection next year.”We cannot address the details yet. … There cannot be a solution today. This is asking too much,” he said.Massive taskJohn Coates, the head of the IOC’s coordination commission, said that securing the venues had been a “massive task.””We are talking about venues in different ownership,” he told the session.”We are talking also of securing the Olympic village, which has been constructed by a consortium of 11 different companies, who have agreed to put back the date when they will be able to hand over the apartments to the public.”The next challenge for Tokyo organizers is developing measures to help prevent a COVID-19 outbreak during the games and how much the delay will cost Japanese taxpayers.Muto said decisions would be made on these issues in the autumn. “We will be having a full-fledged discussion over COVID-19 countermeasures,” he said.”But, as an example, the topics and themes we may discuss are immigration control, enhanced testing structures and the establishment of treatment systems and measures against COVID-19 in the areas of accommodation and transport.”
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Nigerian comedy siblings the Ikorudu Boiz went viral in June for their online parody the Hollywood action thriller “Extraction,” using household items and toys as props and their environment in Ikorodu, Lagos for sets.  The video has so far been viewed more than 11 million times on Twitter. Nigeria’s own film industry — Nollywood — has also had to get creative with staying productive and safe during the COVID-19 pandemic.    Actor Bashir Datti rehearses his lines as 10 others, including a camera crew,  set up a scene in an open field on the outskirts of Jos, Nigeria.  Datti said the coronavirus has cost him a lot of work.   “This is my first set since this corona of a thing started and what I experienced today is that it is not an easy task,” Datti said. “We’ll just learn to live with the virus, life goes on, we need to adjust ourselves and keep on going, because if you say that because of the fear of the virus, you will not come on set, you have nothing to do apart from film making.”  Movie audiences sit in their parked cars as they watch “Living in Bondage” at a drive-in cinema, following the relaxation of lockdown, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Abuja, Nigeria, May 20, 2020.Nollywood produces the second largest number of films in the world each year, after India’s Bollywood, and employs over one million people.    But the coronavirus shut down cinemas globally and forced many filmmakers to delay productions. Award winning Nollywood filmmaker, Kenneth Gyang says the pandemic is creating new challenges.  “Recently there has been this whole conversation about what is going to happen.  What are filmmakers supposed to do?” Gyang said.  “And we have been having the conversation that right now before you get on set, you have to test your cast and crew, you have to isolate them in a particular place, for maybe 14 days, before you get on set.  So, there has been a lot of spike in the budget that filmmakers will normally spend.”  The added costs have forced some Nollywood directors to cut back on the quantity of films.  But aspiring filmmaker William Chidube said he sees it as an opportunity to work smarter.  “We can always all multitask,“ Chidube said. “You know we can do a lot of things!  Especially now you don’t have the luxury to deal with a large crew, you can begin to do more than one thing, that you know you are strong in and are good at. You are good at editing and good at shooting, so you do the both of them.”  Creatively scripting scenes for social distancing is key to coping with the realities of COVID-19, says writer-director Umar Turaki.     “So, what is it to stop a group of young people writing a story maybe around a particular piece of scenery, around a particular hill, around a particular tree and producing that,” Turaki said. “But really I feel like the most important thing is to be able to challenge ourselves in terms of the writing and conceptualization in a way that allow us to produce work that doesn’t expose us to the dangers of COVID-19.”   While Nollywood has taken a hit from the pandemic, Nigerian filmmakers are confident that if they use their creative energies, the industry will recover and thrive. 
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Nigeria’s aspiring young filmmakers have been gaining international attention while the Nigeria’s film industry, known as Nollywood, has been coping with the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Adjusting the world’s second most productive film business to social distancing has been costly but it’s also sparking more creativity.  Ifiok Ettang reports from Jos, Nigeria.
Camera: Ifiok Ettang
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From New York to Alabama to Oregon, many tangible displays of African American culture and heritage are in deep disrepair. Due to a lack of recognition and funding, these spaces are slowly being lost before their full story can be told. But a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation will help maintain 27 historic sites that showcase African American perseverance, activism and contributions to the nation. 
