Mexican artisans are struggling to preserve the traditional manufacture of paper cut-out decorations long used in altars for the Day of the Dead.

Defying increasingly popular mass-production techniques, second-generation paper cutter Yuridia Torres Alfaro, 49, still makes her own stencils at her family’s workshop in Xochimilco, on the rural southern edge of Mexico City.

As she has since she was a child, Torres Alfaro punched stunningly sharp chisels into thick piles of tissue paper at her business, “Papel Picado Xochimilco.”

While others use longer-lasting plastic sheets, laser cutters or pre-made stencils, Torres Alfaro does each step by hand, as Mexican specialists have been doing for 200 years.

In 1988, her father, a retired schoolteacher, got a big order for sheets — which usually depict festive skeletons, skulls, grim reapers or Catrinas — to decorate city government offices.

“The business was born 34 years ago, we were very little then, and we started helping in getting the work done,” Torres Alfaro recalled.

Begun in the 1800s, experts say “papel picado” using tissue paper is probably a continuation of a far older pre-Hispanic tradition of painting ceremonial figures on paper made of fig-bark sheets. Mexican artisans adopted imported tissue paper because it was cheap and thin enough so that, with sharp tools, extreme care and a lot of skill, dozens of sheets can be cut at the same time.

But the most important part is the stencil: its design designates the parts to be cut out, leaving an intricate, airy web of paper that is sometimes strung from buildings or across streets. More commonly, it is hung above Day of the Dead altars that Mexican families use to commemorate — and commune with — deceased relatives.

The holiday begins Oct. 31, remembering those who died in accidents; it continues Nov. 1 to mark those died in childhood, and then those who died as adults on Nov. 2.

Traditionally, the bright colors of the paper had different meanings: Orange signified mourning, blue was for those who drowned, yellow was for the elderly deceased and green for those who died young.

But many Mexicans — who also use the decorations at other times of year, stringing them at roof-height along streets — now prefer to buy plastic, which lasts longer in the sun and the rain.

Still other producers have tried to use mass-produced stencils, which means that tens of thousands of sheets might bear exactly the same design.

“Stencils began to appear for making papel picado, because it is a lot of work if you have to supply a lot of people,” said Torres Alfaro, who still hand-cuts her own stencils with original designs.

“We wanted to keep doing it the traditional way, because it allows us to make small, personalized lots, and keep creating a new design every day,” she says.

Another rival was the U.S. holiday Halloween, which roughly coincides with Day of the Dead. Because it is flashier and more marketable — costumes, movies, parties and candy — Halloween has gained popularity in Mexico.

“For some time now, there has been a bit more Halloween,” said Torres Alfaro. “We do more traditional Mexican things. That is part of the work, to put Mexican things in papel picado. If we do Halloween things, it’s only on order” from customers.

Still others have tried to use 21st-century technology, employing computer-generated designs and laser cutters.

But Torres Alfaro says that concentrating so much on the cutting leaves out the most important part: the delicate webs of paper left behind.

“There are some laser machines that are gaining popularity, but we have checked them and the costs are the same, the machines still cut hole-by-hole and they can’t cut that many sheets,” she said.

“The (ready-made) stencils and the laser machine have their downsides,” she said. “Papel picado is based on what can be cut, and what can’t, and that is the magic of papel picado.”
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At least 120 people were killed in a crush during a Halloween celebration in South Korea’s capital Seoul late on Saturday. 

Here are details of some of the worst stampedes over the last three decades: 

April 1989: Ninety-six people are killed and at least 200 injured in Britain’s worst sports disaster after a crowd surge crushed fans against barriers at the English F.A. Cup semi-final match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield. 

July 1990: Inside Saudi Arabia’s al-Muaissem tunnel near the Muslim holy city of Mecca, 1,426 pilgrims are crushed to death during Eid al-Adha, Islam’s most important feast, at the end of the annual hajj pilgrimage. 

May 1994: A stampede near Jamarat Bridge in Saudi Arabia during the hajj kills 270 in the area where pilgrims hurl stones at piles of rocks symbolizing the devil. 

April 1998: One hundred and nineteen Muslim pilgrims are crushed to death during the hajj in Saudi Arabia. 

May 2001: In Ghana, at least 126 people are killed in a stampede at Accra’s main soccer stadium when police fire tear gas at rioting fans in one of Africa’s worst soccer disasters. 

February 2004: A stampede kills 251 Muslim pilgrims in Saudi Arabia near Jamarat Bridge during the hajj ritual stoning of the devil. 

January 2005: At least 265 Hindu pilgrims are killed in a crush near a remote temple in India’s Maharashtra state.  

August 2005: At least 1,005 people die in Iraq when Shi’ites stampede off a bridge over the Tigris river in Baghdad, panicked by rumors of a suicide bomber in the crowd.

January 2006: Three hundred and sixty-two Muslim pilgrims are crushed to death at the eastern entrance of the Jamarat Bridge when pilgrims jostle to perform the hajj stoning ritual. 

August 2008: Rumors of a landslide trigger a stampede by pilgrims in India at the Naina Devi temple in Himachal Pradesh state. At least 145 people die and more than 100 are injured. 

September 2008: In India, 147 people are killed in a stampede at the Chamunda temple, near the historic western town of Jodhpur. 

July 2010: A stampede kills 19 people and injures 342 when people push through a tunnel at the Love Parade techno music festival in Duisburg, Germany. 

November 2010: A stampede on a bridge in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, kills at least 350 people after thousands panic on the last day of a water festival. 

January 2013: More than 230 people die after a fire breaks out at a nightclub in the southern Brazilian college town of Santa Maria, and a stampede crushes some of the victims and keeps others from fleeing the fumes and flames.  

October 2013: Devotees crossing a long, concrete bridge towards a temple in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh panic when some railings break, triggering a stampede that kills 115. 

September 2015: At least 717 Muslim pilgrims are killed and 863 injured in a crush at the hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. 

April 2021: At least 44 people are crushed to death at an overcrowded religious bonfire festival in Israel in what medics said was a stampede. 

November 2021: At least nine people are killed and scores injured in a crush at the opening night of rapper Travis Scott’s Astroworld music festival in Houston, Texas, triggered by a surge of fans pushing toward the stage.  

January 2022: At least 12 Hindu pilgrims died and more than a dozen are injured in a stampede at the Mata Vaishno Devi shrine in Kashmir during events to mark the New Year. 

January 2022: A stampede at a church on the outskirts of Liberia’s capital Monrovia killed 29 people during an all-night Christian worship event.   

May 2022: At least 31 people die during a stampede at a church in Nigeria’s southern Rivers state, after people who turned up to receive food at the church broke through a gate.   

October 2022: A stampede at a soccer stadium in Indonesia kills at least 125 people and injures more than 320 after police sought to quell violence on the pitch, authorities said. 
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It happened at a music festival in Houston, a soccer stadium in England, during a hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, in a Chicago nightclub, and countless other gatherings: Large crowds surge toward exits, onto playing fields or press up against a stage with such force that people are literally squeezed to death.  

And it has happened again, during Halloween festivities in the South Korean capital Seoul, where a crowd pushed forward, the narrow street they were on acting as a vice, leaving more than 140 people dead and 150 more injured.   

The risk of such tragic accidents, which receded when venues closed and people stayed home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, has returned.  

To be sure, most events where large crowds gather happen without injury or death, with fans coming and going without incident. But those that went horribly wrong shared some common traits. Here is a look at why that happens:  

How do people die at these events?  

While movies that show crowds desperately trying to flee suggest getting trampled might be the cause of most of the deaths, the reality is most people who die in a crowd surge are suffocated.  