 
The trust’s This Jan. 29, 2019, photo shows homes in Africatown in Mobile, Alabama, established by the last boatload of Africans abducted into slavery and shipped to the United States.“These 27 sites represent examples of Black resilience, activism and excellence. And as a collection, they begin to elevate the historic landscapes and buildings that tell an underrecognized and unappreciated story about the United States,” says Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.   Over the past two years, 65 historic African American sites received more than $4.3 million to help preserve and restore places that exemplify Black life and cultural heritage.Grant recipient “While We Are Still Here” seeks to preserve Harlem history, including buildings that housed a cross section of Black America. (Courtesy While We Are Still Here)Educator Booker T. Washington and Sears Roebuck president Julius Rosenwald built schools like grant recipient May’s Lick in Maysville, Kentucky, in the early 1900s for Black students in the South. (Mays Lick Community Development Board)The recent Black Lives Matter protests have helped shine a light on the need to restore historic Black spaces. Leggs says the Action Fund has received more online donations, and he is hopeful that current talks with corporations and others will result in large gifts to help extend the Action Fund’s reach and impact. “To be able to preserve these kinds of places help our nation learn more about the complexity and breadth of its own history,” Leggs says. “There’s power in truth, and preservation begins to reveal more of the truth.” 
 
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Last year saw record representation of LGBTQ characters in the 118 films released by major studios, according to a new study by GLAAD. But for the third straight year, the racial diversity of LGBTQ characters has waned and transgender characters again went unseen.
GLAAD called the decrease in non-white LGBTQ characters “concerning.” In 2019, 34% of LGBTQ characters were people of color. That’s down from 42% in 2018 and 57% in 2017.
“GLAAD is calling on the studios to ensure that within two years at least half of their LGBTQ characters are people of color,” said the advocacy group that tracks representation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the media.
For the third year in a row, transgender characters were also absent from major studio releases.
But overall, GLAAD found higher rates of inclusion than it has in the eight years its been tracking studio films. Of the 118 films studied, 22 (18.6%) included lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer characters. That’s a slight increase from 18.2% in 2018.
But none of the studios studied — the Walt Disney Co., Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, STX Films and United Artists Releasing — received a “good” or higher grade for LGBTQ representation. Sony and Disney received “poor” grades. STX Films, which released “Hustlers,” “21 Bridges” and “Uglydolls” last year, failed GLAAD’s test since their 2019 movies featured zero LGBTQ representation.
GLAAD has sought that studios reach inclusion of LGBTQ characters in 20% of their films by 2021 and 50% by 2024. Paramount, Lionsgate, Disney and United Artists reached the 20% level last year.
Screen time is also an issue. In many of Hollywood’s biggest films, LGBTQ characters — when included — came and went. Only nine of the 22 films with an LGBTQ character featured one with more than 10 minutes of screen time.  
“Despite seeing a record high percentage of LGBTQ-inclusive films this year, the industry still has a long way to go in terms of fairly and accurately representing the LGBTQ community,” said GLAAD President and CEO, Sarah Kate Ellis. “If film studios want to stay relevant to today’s audiences and compete in an industry that is emphasizing diversity and inclusion, then they must urgently reverse course on the diminishing representation of LGBTQ women and people of color, as well as the complete absence of trans characters.” 
 
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The International Olympic Committee (IOC) remains fully committed to staging the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021 and is considering multiple scenarios for them to take place safely, IOC President Thomas Bach said Wednesday. Japan and the IOC postponed the Tokyo Games until 2021 in March because of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Organizers have since spoken of trying to simplify the event — which had been due to start on July 24 — to reduce costs and ensure athletes’ safety. Bach said the IOC’s coordination commission had reported “very good work in progress” and that more details would be given to a full IOC session which will take place by video conference on Friday. Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee, attends a meeting of IOC’s executive board in Lausanne, Switzerland, July 15, 2020.”We remain fully committed to celebrating Tokyo 2020 next year in July and August,” Bach told reporters in a conference call. “The entire IOC is following the principle we established before the postponement (in March) that the first priority is about the safety of all participants.” “We continue to be guided by the advice of the World Health Organization (WHO) and based on this advice we are preparing multiple scenarios,” he added. “We don’t know the health situation one year from now.” He said that holding events without spectators was clearly something the IOC did not want. “We are working for a solution which on the one hand is safeguarding the health of all participants and on the other hand is also reflecting the Olympic spirit,” Bach added. Bach also said the IOC had agreed with host nation Senegal to postpone the 2022 Youth Olympic Games in Dakar until 2026. “This allows the IOC and national Olympic committees to better plan activities which have been strongly affected by the postponement of the 2020 Olympic Games and subsequent postponement of other major sports events,” he said. The decision will have to be ratified by the full IOC session on Friday. 