What can’t be seen are forces so strong that they can bend steel. That means something as simple as drawing breath becomes impossible. People die standing up and those who fall die because the bodies on top of them exert such pressure that breathing becomes impossible. 

“As people struggle to get up, arms and legs get twisted together. Blood supply starts to be reduced to the brain,” G. Keith Still, a visiting professor of crowd science at the University of Suffolk in England, told NPR after the Astroworld crowd surge in Houston last November. “It takes 30 seconds before you lose consciousness, and around about six minutes, you’re into compressive or restrictive asphyxia. That’s a generally the attributed cause of death — not crushing, but suffocation.”  

 

What is the experience of being swept into a crush of people like?

Survivors tell stories of gasping for breath, being pushed deeper under what feels like an avalanche of flesh as others, desperate to escape, climb over them. Of being pinned against doors that won’t open and fences that won’t give. 

“Survivors described being gradually compressed, unable to move, their heads ‘locked between arms and shoulders … faces gasping in panic,’” according to a report after a human crush in 1989 at the Hillsborough soccer stadium in Sheffield, England, led to the deaths of nearly 100 Liverpool fans. “They were aware that people were dying, and they were helpless to save themselves.” 

What triggers such events?  

At a Chicago nightclub in 2003, a crowd surge began after security guards used pepper spray to break up a fight. Twenty-one people died in the resulting crowd surge. And this month in Indonesia, 131 people were killed when tear gas was fired into a half-locked stadium, triggering a crush at the exits. 

In Nepal in 1988, it was a sudden downpour that sent soccer fans rushing toward locked stadium exits, leading to the deaths of 93 fans. In the latest incident in South Korea, some news outlets reported that the crush occurred after a large number of people rushed to a bar after hearing that an unidentified celebrity was there. 

But still, the British professor who has testified as an expert witness in court cases involving crowds, pointed to a variation of the age-old example of someone shouting “Fire” in a crowded movie theater. He told the AP last year that what lights the fuse of such a rush for safety in the U.S., more than in any other country, is the sound of someone shouting: “He has a gun!” 

What role did the pandemic play?  

Stadiums are filling up again. During the pandemic, as games went forward, teams took some creative steps to make things look somewhat normal. Cardboard figures of fans were placed in some of the seats and crowd noise was piped in — a sports version of a comedy show laugh track. 

Now, though, the crowds are back, and the danger has returned. 

“As soon as you add people into the mix, there will always be a risk,” Steve Allen of Crowd Safety, a U.K.-based consultancy engaged in major events around the world, told the AP in 2021. 
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Jerry Lee Lewis, the untamable rock ‘n’ roll pioneer whose outrageous talent, energy and ego collided on such definitive records as “Great Balls of Fire” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and sustained a career otherwise upended by personal scandal, died Friday morning at 87.

The last survivor of a generation of groundbreaking performers that included Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, Lewis died at his Mississippi home, south of Memphis, Tennessee, representative Zach Farnum said in a release. The news came two days after the publication of an erroneous TMZ report of his death, later retracted.

Of all the rock rebels to emerge in the 1950s, few captured the new genre’s attraction and danger as unforgettably as the Louisiana-born piano player who called himself “The Killer.”

Tender ballads were best left to the old folks. Lewis was all about lust and gratification, with his leering tenor and demanding asides, violent tempos and brash glissandi, cocky sneer and crazy blond hair. He was a one-man stampede who made the fans scream and the keyboards swear, his live act so combustible that during a 1957 performance of “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” on “The Steve Allen Show,” chairs were thrown at him like buckets of water on an inferno.

“There was rockabilly. There was Elvis. But there was no pure rock ’n ’roll before Jerry Lee Lewis kicked in the door,” a Lewis admirer once observed. That admirer was Jerry Lee Lewis.

But in his private life, he raged in ways that nearly ended his career.

For a brief time, in 1958, he was a contender to replace Presley as rock’s prime hit maker after the latter was drafted into the Army. But while Lewis toured in England, the press learned three damaging things: He was married to 13-year-old (possibly even 12-year-old) Myra Gale Brown, she was his cousin, and he was still married to his previous wife. His tour was canceled, he was blacklisted from the radio and his earnings dropped overnight to virtually nothing.

“I probably would have rearranged my life a little bit different, but I never did hide anything from people,” Lewis told The Wall Street Journal in 2014 when asked about the marriage. “I just went on with my life as usual.”

Struggles

Over the following decades, Lewis struggled with drug and alcohol abuse, legal disputes and physical illness. Two of his many marriages ended in his wives’ early deaths. Brown herself divorced him in the early 1970s and would later allege physical and mental cruelty that nearly drove her to suicide.

“If I was still married to Jerry, I’d probably be dead by now,” she told People magazine in 1989.

Lewis reinvented himself as a country performer in the 1960s, and the music industry eventually forgave him, long after he stopped having hits. He won three Grammys, and he recorded with some of the industry’s greatest stars. In 2006, Lewis came out with “Last Man Standing,” featuring Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, B.B. King and George Jones. In 2010, Lewis brought in Jagger, Keith Richards, Sheryl Crow, Tim McGraw and others for the album “Mean Old Man.”

In “The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll,” first published in 1975, he recalled how he convinced disc jockeys to give him a second chance.

“This time I said, ‘Look, man, let’s get together and draw a line on this stuff — a peace treaty, you know,’ ” he explained. Lewis would still play the old hits on stage, but on the radio he would sing country.

Lewis had a run of top 10 country hits between 1967 and 1970, and hardly mellowed at all. He performed drinking songs such as “What’s Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me),” the roving eye confessions of “She Still Comes Around” and a dry-eyed cover of a classic ballad of abandonment, “She Even Woke Me Up to Say Goodbye.” He had remained popular in Europe, and a 1964 album, “Live at the Star Club, Hamburg,” is widely regarded as one of the greatest concert records.

A 1973 performance proved more troublesome: Lewis sang for the Grand Ole Opry and broke two long-standing rules — no swearing and no non-country songs.

Lewis married seven times and was rarely far from trouble or death. His fourth wife, Jaren Elizabeth Gunn Pate, drowned in a swimming pool in 1982 while suing for divorce. His fifth wife, Shawn Stephens, 23 years his junior, died of an apparent drug overdose in 1983. Within a year, Lewis had married Kerrie McCarver, then 21. She filed for divorce in 1986, accusing him of physical abuse and infidelity. He countersued, but both petitions eventually were dropped. They finally divorced in 2005 after several years of separation. The couple had one child, Jerry Lee III. Another son by a previous marriage, Steve Allen Lewis, 3, drowned in a swimming pool in 1962, and son Jerry Lee Jr. died in a traffic accident at 19 in 1973.

His finances were also chaotic. Lewis made millions, but he liked his money in cash and ended up owing hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Internal Revenue Service. When he began welcoming tourists in 1994 to his longtime residence near Nesbit, Mississippi — complete with a piano-shaped swimming pool — he set up a 900 phone number fans could call for a recorded message at $2.75 a minute.

First piano

The son of one-time bootlegger Elmo Lewis and the cousin of TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart and country star Mickey Gilley, Lewis was born in Ferriday, Louisiana. As a boy, he first learned to play guitar, but found the instrument too confining and longed for an instrument that only the rich people in his town could afford: a piano. His life changed when his father pulled up in his truck one day and presented him with one.

“My eyes almost fell out of my head,” Lewis recalled in “Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story,” written by Rick Bragg and published in 2014.

He took to the piano immediately and began sneaking off to Black juke joints and absorbing everything from gospel to boogie-woogie. Conflicted early on between secular and scared music, he quit school at 16, with plans of becoming a piano-playing preacher. Lewis briefly attended Southwestern Assemblies of God University in Waxahachie, Texas, a fundamentalist Bible college, but was expelled, reportedly, for playing the “wrong” kind of music.

“Great Balls of Fire,” a sexualized take on biblical imagery that Lewis initially refused to record, and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ ” were his most enduring songs and performance pieces. Lewis had only a handful of other pop hits, including “High School Confidential” and “Breathless,” but they were enough to ensure his place as a rock ‘n’ roll architect.

“No group, be it [the] Beatles, Dylan or Stones, have ever improved on ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ ‘ for my money,” John Lennon would tell Rolling Stone in 1970.

A roadhouse veteran by his early 20s, Lewis took off for Memphis in 1956 and showed up at the studios of Sun Records, the musical home of Presley, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. Told by company founder Sam Phillips to go learn some rock ‘n’ roll, Lewis returned and soon hurried off “Whole Lotta Shakin’ ” in a single take.

“I knew it was a hit when I cut it,” he later said. “Sam Phillips thought it was gonna be too risque, it couldn’t make it. If that’s risque, well, I’m sorry.”

In 1986, along with Presley, Berry and others, he made the inaugural class of inductees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and joined the Country Hall of Fame this year. The Killer not only outlasted his contemporaries but saw his life and music periodically reintroduced to younger fans, including in the 1989 biopic “Great Balls of Fire,” starring Dennis Quaid, and Ethan Coen’s 2022 documentary “Trouble in Mind.” A 2010 Broadway musical, “Million Dollar Quartet,” was inspired by a recording session that featured Lewis, Presley, Perkins and Cash.

He won a Grammy in 1987 as part of an interview album that was cited for best spoken word recording, and he received a lifetime achievement Grammy in 2005. The following year, “Whole Lotta Shakin’ ” was selected for the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry, whose board praised the “propulsive boogie piano that was perfectly complemented by the drive of J.M. Van Eaton’s energetic drumming. The listeners to the recording, like Lewis himself, had a hard time remaining seated during the performance.”

A classmate at Bible school, Pearry Green, remembered meeting Lewis years later and asking if he was still playing the devil’s music.

“Yes, I am,” Lewis answered. “But you know it’s strange, the same music that they kicked me out of school for is the same kind of music they play in their churches today. The difference is, I know I am playing for the devil, and they don’t.”

Lewis is survived by his wife, Judith; children Jerry Lee III, Ronnie Lewis, Phoebe Lewis and Lori Lancaster; a sister; and many grandchildren.
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Adidas ended its lucrative partnership with the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, over his offensive and antisemitic remarks, which drew widespread criticism from Jewish groups, celebrities and others on social media who said the German sportswear company was being too slow to act.

The sneaker giant became the latest company to cut ties with Ye, who was suspended from Twitter and Instagram this month over antisemitic posts that the social networks said violated their policies. The outcry swelled after demonstrators on a Los Angeles overpass unfurled a banner Saturday praising Ye’s antisemitic comments.

Adidas said it expected to take a hit of up to 250 million euros ($246 million) to its net income this year from the decision to immediately stop production of its line of Yeezy products and stop payments to Ye and his companies.

“Adidas does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech,” the company said in a statement Tuesday. “Ye’s recent comments and actions have been unacceptable, hateful and dangerous, and they violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness.”

Jewish groups, noting Adidas’ past links to the Nazi regime, said the decision was overdue. The World Jewish Congress noted that during World War II, Adidas factories “produced supplies and weapons for the Nazi regime, using slave labor.”

“I would have liked a clear stance earlier from a German company that also was entangled with the Nazi regime,” said Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, the main Jewish group in the country where Adidas is headquartered.

For weeks, Ye has made antisemitic comments in interviews and social media, including a Twitter post earlier this month that he would soon go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE,” an apparent reference to the U.S. defense readiness condition scale known as DEFCON.

The rapper has alienated even ardent fans in recent years, teasing and long tinkering with albums that haven’t been met with the critical or commercial success of his earlier recordings. Those close to him, like ex-wife Kim Kardashian and her family, have ceased publicly defending him after the couple’s bitter divorce and his unsettling posts about her recent relationship with comedian Pete Davidson.

Ye has told Bloomberg that he plans to cut ties with his corporate suppliers. After he was suspended from Twitter and Facebook, Ye offered to buy conservative social network Parler.

An email message sent to a representative for Ye was not immediately returned.

Adidas, whose CEO Kasper Rorsted is stepping down next year, said it reached its decision after conducting a “thorough review” of its partnership with Ye, whose talent agency, CAA, as well as Balenciaga fashion house had already dropped the rapper.

Despite the growing controversy, Allen Adamson, co-founder of marketing consultancy Metaforce, believes that Adidas’ delayed response was “understandable.”

“It’s a hugely profitable, edgy brand association,” Adamson said. “The positives are so substantial in terms of the audience it appeals to — younger, urban, trendsetters, the size of the business. I’m sure they were hoping against hope that he would apologize and try to make this right.”

Adamson noted that Adidas was facing pressure from everywhere including customers, employees and stakeholders.

“There’s the short-term profits of selling shoes, and then there is the long-term equity of the Adidas brand,” he said.

In the hours before the announcement, some Adidas employees in the United States had spoken out on social media about the company’s inaction.

Sarah Camhi, a director of trade marketing at the company who described herself as Jewish, said in a LinkedIn post that she felt “anything but included” as Adidas.

“remained quiet; both internally to employees as well as externally to our customers” for two weeks after Ye made his antisemitic remarks.

The rapper, who has won 24 Grammy Awards, has been steadily losing audience on radio and even his streaming numbers have declined slightly over the last month. According to data provided by Luminate, an entertainment data and insights company whose data powers the Billboard music charts, his airplay audience slipped from 8 million in the week ending Sept. 22, to 5.4 million in the week ending on Oct. 20. The popularity of his songs on streaming on demand also went down in the same period, from 97 million to 88.2 million, about a 9% drop.

Ye has earned more of a reputation for stirring up controversy since 2016, when he was hospitalized in Los Angeles because of what his team called stress and exhaustion. It was later revealed that he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

He recently suggested slavery was a choice and called the COVID-19 vaccine the “mark of the beast,” among other comments. He also was criticized for wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt to his Yeezy collection show in Paris.

MRC studio announced Monday that it is shelving a complete documentary about the rapper. JPMorganChase and Ye have ended their business relationship, although the banking breakup was in the works even before Ye’s antisemitic comments.

Gap said Tuesday that it is also taking immediate steps to remove Yeezy Gap products from its stores and has shut down yeezygap.com in light of West’s comments. The clothing retailer said that in September it was ending their relationship but at the time, it said that it planned to continue to sell Yeezy Gap products that were in the pipeline.

Jewish groups have pointed to the danger of the rapper’s comments at a time of rising antisemitism. Such incidents in the U.S. reached an all-time high last year, the Anti-Defamation League said in a letter to Adidas last week urging it to break with Ye.

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, applauded the company’s decision to drop Ye.

“This is a very positive outcome,” he said in a statement Tuesday. “It illustrates that antisemitism is unacceptable and creates consequences.”

The saga of Ye, not just with Adidas but with brands like Gap and Balenciaga, underscores the importance of vetting celebrities thoroughly and avoiding those who are “overly controversial or unstable,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail.

“Companies or brands that fail to heed this will get stung, especially if they become overly reliant on a difficult personality to drive their business,” Saunders said.
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A New York City charity art exhibition includes more than 150 war-themed posters designed by Ukrainian artists to show the true impact of Russia’s war on their country. Nina Vishneva has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.