 
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In the digital age, you can take acting lessons from Samuel L. Jackson or enjoy basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar personally wishing you a happy birthday. Online firms like Cameo and MasterClass are democratizing access to celebrities by turning the famous into gig economy workers. Tina Trinh reports
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New York Philharmonic’s first and only African-American principal player took a stand of his own for the Black Lives Matter movement. In a black-and-white video posted on social media platforms, clarinetist Anthony McGill called on musicians to #taketwoknees for Black lives. Elena Wolf has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.VIDEOGRAPHER: Dmitrii Vershinin, Elena Matusovsky 
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“Glee” star Naya Rivera ‘s 4-year-old son told investigators that his mother, whose body was found in a Southern California lake Monday, boosted him back on to the deck of their rented boat before he looked back and saw her disappearing under the water, authorities said.  “She must have mustered enough energy to get her son back on the boat, but not enough to save herself,” Ventura County Sheriff Bill Ayub said at a news conference.  The boy, Josey Hollis Dorsey, was found asleep and alone in a life vest on the drifting pontoon boat about three hours after they launched on Lake Piru northwest of Los Angeles, setting off a five-day search that ended with the discovery of the body of the 33-year-old floating near the surface early Monday, authorities said.  The mother and son had gone swimming, which was permitted in that part of the lake, Ayub said. She was not wearing a life vest.  Authorities believe that Rivera drowned accidentally, and that her body was most likely trapped in the vegetation under the lake for several days before floating to the top, Ayub said.  Divers had already thoroughly searched the area where she was eventually found, but shrubbery that had grown wildly in the area, which was recently dry, must have kept her hidden in the murky water.  Family members chatted with Rivera via FaceTime when she was on the boat, and search crews watched those videos for clues to where she might have gone down, Ayub said.  “It has been an extremely difficult time for her family throughout this ordeal,” Ayub said “We share in their grief.”  FILE – Actress Naya Rivera participates in the “Step Up: High Water” panel during the YouTube Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour in Pasadena, California, Jan. 13, 2018.Rivera played singing cheerleader Santana Lopez for six seasons from 2009 to 2015 on the Fox musical-comedy “Glee.” She is the third major cast member from the show to die in their 30s.  The announcement of her death comes seven years to the day after co-star Cory Monteith died at 31 from a toxic mix of alcohol and heroin, with the series losing one of its leads while it was still on the air.  Another co-star, Mark Salling, who Rivera dated at one point, killed himself in 2018 at age 35 after pleading guilty to child pornography charges.  Rivera’s body was flown by helicopter 40 miles (64 kilometers) to the coroner’s office in Ventura, where an autopsy would be conducted and an official identification made, authorities said. Ayub said the circumstances from the location of the body to the fact that no one else has been reported missing in the lake makes the department “confident that the body we found is Naya Rivera.”  Rivera had experience boating on the lake in Los Padres National Forest an hour’s drive from Los Angeles.  It was closed down and searched by dozens of divers with help from sonar and robotic devices combing the bottom and helicopters and drones searching above.  Surveillance video showed the mother and son parking and renting the boat at about 1 p.m. on July 8.  The vendor who rented it to them went looking for them when they failed to return on time, and found the boat drifting in the northern end of the lake with the boy aboard.  The boy, Rivera’s son from her marriage to actor Ryan Dorsey, was safe and healthy and quickly reunited with family members after he was found, authorities said.  His parents divorced in 2018 after nearly four years of marriage.  The day before her death, Rivera tweeted a photo of herself and Josey that read, “just the two of us.”  
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Anthropologist Lawrence Kuznar isn’t a fan of Confederate statues, but he feels Americans have a lesson to learn from them. “I’m not necessarily against taking them down,” says the professor of anthropology at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, who is in the process of retiring.“It’s easy to get emotional and excited in a group and go tear down a monument. It absolutely does nothing to address a deep racial and political divide that really seems to be tearing this country apart. Even lawfully removing them, I think, should be done in a thoughtful way.” As the Black Lives Matter protests gained momentum nationwide in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in police custody, some demonstrators took it upon themselves to bring the statues down. Other monuments are being removed by local authorities. Overall, dozens of statues have been removed, and countless others vandalized nationwide.  