Camera: Alexander Barash
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Leslie Jordan, the actor whose wry Southern drawl and versatility made him a comedy and drama standout on TV series including “Will & Grace” and “American Horror Story,” has died. The Emmy-winner, whose videos turned him into a social media star during the pandemic, was 67. 

“The world is definitely a much darker place today without the love and light of Leslie Jordan. Not only was he a mega talent and joy to work with, but he provided an emotional sanctuary to the nation at one of its most difficult times,” a representative for Jordan said in a statement Monday. “Knowing that he has left the world at the height of both his professional and personal life is the only solace one can have today.” 

The native of Chattanooga, Tennessee, who won an outstanding guest actor Emmy in 2005 for his role as Beverly Leslie in “Will & Grace,” had a recurring role on the Mayim Bialik comedy “Call me Kat” and co-starred on the sitcom “The Cool Kids.” 

Jordan’s other eclectic credits include “Hearts Afire,” “Boston Legal,” “Fantasy Island” and “The United States vs. Billie Holiday.” He played various roles on the “American Horror Story” franchise series. 

Jordan died Monday in a single car crash in Hollywood, according to reports by celebrity website TMZ and the Los Angeles Times, citing unnamed law enforcement sources. 

Jordan earned an unexpected new following in 2021 when he spent time during the pandemic lockdown near family in his hometown. He broke the sameness by posting daily videos of himself on Instagram. 

Many of Jordan’s videos included him asking “How ya’ll doin?” and some included stories about Hollywood or his childhood growing up with identical twin sisters and their “mama,” as he called her. Other times he did silly bits like completing an indoor obstacle course. 

“Someone called from California and said, ‘Oh, honey, you’ve gone viral.’ And I said, ‘No, no, I don’t have COVID. I’m just in Tennessee,'” said Jordan. Celebrities including Michelle Pfeiffer, Jessica Alba and Anderson Cooper, along with brands such as Reebok and Lululemon, would post comments. 

Soon he became fixated with the number of views and followers he had, because there wasn’t much else going on. By the time of his death, he amassed 5.8 million followers on Instagram and another 2.3 million on TikTok. 

“For a while there, it was like obsessive. And I thought, ‘This is ridiculous. Stop, stop, stop.’ You know, it almost became, ‘If it doesn’t happen on Instagram, it didn’t happen.’ And I thought, ‘You’re 65, first of all. You’re not some teenage girl.'” 

The spotlight led to new opportunities. Earlier this month he released a gospel album called “Company’s Comin'” featuring Dolly Parton, Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile, Eddie Vedder and Tanya Tucker. He wrote a new book, “How Y’all Doing?: Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived.” 

It was Jordan’s second book, following his 2008 memoir, “My Trip Down the Red Carpet.” 

“That sort of dealt with all the angst and growing up gay in the Baptist Church and la, la, la, la, la. And this one, I just wanted to tell stories,” he told The Associated Press in a 2021 interview. Among the anecdotes: working with Lady Gaga on “American Horror Story,” how meeting Carrie Fisher led to Debbie Reynolds calling his mother, and the Shetland pony he got as a child named Midnight. 

In a 2014 interview with Philadelphia magazine, Jordan was asked how he related to his role in the 2013 film “Southern Baptist Sissies,” which explores growing up gay while being raised in a conservative Baptist church. 

“I really wanted to be a really good Christian, like some of the boys in the movie. I was baptized 14 times,” Jordan said. “Every time the preacher would say, ‘Come forward, sinners!’ I’d say ‘Oooh, I was out in the woods with that boy, I better go forward.’ My mother thought I was being dramatic. She’d say, ‘Leslie, you’re already saved,’ and I’d say, ‘Well, I don’t think it took.'” 

Jordan said he considered himself a storyteller by nature. 

“It’s very Southern. If I was to be taught a lesson or something when I was a kid, I was told a story,” he told the AP. 

 
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Fierce female leads were once rarities in U.S. action movies. More recently, blockbuster franchises and streaming platforms have placed women at the center of the action, saving the day with their strength and ingenuity. Increasingly, these powerful heroines are ethnically diverse, appealing to wider audiences. VOA’s Penelope Poulou has more. Videographer: Adam Greenbaum, Julie Taboh
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Climate protesters threw mashed potatoes at a Claude Monet painting in a German museum to protest fossil fuel extraction Sunday but caused no damage to the artwork.

Two activists from the group Last Generation, which has called on the German government to take drastic action to protect the climate and stop using fossil fuels, approached Monet’s “Les Meules” at Potsdam’s Barberini Museum and threw a thick substance over the painting and its gold frame.

The group later confirmed via a post on Twitter that the mixture was mashed potatoes. The two activists, both wearing orange high-visibility vests, also glued themselves to the wall below the painting.

“If it takes a painting – with #MashedPotatoes or #TomatoSoup thrown at it – to make society remember that the fossil fuel course is killing us all: Then we’ll give you #MashedPotatoes on a painting!” the group wrote on Twitter, along with a video of the incident.

In total, four people were involved in the incident, according to German news agency dpa.

The Barberini Museum said later Sunday that because the painting was enclosed in glass, the mashed potatoes didn’t cause any damage. The painting, part of Monet’s “Haystacks” series, is expected to be back on display Wednesday.

“While I understand the activists’ urgent concern in the face of the climate catastrophe, I am shocked by the means with which they are trying to lend weight to their demands,” museum director Ortrud Westheider said in a statement.

Police told dpa they had responded to the incident, but further information about arrests or charges was not immediately available.

The Monet painting is the latest artwork in a museum to be targeted by climate activists to draw attention to global warming.

The British group Just Stop Oil threw tomato soup at Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” in London’s National Gallery earlier this month.

Just Stop Oil activists also glued themselves to the frame of an early copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, and to John Constable’s “The Hay Wain” in the National Gallery.
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Salman Rushdie lost sight in one eye and the use of one hand following an attack on stage at a literary event in western New York in August, his agent said.

Andrew Wylie, who represents literary giants such as Saul Bellow and Roberto Bolano, described the extent of the injuries Rushdie suffered in the “brutal” attack in an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais.

Wylie described the author’s wounds as “profound,” and noted the loss of sight of one eye. “He had three serious wounds in his neck. One hand is incapacitated because the nerves in his arm were cut. And he has about 15 more wounds in his chest and torso.”

The agent declined to say whether “The Satanic Verses” author, 75, was still in the hospital more than two months after police said a 24-year-old New Jersey man stabbed the writer in the neck and torso just before Rushdie was to give a lecture at Chautauqua Institution, a retreat about 19 km from Lake Erie.

The novelist was rushed to the hospital after sustaining severe injuries in the attack, including nerve damage in his arm, wounds to his liver, and the likely loss of an eye, Wylie said at the time.

The attack came 33 years after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran’s Supreme Leader, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, calling on Muslims to assassinate Rushdie a few months after “The Satanic Verses” was published. Some Muslims saw passages in the novel about the Prophet Muhammad as blasphemous.

Rushdie, who was born in India to a Muslim Kashmiri family, has lived with a bounty on his head, and spent nine years in hiding under British police protection.

While Iran’s pro-reform government of President Mohammad Khatami distanced itself from the fatwa in the late 1990s, the multimillion-dollar bounty hanging over Rushdie’s head kept growing and the fatwa was never lifted.

Khomeini’s successor, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was suspended from Twitter in 2019 for saying the fatwa against Rushdie was “irrevocable.”

The man accused of attacking the novelist has pleaded not guilty to second-degree attempted murder and assault charges. He is being held without bail in a western New York jail. 
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Many preparations go into the celebration of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, which starts Monday.

There’s cleaning and decorating the house, buying new clothes, visiting friends and family — and of course preparing and sharing food. And although the foods associated with Diwali vary from culture to culture, one central theme is snacks and sweets.

The holiday honors the goddess Lakshmi, goddess of prosperity. It celebrates light over darkness, new beginnings, and the triumph of good over evil.

Roni Mazumdar is the founder and CEO of Unapologetic Foods, a restaurant group that includes Dhamaka and Semma in New York City. He moved to the U.S. from Kolkata when he was 12 and misses the Diwali celebrations of his youth.

“In India, every single relative would be there, and that’s what made it Diwali to me,” he says.

The sweet that encapsulates the delight of the holiday for him is fresh rasgulla, a Bengali sweet with jaggery, a type of brown cane sugar.

“Imagine these little cheese dumplings that are dipped in a sweet jaggery syrup that you can just pop into your mouth all day long. It’s like a divine intervention of mankind,” he says.

The rasgulla he most associates with Diwali are made from nolen gur, a jaggery syrup made from the sap of date palms, which is harvested as Diwali approaches, when the weather gets cooler.

Milk is also a big part of the sweets from Kolkata and eastern India, he says. He loves kacha gulla, made from milk that has been curdled and has a loose texture “like ricotta cheese.” It’s used in many kinds of sweets.

Raghavan Iyer, a cookbook author and James Beard Award winner, has fond memories of Diwali celebrations in Mumbai, where he lived until age 21.

“The food itself is important, but it’s also about the exchange of foods with relatives and friends — that is the fun part of it,” he says. “Growing up, we always knew which neighbors to go to — the houses where the goodies would be really great.”

He remembers fondly a steamed-rice, flour-based dumpling called kozhukattai. His family made two versions: a sweet one made with fresh coconut and jaggery, and a savory one filled with lentils and chilies.

Iyer says Diwali always featured kaaju barfi, bars made from pureed cashews, ghee (clarified butter) and sugar. (Hint to his sister: He is hoping you send him some this year!)

And many desserts, he says, are finished by soaking them in a sweet syrup. One of his favorites is jalebi, which features chickpea flour. It’s dipped in sugar syrup laced with cardamom, saffron and lime.

Leela Mahase from Queens, New York, grew up in a Hindu family in Trinidad. Her Diwali sweets include ladoos, which she makes with a paste made from ground split peas and turmeric. It is fried in oil, then ground again, and combined with a syrup made from brown sugar, various spices and condensed milk. It’s formed into balls for eating.

Mahase also makes prasad, made by toasting flour in ghee, then adding cream of wheat. In a separate pot, she simmers evaporated milk with water, raisins, cinnamon and cardamom. This milk-based syrup is added to the cream of wheat mixture, and cooked until the liquid has evaporated. It has a texture she compares to mashed potatoes, and is eaten with the fingers.

Maneesha Sharma, a lawyer and mother of three in New York City, celebrates Diwali along the traditions of northern India, where her family is from.

“Diwali is celebrated with grandeur. You decorate the front door with lights, you put out your finery, and you eat delicacies you would not eat on a daily basis,” she says.

In India, she says, it is common to give others boxes and hampers with food and gold coins featuring images of gods, such as Ganesh and Lakshmi.

Sharma says that “as part of the prayer service when you light the flame, you make a food offering — always a sweet — to the gods.”

She says that including crushed nuts in desserts is a traditional way to both demonstrate wealth and offer respect. Pistachios and almonds are popular.

Here too, milk is featured in many desserts, she says, including phirni, a custard baked in a ramekin, sprinkled with pistachios and served cold. There’s also burfi, cut into small fudge-like squares.
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Joanna Simon, an acclaimed mezzo-soprano, Emmy-winning TV correspondent and one of the three singing Simon sisters who include pop star Carly, has died at age 85.

Simon, the eldest of four, died Wednesday, just a day before her sister Lucy died, according to Lucy’s daughter, Julie Simon. Their brother Peter, a photographer, died in 2018 at 71. All three had cancer.

“In the last 2 days, I’ve been by the side of both my mother and my aunt, Joanna, and watched them pass into the next world. I can’t truly comprehend this,” Julie wrote on Facebook.

Joanna Simon, who died of thyroid cancer, rose to fame in the opera world and as a concert performer in the 1960s. She was a frequent guest on TV talk shows. After her retirement from singing, she became an arts correspondent for PBS’s MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, where she won an Emmy in 1991 for a report on mental illness and creativity.

“I am filled with sorrow to speak about the passing of Joanna and Lucy Simon. Their loss will be long and haunting. As sad as this day is, it’s impossible to mourn them without celebrating their incredible lives that they lived,” Carly Simon said in a statement Saturday.

She added: “We were three sisters who not only took turns blazing trails and marking courses for one another. We were each other’s secret shares. The co-keepers of each other’s memories.”

Joanna Simon was married to novelist and journalist Gerald Walker from 1976 until his death in 2004. She was the companion of Walter Cronkite from 2005 until his death in 2009.

Onstage, she made her professional debut in 1962 as Cherubino in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro at New York City Opera. That year, she won the Marian Anderson Award for promising young singers. Simon took on a range of material. As a concert performer, she leaned into classic and contemporary songs of her time.

The siblings were born to publishing giant Richard Simon and his wife, Andrea. Carly and Lucy once performed as the Simon Sisters, opening for other acts in Greenwich Village folk clubs.

“I have no words to explain the feeling of suddenly being the only remaining direct offspring of Richard and Andrea Simon,” Carly Simon said. “They touched everyone they knew and those of us they’ve left behind will be lucky and honored to carry their memories forward.”
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Days after Iranian climber Elnaz Rekabi caused an international incident by not wearing her country’s mandatory headscarf while competing abroad, her fate is top of mind for the world’s best climbers.

“It has made me ill — nauseous,” said American Brooke Raboutou, speaking to The Associated Press on Friday at a World Cup climbing event in northern Japan.

“I support her 100% and I’d like to think I can speak on behalf of most of the athletes,” she added. “I’ve reached out to her, just asking if there is anything we can do to help, to support. I know that she’s fighting a really hard battle and doing what she can to represent the women in her country.”

Raboutou said she had not received a reply.

Rekabi, 33, competed Sunday without her headscarf, or hijab, in Seoul during the finals of the International Federation of Sport Climbing’s Asia Championship. She was immediately embraced by those supporting the weekslong demonstrations in her country over the hijab that increasingly include calls for the overthrow of the country’s theocracy.

She returned home to a crowd of cheering protesters, including women not wearing the required head covering. In an emotionless interview before leaving the airport terminal, she told state television that competing without her hair covered was “unintentional.”

Sports in Iran, from soccer leagues to Rekabi’s competitive climbing, broadly operate under a series of semi-governmental organizations. Women athletes competing at home or abroad, whether playing volleyball or running track, are expected to keep their hair covered as a sign of piety. Iran makes such head coverings mandatory for women, as does Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

Rekabi’s act of what seemed to be open defiance has been described as a lightning-rod event in Iran. Activists say it lends support to the antigovernment protests sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who had been detained by the country’s morality police over what she was wearing.

In the tight-knit climbing community, she’s become an inspiration for many athletes who barely know her — or only know of her.

“I feel I cannot understand how it feels,” French climber Oriane Bertone said. “Athletes from that country (Iran) are obligated to wear something. I feel like this is something she did knowing perfectly that she was risking something. And that must have been really hard.

“We’re trying to be her voice because it’s not only concerning her, it’s concerning everyone in the country,” Bertone added.

Bertone was asked if she believes Rekabi is safe.

“She’s definitely not. She’s not safe right now,” Bertone said. “When we watched the (television) interview she did, she was trembling.”

Rekabi’s case has drawn comparisons to that of Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai.