Isaiah Bowen, right, takes a shot as his dad, Garth Bowen, center, looks on at a basketball hoop in front of the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, June 21, 2020.In addition to Confederate statues, other monuments that are viewed as symbols of oppression and systemic racism are also being targeted. On Independence Day, a crowd tore down a statue of Christopher Columbus and dumped it in the Baltimore Inner Harbor.   There were 1,747 symbols honoring the Confederacy in public spaces, according to a 2019 report from the FILE – A carving in Stone Mountain, Georgia, depicting Confederate leaders Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, is America’s largest Confederate memorial.The SPLC found construction of the monuments actually spiked in the early 1900s, and then again in the 1950s and ‘60s during times of civil rights tension.  “The stated purpose was to honor men who symbolized such values as valor and honor, but the actual purpose was to affirm the power relationships between Black and white southerners,” James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, told VOA in an email. “These monuments reminded everyone, in a very public way, that white people would maintain their monopoly on power.  That, Kuznar says, is precisely the history Confederate monuments can tell.  “They say something about the U.S. If more people understood the political forces behind why many, not all, but many of the Confederate statues were erected in the Jim Crow era … (it’s) a rather dark chapter of the nation’s history,” he says. “Taking the statues away makes it harder to bring that story out to people. Quite frankly, I think it makes it harder for us to tell and memorialize the full truth of the nation’s history.”   Defaced bronze sculpture on the base of the statue of Confederate general, Albert Pike, after protestors toppled the Pike statue, June 20, 2020, in Washington.Jim Crow laws were state and local statutes enacted in the American South in the late 1800s and early 1900s to enforce racial segregation. While some might view removing statues as “whitewashing” history, others see taking them down as correcting a false narrative.  “Whitewashing history is what the statues were doing in the first place by setting up as heroes men who committed treason in defense of the supposed right of some people to own other people. That’s the ‘whitewash,’” Grossman says. “That is the attempt to cleanse the reputations of men who deserve no honor for what they did or what they stood for.”  Anthropologist Lawrence Kuznar at Cueva Quellaveco, Peru in 1989. (Photo courtesy Lawrence Kuznar)Kuznar points out that removing or destroying monuments isn’t new. Spanish conquerors destroyed Aztec and Inca monuments. Russia removed several Soviet-era statues after the fall of the USSR. The Taliban blew up a pair of ancient sandstone Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan in 2001.  Kuznar, who has an archeological background, cautions against moving too quickly in the heat of passion or due to political expediency.  “I think communities erected these things. I think the communities themselves need to have some very sober, very serious discussion about why is that statue there,” he says. “Do we want to memorialize this person anymore? Can we use the statue to tell a more complete story of the nation’s history? And for them to decide accordingly whether they want that there or not.”  
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A New York state judge lifted a stay on Monday that had temporarily blocked Donald Trump’s niece from publishing a book offering an unflattering look at the U.S. president and his family. Justice Hal Greenwald of the state Supreme Court in Poughkeepsie, New York, denied the request to stop publication and canceled the temporary restraining order he issued on June 30 against Mary Trump and her publisher, Simon & Schuster, at the request of Robert Trump, the brother of the president. Simon & Schuster was due to release the book on Tuesday. Robert Trump said previously that the release of “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man” would violate a confidentiality agreement tied to the estate of his father, Fred Trump Sr., who died in 1999. Mary Trump, a trained psychologist, is Fred Trump’s granddaughter. “Notwithstanding that the Book has been published and distributed in great quantities, to enjoin Mary L. Trump at this juncture would be incorrect and serve no purpose,” Greenwald said in his decision. “It would be moot. … To quote United States v. Bolton, 2020, ‘By the looks of it the horse is not just out of the barn, it is out of the country,'” he wrote. Mary Trump’s attorney, Theodore Boutrous, said in a statement: “The court got it right in rejecting the Trump family’s effort to squelch Mary Trump’s core political speech on important issues of public concern.” Lawyers for Robert Trump could not immediately be reached for comment. The book’s publication comes as the Republican president seeks a second term in the Nov. 3 election. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has described it as a “book of falsehoods.” Mary Trump applies her training in psychology to conclude in the book that the president likely suffers from narcissism and other clinical disorders – and was boosted to success by a father who fueled those traits. She writes of a “malignantly dysfunctional family” dominated by a patriarch, Fred Trump, who showed little interest in his five children other than grooming an heir for his real-estate business. Ultimately, he settled on Donald, she wrote, deciding that his second son’s “arrogance and bullying” would come in handy at the office, and encouraged it. 