Peng wrote publicly a year ago about being sexually assaulted by a former high-ranking Chinese Communist Party official. She quickly disappeared from public view, tried to recant, and is reported to have come under crushing pressure as China was preparing to hold the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. She is rarely seen in public and doesn’t leave China, although she took part in some orchestrated events around the Olympics.

Then there’s sprinter Krystsina Tsimanousksya. She criticized her Belarusian team officials, then was forced to flee to Poland during last year’s Tokyo Olympics. She feared returning home and now has Polish citizenship.

Iranian athletes did not compete at the climbing event in Japan. The field was made up of largely Europeans, Americans and Japanese. The only athletes from a Muslim-majority country were two brothers from Indonesia.

The International Federation of Sport Climbing, the government body, has echoed similar statements made by the International Olympic Committee, saying it has assurances that Rekabi “will not suffer any consequences and will continue to train and compete.”

Neither the IOC nor the climbing federation has said how it will track how Rekabi is treated in Iran.

The IOC and its President Thomas Bach have repeated similar messages in the cases of Peng and the Belarusian-Polish sprinter. Bach has been criticized for looking away from well-documented human-rights abuse in Olympic host countries like China and Russia. Both nations spent billions to host recent Winter Olympics — while other nations have backed out of bids because of high costs.

American Natalia Grossman said other climbers at the event in Japan were thinking of Rekabi, and trying to find ways to support her. She said she did not know Rekabi well and had “not talked to her too much. But everyone in the climbing community is close in one way or another.”

Grossman said she wasn’t certain if Rekabi intentionally competed without the hijab. But she has her suspicions.

“I can’t know because I’m not her and I haven’t spoken to her,” Grossman said. “But every day you wear it, and you just don’t forget one day.”

Like several other climbers, Grossman argued that sports and politics could not be separated — and shouldn’t be.

“I don’t really think you can keep them apart,” she said. “I don’t think we should have to keep them apart. You should be able to make whatever statement.”

Japanese climber Miho Nonaka, who won an Olympic silver medal a year ago in Tokyo, said she was trying to understand Rekabi’s plight.

“There is some physical distance, so in terms of actual support, I think the most immediate thing I can do is share it on (social media) as much as possible, or obtain the correct information and spread it to many people,” she said in Japanese.

Marco Vettoretti, a spokesperson for the climbing federation, described the climbers as “a young, cohesive and a diverse group.”

“We have Muslim athletes competing almost everywhere,” he said. “But it’s bigger than us sometimes. You try to respect everyone. Then sometimes it’s bigger than the athletes. It’s bigger than us when it comes to religion and politics.”

Vettoretti said the climbing federation expected Rekabi to be back competing in the northern hemisphere this spring.

Japanese climber Ai Mori seemed to have the same expectation, addressing her best wishes to the Iranian.

“You are not wrong,” she said in Japanese. “So do your best to come back to climbing to compete again. We’ll be waiting for you.”
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Works by Ukrainian artists will be the highlight of the world’s largest outdoor sculpture exhibition, starting Friday in Sydney.

The annual Sculpture by the Sea exhibition, near Bondi beach in Sydney, will raise money for the Australian-Ukrainian community’s humanitarian aid charity. The seaside gallery will show more than 100 exhibits from 16 countries from Oct. 21-Nov. 7.

Organizers of the event have said sculptures that are part of the Ukraine Showcase in Sydney are symbols of solidarity and resistance.

Colossus Holds Up the World by artist Egor Zigura is about the fragility of life and refers to Russian aggression in Ukraine in 2014. Another exhibit warns of the dangers of global warming.

The Ukrainian sculptures are curated by Viktoria Kulikova, the art director at the Abramovych Art Agency in Kyiv.

She told VOA the exhibition sends powerful messages of support to the people of Ukraine.

“It is very important for us because it is about a relationship with Ukraine and Australia also,” she said. “It is also about solidarity with Ukraine, about culture, about resistance, about our unity, also.”

Organizers of the exhibition on cliffs near Bondi beach say they want to remind Australians of the plight of Ukrainian refugees forced to flee Russia’s invasion.

About 400,000 visitors are expected to attend the exhibition, which has been held since 1997.

About 9,000 people displaced by the conflict have been granted visas in Australia. Australia is the largest non-NATO contributor of military aid to Ukraine.

It has sent missiles and armored personnel carriers as well as humanitarian supplies. The government has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russian institutions and its political and military leaders, including President Vladimir Putin.

Earlier this month, campaigners from the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organizations again called on Australia to declare the Russian government, military and its Federal Security Service, the FSB, terrorist organizations under Australian law.
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The popular National Air and Space Museum in Washington on the National Mall has partially reopened, after being closed for almost seven months, with a new look and new exhibits.

Among them, a historical look at The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Aerial Age, and Exploring the Planets.

Rather than an assortment of objects spread out across the museum, larger exhibitions tell in-depth stories on everything from commercial passenger flight in the past to today’s delivery drones.

“There’s a gallery that shows the importance of using drones and airplanes for the greater good,” said Jeremy Kinney, the museum’s associate director for research and curatorial affairs.

These include drones that deliver food packages to the Amazon, and a commercial airliner, converted into an eye-surgery hospital, that travels around the world to developing countries.

The National Air and Space Museum, which first opened its doors 46 years ago, was upgraded to include eight new exhibitions, hundreds of new artifacts, and 50 digital interactive exhibits – with the aim of making it more modern and engaging.

It’s an experience that reflects the 21st century, bringing people into the digital age,” Kinney said.

That includes an interactive tour of the solar system.

“The planets gallery is a fully immersive journey through our solar system, stopping at different locations, and seeing what that looks like on a large scale,” Kinney said. “You learn about the surface of different planets and asteroids. It almost feels like you’re walking on them.”

Visitor Taylor Brautigan, 18, looked at some of the artifacts in the gallery and then watched the seven-minute video on a huge screen.

“Wow, it was fantastic to see how different the planets are, and it made me want to find out more about them,” she said.

Kinney said that’s the kind of reaction the museum is hoping for.

“We want young people to connect with the artifacts and the stories we tell about them,” he said, “so when they get home, they will want to learn more about the history and importance of the objects.”

Visitors can see favorite artifacts in new settings that tell compelling stories past and present.

They include the 1903 Wright Flyer, the first powered and piloted mechanical aircraft.

Ahmed Chaudry, who had traveled from Pakistan to visit relatives in Washington, said he had looked forward to seeing the aircraft.

“The exhibit explains the background behind the Wright Brothers and what they went through to build the plane,” he said. “They only flew it for 12 seconds the first time, but it was incredible they were able to do that.”

The Destination Moon exhibit shows icons of space history, including the Apollo 11 command module, Columbia, and the spacesuit astronaut Neil Armstrong wore during the journey to the moon. Armstrong, who was first man to walk on the moon, uttered the famous line, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Items used in film and video are also included in the museum, including the fictional X-Wing Starfighter used in a Star Wars movie, and the prosthetic ear tips made for Mr. Spock in the original Star Trek series.

More accomplishments by women and people of color are incorporated than were in the past.

Highlights include the air racer constructed by Neal Loving, the first African American to be licensed as a racing pilot, and a supersonic jet trainer flown by Jackie Cochran, the first woman to break the sound barrier.

The museum also shows the discrimination they faced, though.

“Our goal is to tell the whole history of air and space which also includes gender and race discrimination,” said Kinney.

That includes women who were qualified, but denied entry into the space program, and Black people who were allowed on commercial passenger planes but not in some airports because of the color of their skin.

A renovation of the National Museum of Air and Space in Washington began in 2018, with the rest of the museum set to open in 2025.