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The body of “Glee” star Naya Rivera was found Monday at a Southern California lake, authorities said.  Ventura County Sheriff’s officials confirmed at an afternoon news conference that the body that search crews found floating in the northeast corner of Lake Piru earlier in the day was the 33-year-old Rivera.  The discovery came five days after the 33-year-old Rivera disappeared on Lake Piru, where her son was found July 8 asleep and alone on a rented pontoon boat, authorities said.  Authorities said the following day that they believed Rivera had drowned, and they had shifted to working to find her body rather than find her alive.  The body was flown 40 miles (64 kilometres) to the coroner’s office in Ventura, where an autopsy would be conducted, Sheriff’s Capt. Eric Buschow said. Rivera’s family has been notified of the discovery.  The lake an hour’s drive from Los Angeles was searched by dozens of divers working in waters with little visibility, with help from sonar and robotic devices combing the bottom and helicopters and drones searching above.  “I can’t imagine what it’s like for her parents, her family,” Buschow said. “It takes an emotional toll on the search teams too.”  Rivera played singing cheerleader Santana Lopez for six seasons on the Fox musical-comedy “Glee.” She is the third major cast member from the show to die in their 30s.  FILE – Cory Monteith, a cast member in “Glee,” poses at the television show’s second season premiere in Los Angeles, Sept. 7, 2010.The confirmation of her death comes seven years to the day after co-star Cory Monteith died at 31 from a toxic mix of alcohol and heroin, with the series losing one of its leads while it was still on the air.  Another co-star, Mark Salling, who Rivera dated at one point, killed himself in 2018 at age 35 after pleading guilty to child pornography charges.  Rivera had experience boating on the lake in Los Padres National Forest, authorities said. Surveillance video shows Rivera and her son, Josey Hollis Dorsey, leaving on the rented boat. When the boat failed to return, its vendor found the vessel drifting in the northern end of the lake late Wednesday afternoon with the boy asleep on board, about three hours after it was first taken out. The boy told investigators that he and his mother had been swimming and he got back into the boat but she didn’t, according to a sheriff’s office statement. The boy was wearing a life vest, and another life jacket was found in the boat along with Rivera’s purse and identification. The boy, Rivera’s son from her marriage to actor Ryan Dorsey, was safe and healthy and quickly reunited with family members after he was found, authorities said.  His parents divorced in 2018 after nearly four years of marriage.  The most recent tweet on Rivera’s account, from the day before her death, read “just the two of us” along with a photo of her and her son. 
  
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After a Paris auction house defied his requests and those of Nigerian authorities to halt the sale of artifacts over questions of provenance, a scholar says he’ll push harder for repatriating cultural treasures. “For those who think the story is over, it’s not. We are just beginning,” said Chika Okeke-Agulu, a Princeton University professor of African and American diaspora art, whose Twitter petition for #BlackArtsMatter has drawn thousands of supporters.   Okeke-Agulu’s comments followed Christie’s June 29 auction, which included the sale of Nigerian artifacts, including two Igbo sacred statues. The pair sold to an anonymous buyer for $239,000, NigeriaIn mid-June, five activists dislodged a funeral pole at the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris, demanding its return to Africa. The activists face trial in September. Such demands have echoes that are both global and longstanding. Greece, for example, has fought for two centuries to reclaim the ancient Elgin marbles from Britain. ‘Complex debates’ Nigeria “was saddened” by the Christie’s sale, the lawyer representing the country’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments French President Emmanuel Macron speaks during the closing press conference at the G5 Sahel summit on June 30, 2020, in Nouakchott, Mauritania.Okeke-Agulu contends that Nigeria’s government needs to do more to halt the trade in stolen goods and reckon with “the sordid histories of collecting” during and after the colonial period. “There are legal instruments that can be applied to stopping the sale of illegal, illegally exported cultural property,” he said, adding that he expects Nigerian authorities “to pursue these objects much more robustly than they have done up until now.” Nigeria’s diplomatic approachAliyu L. Abdu, who directs Nigeria’s museums commission, told VOA in an email that its members appreciate “the strong protests expressed by concerned citizens such as Professor Chika Okeke to assert his cultural right as a member of a community whose cultural integrity and sensitivity (have) been violated by commercial interest.” But, he wrote, the government entity is “taking a more comprehensive approach,” using diplomatic and institutional channels for recovering Nigeria’s “cultural patrimony.” Abdu cited the Benin Dialogue Group as an example. The initiative aims to establish a museum in southern Nigeria’s Edo state capital, Benin City, that would reunite looted artworks now scattered around the globe. Representatives from Nigeria, including from the commission, are collaborating with museum directors and delegates from Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom.   The group has “started the moves to identify and inventory thousands of Nigerian artifacts in European museums for repatriation through an agreeably mutual process,” Abdu wrote. “However, that angle does not substitute prompt reaction towards recovery of our stolen artifacts that has come to light. As long as Nigeria has noted, recorded and tracked the movements of  objects exposed through Christie’s auction, the matter can no longer be denied or suppressed, so we shall continue our efforts of recovery through all available means, which happily are becoming more available.” Examining ethics of collecting Okeke-Agulu also has called on public museums that own looted African objects to come clean about where the objects came from and how they were obtained. American museums, like their European counterparts, are grappling with repatriation. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, wary of the provenance of some African items it received in a bequest, in 2014 contacted Nigeria’s museums commission. “When the commission confirmed that export documents had been forged, the MFA returned the (eight) works in question,” ARTnews magazine reported last summer. The same story noted that Maryland’s Baltimore Museum of Art – with more than 2,500 African works, including ancient sculptures and modern paintings – was creating a Cultural Property Working Group to assess the museum’s collection policies. The group had hoped to complete its recommendations by late this year, but it has been delayed by the pandemic, the museum told VOA in an email.      In Okeke-Agula’s opinion, “negotiation about the status and ownership of these objects ought to begin sooner rather than later, and until there is a lot of pressure put on the institutions or the private collections that have them, they’re not going to do anything.”  “It’s not a sprint,” he said of his campaign. “What I want to be associated with is a long journey, and as I said, we’re only beginning.” VOA Africa Division’s Jason Patinkin and Carol Guensburg reported from Washington, with additional reporting by Catherine Field in Paris. 