The museum, along with its companion facility in Chantilly, Virginia, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, contains the world’s largest collection of historic aircraft and spacecraft.
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A jury sided with Kevin Spacey on Thursday in one of the lawsuits that derailed the film star’s career, finding he did not sexually abuse Anthony Rapp, then 14, while both were relatively unknown actors in Broadway plays in 1980s.

The verdict in the civil trial came with lightning speed. Jurors at a federal court in New York deliberated for a little more than an hour before deciding that Rapp hadn’t proved his allegations.

When the verdict was read, Spacey dropped his head. Then he hugged lawyers and others before leaving the courtroom.

During the trial, Rapp had testified that Spacey invited him to his apartment for a party, then approached him in a bedroom after the other guests left. He said the actor, then 26, picked him up and briefly laid on top of him on a bed.

Rapp testified that he wriggled away and fled as an inebriated Spacey asked if he was sure he wanted to leave.

In his sometimes-tearful testimony, Spacey told the jury it never happened, and he never would have been attracted to someone who was 14.

The lawsuit sought $40 million in damages.

In his closing arguments to the jury Thursday, Rapp’s lawyer, Richard Steigman, accused Spacey of lying on the witness stand.

“He lacks credibility,” Steigman said. “Sometimes the simple truth is the best. The simple truth is that this happened.”

Spacey’s lawyer, Jennifer Keller, told jurors that Rapp made up the encounter and said they should reject Rapp’s claims.

During her closing argument, she suggested reasons Rapp imagined the encounter with Spacey or made it up.

It was possible, she said, that Rapp invented it based on his experience performing in “Precious Sons,” a play in which actor Ed Harris picks up Rapp’s character and lies on top of him, mistaking him briefly for his wife before discovering it is his son.

She also suggested that Rapp later became jealous that Spacey became a megastar while Rapp had “smaller roles in small shows” after his breakthrough performance in the original cast of the Broadway musical “Rent.”

“So, here we are today, and Mr. Rapp is getting more attention from this trial than he has in his entire acting life,” Keller said.

Rapp, 50, and Spacey, 63, each testified over several days at the three-week trial.

Rapp’s claims, and those of others, abruptly interrupted what had been a soaring career for the two-time Academy Award-winning actor, who lost his job on the Netflix series “House of Cards” and saw other opportunities dry up. Rapp is a regular on TV’s “Star Trek: Discovery.”

After jurors were sent away to deliberate, Keller drew sympathy from U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan when she complained that Steigman had broken trial rules when he finished his summation by telling jurors that he hoped “you don’t let him get away with it this time.”

Kaplan had set rules that were meant to keep jurors from learning about sex abuse accusations made against Spacey that were not part of the trial evidence.

Keller called Steigman’s statement “another clear, premeditated attempt to let the jury know” about other claims against Spacey.

“I’m very concerned,” she added, saying it could affect the verdict.

Kaplan responded by saying Steigman’s statement “shouldn’t happen” and that if the jury ruled in Rapp’s favor, attorneys might need to make written arguments over the issue.

He also said that Rapp during his testimony should not have mentioned that there were other claims made against Spacey.
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Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka won the Booker Prize on Monday for his second novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, about a dead war photographer on a mission in the afterlife.

Karunatilaka received a trophy from Queen Consort Camilla at the English language literary award’s first in-person ceremony since 2019. He also gets a 50,000 pound ($56,810) prize.

Set in 1990 Sri Lanka during the country’s civil war, Karunatilaka’s story follows gay war photographer and gambler Maali Almeida, who wakes up dead.

Time is of essence for Maali, who has “seven moons” to reach out to loved ones and guide them to hidden photos he has taken depicting the brutality of his country’s conflict.

“My hope for Seven Moons is that in the not-too-distant future … it is read in a Sri Lanka that has understood that these ideas of corruption, race baiting and cronyism have not worked and will never work,” Karunatilaka said in his acceptance speech.

“I hope it is read in a Sri Lanka that learns from its stories and that ‘Seven Moons’ will be in the fantasy section of the bookshop and will … not be mistaken for realism or political satire.”

This year’s shortlist of Booker Prize contenders included British author Alan Garner’s Treacle Walker, Zimbabwean author NoViolet Bulawayo’s Glory, Small Things Like These by Irish writer Claire Keegan, U.S. author Percival Everett’s The Trees and Oh William! by U.S. author Elizabeth Strout.

“This is a metaphysical thriller, an afterlife noir that dissolves the boundaries not just of different genres, but of life and death, body and spirit, east and west,” judges chair Neil MacGregor said of Karunatilaka’s book.

“It is an entirely serious philosophical romp that takes the reader to ‘the world’s dark heart’ — the murderous horrors of civil war Sri Lanka,” MacGregor added. “And once there, the reader also discovers the tenderness and beauty, the love and loyalty, and the pursuit of an ideal that justify every human life.”

Past winners of the Booker Prize, which was first awarded in 1969, include Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie and Yann Martel.
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Karim Benzema won the men’s Ballon d’Or for the first time on Monday after a brilliant season with Real Madrid capped by the Champions League and Spanish league titles.

The 34-year-old Benzema had his best season ever at Madrid, being the top scorer in both leagues. He scored 44 times with Madrid, including 15 in Europe’s top competition, and equaled Raúl González as the club’s second-highest scorer behind Cristiano Ronaldo.

Spanish player Alexia Putellas won the women’s trophy for the second straight year following another standout season with Barcelona.

Benzema won ahead of Liverpool’s Sadio Mané and Manchester City playmaker Kevin De Bruyne.

Benzema succeeded Lionel Messi, who won the award for a record-extending seventh time last year but was not among the nominees this time after his first season with Paris Saint-Germain.

For the first time this year, the Ballon d’Or was based on achievements from the past season. It had previously been awarded based on performances throughout calendar years.

Awarded by France Football magazine, the Ballon d’Or has been given out to men every year since 1956 when Stanley Matthews won. The women’s trophy was created in 2018, and both were canceled in 2020 because of the pandemic.

Benzema became the fifth Frenchman to win it after Raymond Kopa, Michel Platini, Jean-Pierre Papin and Zinedine Zidane, who was crowned in 1998, the year France won its first World Cup.

Benzema was not part of the France squad that triumphed at the 2018 World Cup in Russia but, barring an injury, will compete at the tournament in Qatar next month.

After nearly six years out following his involvement in a sex tape scandal, Benzema was recalled by France coach Didier Deschamps last year ahead of the European Championship and has played regularly since.

Leading an attack that also included Vinícius Júnior and Rodrygo, Benzema played a crucial role last season to drive Madrid to a record-extending 14th European title, and his fifth since he joined from Lyon in 2009. The Frenchman was the tournament’s top scorer and found the net when it really mattered, with 10 of his goals in the knockout stages.

Putellas scored 42 goals and delivered 22 assists last season. She became the first player to win the award twice.

With Barcelona, she won the Spanish League and reached the Champions League final. She has been sidelined since July after injuring her left knee and undergoing surgery on the eve of the Women’s European Championship.

Putellas beat out fellow forwards Beth Mead of Arsenal and England and Sam Kerr of Chelsea and Australia for the award at the ceremony in Paris. A panel of international journalists chose the winners.

In other awards, the Kopa Trophy for the best under-21 player went to 18-year-old Barcelona midfielder Gavi, while Robert Lewandowski won the Gerd Müller award for the best striker of the year.

The Lev Yashin award for best goalkeeper went to Real Madrid’s Thibaut Courtois.

Ballon d’Or organizers added a humanitarian prize named after the late Brazil midfielder Socrates. The trophy went to Liverpool’s Sadio Mané for his charity work in Senegal including building a hospital and school donations.
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The rapper formerly known as Kanye West is offering to buy right-wing friendly social network Parler shortly after being booted off Twitter and Instagram for antisemitic posts.