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A body was found Monday at a Southern California lake during the search for “Glee” star Naya Rivera, authorities said.The body was discovered five days after the 33-year-old Rivera disappeared on Lake Piru, where her son was found July 8 alone a few hours later on a boat the two had rented, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office said.Authorities would not immediately say if the person found was Rivera, but said the day after she disappeared that they believed she drowned in the lake northwest of Los Angeles. A 2 p.m. press conference was scheduled.Search crews found the body floating in the northeast area of the lake and the county medical examiner was notified, authorities said.The lake an hour’s drive from Los Angeles was searched by dozens of divers working in waters with little visibility, with help above from helicopters, drones and all-terrain vehicles.Rivera played singing cheerleader Santana Lopez for six seasons on the Fox musical-comedy “Glee.” If she is declared dead, she will become the third major cast member from the show to die in their 30s.Cory Monteith, one of the show’s leads, died at 31 in 2013 from a toxic mix of alcohol and heroin.And co-star Mark Salling, who Rivera dated at one point, killed himself in 2018 at age 35 after pleading guilty to child pornography charges.Rivera had experience boating on the lake in Los Padres National Forest, authorities said.Surveillance video shows Rivera and her son, Josey Hollis Dorsey, leaving on the rented boat.When the boat failed to return, its vendor found the vessel drifting in the northern end of the lake late Wednesday afternoon with the boy asleep on board. He told investigators that he and his mother had been swimming and he got back into the boat but she didn’t, according to a sheriff’s office statement.The boy was wearing a life vest, and another life jacket was found in the boat along with Rivera’s purse and identification.Rivera is believed to have drowned “in what appears to be a tragic accident,” the statement said.The boy, Rivera’s son from her marriage to actor Ryan Dorsey, was safe and healthy and with family members, authorities said. The couple finalized their divorce in June 2018 after nearly four years of marriage.The most recent tweet on Rivera’s account, from July 7, read “just the two of us” along with a photo of her and her son. 
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The son of Lisa Marie Presley has died. He was 27.  Presley’s representative Roger Widynowski said in a statement Sunday to The Associated Press that she was “heartbroken” after learning about the death of her son Benjamin Keough. He is the grandson of the late Elvis Presley.  TMZ reports that Keough died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound Sunday in Calabasas, California.  “She is completely heartbroken, inconsolable and beyond devastated but trying to stay strong for her 11-year-old twins and her oldest daughter Riley,” Widynowski said in the statement. “She adored that boy. He was the love of her life.” Presley had Keough and actress Riley Keough, 31, with her former husband Danny Keough. She also had twins from another marriage.  Nancy Sinatra tweeted her condolences to Presley, writing, “I have known you since before your mama gave birth to you, never dreaming you would have pain like this in your life. I’m so very sorry.” 
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Kelly Preston, who played dramatic and comic foil to actors ranging from Tom Cruise in “Jerry Maguire” to Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Twins,” died Sunday, husband John Travolta said. She was 57. Travolta said in an Instagram post that his wife of 28 years died after a two-year battle with breast cancer.  “It is with a very heavy heart that I inform you that my beautiful wife Kelly has lost her two-year battle with breast cancer,” Travolta said. “She fought a courageous fight with the love and support of so many.” The couple had three children together. “Shocked by this sad news,” Maria Shriver said on Twitter. “Kelly was such a bright loving soul, a talented actress, and a loving mom and wife. My heart breaks for her family who have already known such sadness and grief.” Preston had a lengthy acting career in movies and television, starring opposite Kevin Costner in the 1999 film “For the Love of the Game.” In 2003, she starred in “What a Girl Wants” and as the mom in the live-action adaptation of “The Cat in the Hat.” The following year she appeared in the music video for Maroon 5’s “She Will Be Loved.” Russell Crowe tweeted that he met Preston “first in late ’92 I think,” adding, “In 1995 we auditioned together for Breaking Up, Salma Hayek got that gig.” Crowe said he hadn’t seen Preston much, “but when I did, she was always the same sparkly eyed gem.” She occasionally appeared in films with her husband, as they did in the box-office bomb “Battlefield Earth” in 2000. Preston and Travolta were married at a midnight ceremony in Paris in 1991 while the couple were expecting their first son, Jett. In January 2009, Jett Travolta, 16, died after a seizure at the family’s vacation home in the Bahamas. The death touched off a court case after an ambulance driver and his attorney were accused of trying to extort $25 million from the actors in exchange for not releasing sensitive information about their son’s death. Travolta testified during a criminal trial that ended in a mistrial and was prepared to testify a second time, but decided to stop pursuing the case and it was dismissed. He cited the severe strain the proceedings and his son’s death had caused the family.  Both Preston and Travolta returned to acting, with Preston’s first role back in the Nicholas Sparks adaptation, “The Last Song,” which starred Miley Cyrus and her future husband, Liam Hemsworth. They had two other children, daughter Ella Bleu in 2000 and son Benjamin in 2010. Ella wrote on Instagram Sunday: “I have never met anyone as courageous, strong, beautiful and loving as you. Anyone who is lucky enough to have known you or to have ever been in your presence will agree that you have a glow and a light that never ceases to shine and that makes anyone around you feel instantly happy.” Travolta and Preston met while filming 1988’s “The Experts.” They last starred together in the 2018 film “Gotti,”  with Travolta playing John Gotti and Preston playing the crime boss’s wife, Victoria.  “Kelly’s love and life will always be remembered,” Travolta said on Instagram. “I will be taking some time to be there for my children who have lost their mother, so forgive me in advance if you don’t hear from us for a while. But please know that I will feel your outpouring of love in the weeks and months ahead as we heal.” Preston’s death was first reported by People magazine. 
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Bollywood star and former Miss World Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and her eight-year-old daughter tested positive for the coronavirus, state officials confirmed Sunday. The news follows an announcement Saturday that her father-in-law Amitabh Bachchan and her husband Abhishek tested positive and were admitted to the hospital. Though Amitabh Bachchan, 77, was admitted to the hospital, he is reportedly stable with only mild symptoms, Rajesh Tope, minister of public health for the state of Maharashtra, said in a tweet Sunday. महानायक अमिताभ बच्चन व अभिषेक बच्चन यांची कोरोना टेस्ट पॉझिटिव्ह आल्याने ते मुंबई येथील नानावटी हॉस्पिटलमध्ये ऍडमिट आहेत. FILE – Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan waving to fans in Mumbai, India, Dec. 13, 2018.Legendary actor Bachchan, who has starred in over 200 of Indian films since the early 1970s, tweeted on Saturday that he had tested positive for the virus.  “Family and staff undergone tests , results awaited … All that have been in close proximity to me in the last 10 days are requested to please get themselves tested !” he wrote. T 3590 -I have tested CoviD positive .. shifted to Hospital .. hospital informing authorities .. family and staff undergone tests , results awaited ..All that have been in close proximity to me in the last 10 days are requested to please get themselves tested !— Amitabh Bachchan (@SrBachchan) July 11, 2020His son Abhishek tweeted a similar message shortly afterward. Earlier today both my father and I tested positive for COVID 19. Both of us having mild symptoms have been admitted to hospital. We have informed all the required authorities and our family and staff are all being tested. I request all to stay calm and not panic. Thank you. 🙏🏽— Abhishek Bachchan (@juniorbachchan) July 11, 2020Amitabh Bachchan has been a prominent figure in India’s campaign to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus, filming ads about wearing masks and appealing to citizens to stay home. Still, despite enforcing one of the most strict lockdowns in the world earlier this year, India’s case numbers of COVID-19 are rising.  Over 27,000 new cases have been reported in the past 24 hours, with over 500 new deaths.  With nearly 850,000 confirmed cases, India has the third highest rate of COVID-19 infections in the world, after Brazil and the United States.  
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“The Most Magical Place on Earth” is reopening after nearly four months with new rules in place to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom are reopening Saturday, while Epcot and Disney’s Hollywood Studios will follow four days later.The reopening comes as a huge surge of Floridians have tested positive for the new coronavirus in recent weeks. Many cities and counties around the state have recently reinstated restrictions that had been lifted in May, when cases seemed to drop.Disney Plans to Reopen Florida Parks July 11 Walt Disney World says parks will enforce social distancing, require masksAll of Disney’s Orlando parks closed in mid-March in an effort to stop the virus’s spread.Universal Orlando and SeaWorld Orlando closed around the same time but reopened several weeks ago after instituting similar rules to protect employees and customers from the virus.Disney’s new rules include mandatory masks and social distancing. Visitors will need reservations to enter a park, and they won’t be allowed to hop between parks. Both visitors and employees will receive temperature checks when they enter. Fireworks shows and parades have been suspended to prevent drawing too many people together.Disney has been opening its parks back up around the globe for the past two months. In May, the company opened Disney Springs, a complex of shops, restaurants and entertainment venues in Lake Buena Vista.