Parlement Technologies, which owns the platform, and West, legally known as Ye, said the acquisition should be completed in the fourth quarter, but details like price were not revealed. Parlement Technologies said the agreement includes the use of private cloud services via Parlement’s private cloud and data center infrastructure.

Ye, was locked out of Twitter and Instagram a week ago over antisemitic posts that the social networks said violated their policies. In one post on Twitter, Ye said he would soon go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE,” according to internet archive records, making an apparent reference to the U.S. defense readiness condition scale known as DEFCON.

Ye is no stranger to controversy, once suggesting slavery was a choice and calling the COVID-19 vaccine “the mark of the beast.” Earlier this month, he was criticized for wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt to his collection at Paris Fashion Week.

The potential purchase of Parler would give Ye control of a social media platform and a new outlet for his opinions with no gatekeeper.

“In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves,” Ye said in a prepared statement.

The acquisition could also breathe new life into Parler, which has struggled amid competition from other conservative-friendly platforms like Truth Social. Parler, which launched in August 2018, didn’t start picking up steam until 2020. But it was kicked offline following the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. A month after the attack, Parler announced a relaunch. It returned to Google Play last month.

“This deal will change the world, and change the way the world thinks about free speech,” Parlement Technologies CEO George Farmer said in a prepared statement.
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The members of K-pop band BTS will serve their mandatory military duties under South Korean law, their management company said Monday, effectively ending a debate on exempting them because of their artistic accomplishments.

Big Hit Music said the band’s oldest member, Jin, will revoke his request to delay his conscription at the end of the month and undertake the required conscription steps. The six other members also plan to serve in the military, according to the company’s notice to financial regulators, which it described as management-related information that could possibly affect investment decisions.

Big Hit issued another statement on Twitter, saying the company and BTS members are “looking forward to reconvening as a group again around 2025 following their service commitment.”

No further information on the timing of their service was given. The band members performed together in Busan over the weekend in support of the city’s EXPO bid, which will be their last concert as a group until they finish serving in the military, according to their label.

“Each BTS member for the time being will focus on their individual activities based on their plans to serve in the military,” Hybe Corp., the parent company of Big Hit, said in an email to The Associated Press.

The announcement came after Lee Ki Sik, commissioner of the Military Manpower Administration, told lawmakers this month that it would be “desirable” for BTS members to fulfil their military duties to ensure fairness in the country’s military service.

After enlisting, Jin and other BTS members will receive five weeks of combat training before being assigned to specific units and duties, according to officials at the Military Manpower Administration, who stressed that the singers would go under the same process as other South Korean men.

While South Korea’s military for years had assigned enlisted entertainers to duties related to producing radio and TV material promoting the military, the “entertainment soldier” system was retired in 2013 following complaints over fairness.

Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup had said in August that if BTS members join the military, they would likely be allowed to continue practicing and to join back with the group for tours overseas.

Whether the BTS members must serve in the army had been a hotly debated issue in South Korea as Jin faced possible enlistment early next year. Jin turns 30 in December, the age at which men can no longer delay enlistment. Other members are currently between 25 and 29 years old, with Suga turning 30 in March.

Under South Korean law, most able-bodied men are required to perform 18-21 months of military service, but special exemptions had been granted for athletes and artists who excel in certain international competitions that have been tied with national prestige.

The band — its other members being J-Hope, RM, Jungkook, V and Jimin — launched in 2013 and has a legion of global supporters who call themselves the “Army.”

After building a huge following in Asia, BTS expanded its popularity in the West with its 2020 megahit “Dynamite,” the band’s first all-English song that made it the first K-pop act to top Billboard’s Hot 100. The band has performed in sold-out arenas around the world and was even invited to speak at United Nations meetings.

Since South Korea’s draft interrupts young males in their professional careers or studies, the dodging of military duties or creation of exemptions is a highly sensitive issue. Opinion surveys in recent weeks showed that the public was split over whether the BTS members should serve in the military.
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Basketball Hall of Famer Dikembe Mutombo is undergoing treatment in Atlanta for a brain tumor, the NBA announced Saturday. 

Mutombo has been one of the NBA’s global ambassadors for years, and recently appeared at Hall of Fame enshrinement events in Springfield, Massachusetts, and a pair of preseason games in Saitama, Japan. 

He also appeared with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken at an event in the Congo, Mutombo’s native country, in August. 

“He is receiving the best care possible from a collaborative team of specialists in Atlanta and is in great spirits as he begins treatment,” Mutombo’s family said in a statement distributed by the NBA. “Dikembe and his family ask for privacy during this time so they can focus on his care. They are grateful for your prayers and good wishes.” 

The family did not release any other details, including what prompted the discovery of the tumor. 

“We know he will approach this challenge with the same determination and grit that have made him a legend on and off the court,” Atlanta Hawks principal owner Tony Ressler said. 

The 56-year-old Mutombo spent 18 seasons in the NBA, playing for Denver, Atlanta, Houston, Philadelphia, New York and the then-New Jersey Nets. The 7-foot-2 center out of Georgetown was an eight-time All-Star, four-time defensive player of the year, three-time All-NBA selection and went into the Hall of Fame in 2015 after averaging 9.8 points and 10.3 rebounds per game for his career. 

Mutombo last played during the 2008-09 season and has worked extensively for charitable and humanitarian causes since. Blinken lauded him when the pair were together in the Congo, telling Mutombo, “You’ve done so much to bring the world together.” 

Mutombo speaks nine languages and founded the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation in 1997, concentrating on improving health, education and quality of life for the people in the Congo. His foundation led the building of a 170-bed hospital in Kinshasa, the capital city, and that facility has treated nearly a half-million people regardless of their ability to pay for care. 

He also has served on the boards of many organizations, including Special Olympics International, the CDC Foundation and the National Board for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. 
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An Iranian filmmaker said the Islamic republic barred him from travelling to the London Film Festival over his support for the protest movement sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini that he called a “great moment in history.”

“I was prevented by the Iranian authorities from boarding my flight to London on Friday,” Mani Haghighi said in a video message to festival-goers tweeted by the British Film Institute (BFI).

“They gave me no reasonable explanation for this actually rude behavior.”

Outrage over Amini’s death on Sept. 16, three days after she was arrested by Iran’s notorious morality police, has fueled the biggest wave of street protests and violence seen in the country for years.

In response, the clerical state’s security forces have waged a brutal crackdown that has claimed the lives of dozens of protesters as well as a campaign of mass arrests of artists, dissidents, journalists and sports stars.

The BFI said Haghighi had been due to attend the London Film Festival for his latest film Subtraction, but the Iranian authorities “confiscated his passport and he could not leave.”

In the video message, the 53-year-old Iranian director, writer and actor said he believed the authorities had prevented him from going abroad over his support for the Amini protest movement.

“A couple of weeks ago I recorded an Instagram video in which I criticized Iran’s mandatory hijab laws and the crackdown on the youth who are protesting it and so many other instances of injustice in their lives.

“Perhaps the authorities thought by keeping me here they could keep a closer eye on me, perhaps to threaten me and shut me up.

“Well, the very fact that I’m talking to you now in this video kind of undermines that plan,” he said.

Haghighi said, however, that he had no regrets about being forced to stay in Iran as a “prisoner” in his own country.

“Let me tell you that being here in Tehran right now is one of the greatest joys of my life.

“I cannot put into words the joy and the honor of being able to witness first-hand this great moment in history and I would rather be here than anywhere else right now.

“So if this is a punishment for what I’ve done, then by all means, bring it on.” 
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