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Johnny Depp described the breakdown of his marriage to Amber Heard on Friday in a London court, saying the last straw came when feces were found in the couple’s bed after a party.Depp was wrapping up his evidence in his libel case against a British tabloid newspaper that accused him of physically abusing Heard. The Hollywood star is suing News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun, and the paper’s executive editor, Dan Wootton, over an April 2018 article that called him a “wife-beater.”In three and a half days in the witness box at the High Court, Depp has described a volatile relationship that descended into screaming matches which sometimes turned physical. But he has strongly denied hitting Heard and accused her of compiling a dossier of fake claims against him as an “insurance policy.”Depp, 57, and Heard, 34, met on the set of the 2011 comedy “The Rum Diary” and married in Los Angeles in February 2015. Heard, a model and actress, filed for divorce the following year and obtained a restraining order against Depp on the grounds of domestic abuse. The divorce was finalized in 2017.Depp said one of the triggering incidents for the couple’s separation came when a cleaner found feces in a bed at their Los Angeles penthouse the morning after Heard’s 30th birthday party in April 2016.Heard blamed the couple’s Yorkshire terriers, Pistol and Boo, but Depp was convinced a person had done it.”It was not left by a three- or four-pound dog. I was convinced that it was either Ms Heard herself or one of her cohorts involved in leaving human feces on the bed,” he said.He said that after this he realized that the marriage could not be saved.”I wanted nothing to do with her,” Depp said. “I thought that was an oddly fitting end to the relationship.”The Sun’s defense relies on a total of 14 allegations by Heard of Depp’s violence between 2013 and 2016. He strongly denies all of them.Under cross-examination by The Sun’s lawyer, Sasha Wass, Depp has depicted a tumultuous relationship with Heard during a period when he was trying to kick drugs and alcohol, and sometimes lapsing.  He said he came to feel he was in a “constant tailspin” and recalled telling Heard several times: “Listen, we are a crime scene waiting to happen.” But he denied being violent.Depp has denied Heard’s claims he assaulted her while under the influence of alcohol and drugs, in settings including his private island in the Bahamas, a rented house in Australia and the couple’s Los Angeles penthouse.The Sun’s lawyer alleged that during a fight at the penthouse in December 2015, Depp trashed Heard’s wardrobe, threw a decanter at her, slapped her, pulled her by the hair and headbutted her, causing two black eyes.The lawyer said Depp was “in an uncontrollable rage” and “screaming you were going to kill her.”Depp claimed Heard was the aggressor, and he had only tried to restrain her “to stop her flailing and punching me.” He conceded he might have head-butted her, but only by accident, and denied causing her injuries.Depp also rejected Heard’s claim that he subjected her to a “three-day ordeal of assaults” in March 2015 in Australia, where Depp was appearing as Capt. Jack Sparrow in the fifth “Pirates of the Caribbean” film.He agreed that the couple had an altercation, which ended up with their rented house being trashed and Depp’s fingertip being severed to the bone.Depp accuses Heard of cutting off his fingertip by throwing a vodka bottle at him. She denies being in the room when the digit was severed.According to Heard, Depp snorted cocaine, swigged Jack Daniels from the bottle, broke bottles, screamed at Heard, smashed her head against a refrigerator, threw her against a pingpong table and broke a window.”These are fabrications,” he said.Depp has admitted in court that he may have done things he can’t remember while he was under the influence of alcohol and drugs. But he denied he could have been physically abusive and not remember it.”There were blackouts, sure, but in any blackout there are snippets of memory,” Depp said.Heard is attending the three-week trial and is scheduled to give evidence next week. 
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The Rolling Stones will release a new version of their 1973 album “Goats Head Soup” featuring three unheard tracks, including one featuring Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page. The band announced on Thursday that the release on Sept. 4 will include a four-disc CD and vinyl box set editions that includes 10 bonus tracks, including outtakes and alternative versions.  Page appears on a song called “Scarlet,” and the Stones also released a video for one of the unheard songs, called “Criss Cross.” “Goats Head Soup” features one of the band’s well-known acoustic ballads, “Angie.” 
 
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