Month: November 2017

A former Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics doctor pleaded guilty Wednesday to seven counts of sexual assault. He has been accused of molesting and sexually abusing more than 100 women and girls, including three Olympic gold medalists. The case of former doctor Larry Nassar reveals serious failings on the part of the authorities who seemingly did little to protect the girls from a known predator. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has this report.
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Dmitri Hvorostovsky, the Russian baritone known for his velvety voice, dashing looks and shock of flowing white hair, died Wednesday at a hospice near his home in London, a few years after he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He was 55.

Called “the Elvis of opera” and the “Siberian Express” by some, Hvorostovsky announced in June 2015 that he had been diagnosed with the tumor. He returned to New York’s Metropolitan Opera three months later to sing the Count di Luna in Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” and was greeted with a loud and lengthy ovation that caused him to break character. Musicians in the orchestra threw white roses during the curtain calls.

Despite his illness, he sang in Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” at London’s Royal Opera that December, in Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra” and “Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball)” at the Vienna State Opera the following spring and gave his final four staged opera performances as Giorgio Germont in Verdi’s “La Traviata” in Vienna, the last on Nov. 29 last year. He announced the following month that balance issues had caused him to cancel future opera appearances.

“Dima was a truly exceptional artist — a great recitalist as well as a great opera singer, which is rare,” said soprano Renee Fleming, who teamed with Hvorostovsky for a memorable run of “Onegin” among their many performances. “His timbre, musicality, musicianship, technique, and especially his capacity for endless phrases, were second to none. I have no doubt that he would have sung beautifully for another 20 years or more, had he not been taken from us. I can’t hear Eugene Onegin, Valentin in Faust or Simon Boccanegra without longing to hear Dmitri. He brought an innate nobility and intense commitment to every role.”

Hvorostovsky made a dramatic unscheduled appearance at the Met last May for a gala celebrating the 50th anniversary of the company’s move to Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Walking stiffly, looking thin and with his cheekbones more pronounced, Hvorostovsky received a standing ovation and lit into Rigoletto’s second-act aria “Cortigiani, vil razza dannata (Courtiers, vile cursed kind).” Some in the audience had tears in their eyes, and many pulled cellphones from their glittering handbags to snap photos as he walked through the lobby during intermission.

His last public concerts were on June 22 and June 23 at the Grafenegg Festival in Austria. In September, he was awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland by Russia President Vladimir Putin for contributions to the nation’s art and culture.

“Words cannot express my anguish that one of the greatest voices of our time has been silenced,” tenor Placido Domingo said. “Dmitri’s incomparably beautiful voice and peerless artistry touched the souls of millions of music lovers. His passing will be mourned by his countless admirers around the world and by those of us who were fortunate to know him.”

The Met dedicated Friday’s performance of Verdi’s Requiem to Hvorostovsky.

“One of opera’s all-time greats, truly an artist for the ages,” Met General Manager Peter Gelb said. “In addition to his astounding vocal gifts, he had an electrifying stage presence and a charisma that won over both his adoring audiences and his devoted colleagues.”

The Vienna State Opera scheduled a minute of silence before Wednesday’s performance of Strauss’ “Salome.”

“I especially admire the wonderful way in which he carried himself during this terrible illness,” Vienna State Opera Director Dominique Meyer said. “Dima leaves a great void behind. He will stay in our memories as an exceptional artist who always gave a hundred percent.”

Hvorostovsky was born on Oct. 16, 1962, and grew up in Krasnoyarsk, in central Siberia. He started piano lessons when he was 7, only for his first piano teacher to tell him he was untalented. At Krasnoyarsk Pedagogical School and Krasnoyarsk High School of Arts, he thrived in music, boxing and soccer. “Apart from this, I was the worst pupil in school,” he said with a straight face.

He became a soloist at the Krasnoyarsk Opera in 1986, won the Russian Glinka National Competition, then attracted attention by winning vocal contests at Toulouse, France, in 1988 and then Cardiff in 1989 — where he beat out Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel for the top prize.

With long hair that turned prematurely silver before he was 35 and then polar bear white, he was instantly recognizable. Hvorostovky’s public musical persona started with a rock ’n’ roll band, when he was a teen-age rebel under communism.

“Ah! Freedom! So what could I do?” he remembered in a 1998 interview with The Associated Press. “I had a few options — to become a street fighter, or I could become a hero in front of my girlfriends.”

He made his Royal Opera debut in 1992 as Riccardo in Bellini’s “I Puritani” and his Met debut in 1995 as Prince Yeletsky in Tchaikovsky’s “Pique Dame (The Queen of Spades).” He was lauded around the world for definitive performances as Onegin and also celebrated for the title role in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” Valentin in Gounod’s “Faust,” Belcore in Donizetti’s “L’Elisir d’Amore.”

He is survived by his wife Florence Hvorostovsky, their son, Maxim, and daughter, Nina, and twins Alexandra and Daniel from his first marriage, to Svetlana Hvorostovsky.

 
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America’s history of racial inequality and civil rights activism are prevalent themes in Hollywood films this season. Using gritty cinematography and A-list actors, directors Kathryn Bigelow, George Clooney and Dan Gilroy highlight America’s history of racial injustice, as well as opening up a conversation about racial tensions in the present.

The film drama Detroit by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Bigelow is based on the riots that tore apart the city of Detroit in 1967. “These riots, this was anger that was building and it was on a collision course in 1967,” the filmmaker said.

Major American cities such as Detroit became the battleground for discontented African-Americans facing unemployment and racial discrimination in housing and education. In her film, Bigelow focuses on a chain of events one night during the riots when a group of innocent African-Americans were caught up in the violence and beaten by police. 

Trying to escape the riots, a group of Motown singers seek refuge in the low-budget Algiers hotel downtown, but tensions follow them there. An African-American hotel resident points a toy gun at another, trying to make the point that a white society always points the proverbial gun at African-Americans. Police forces on the ground take the popping sound of the fake gun coming from the hotel as a potential sniper attack. They open fire at the hotel and then raid it.

Will Poulter portrays racist officer Krauss, a composite of police officers, who intimidates and brutalizes the youth in the hotel, to recover what he thought was a real gun. Three young men are killed, and police detectives arrest an African-American security guard in an effort to pin the crime on him. John Boyega plays real-life security guard Melvin Dismukes, who witnessed the events at the hotel and tried to intervene to diffuse the situation.

“He was an unspoken guardian angel to those boys that were there,” Boyega said.

An Oscar-worthy film, Detroit combines a cinéma vérité approach with taut drama. Weaving historic footage into dramatic sequences, the film immerses the audience into the riots as the pivotal moment of racial injustice and repression.

“My hope is that the film could maybe stimulate greater conversation,” Bigelow said.

Suburbicon

Tensions in white American suburbs of the 1950s are explored in Clooney’s dark satire Suburbicon. Like Bigelow, Clooney uses real-life racial tensions as a counterpoint to his murder mystery. He places his story in Suburbicon, a town modeled on the first all-white suburb of Levittown, Pennsylvania. 

A corrupt middle-management executive, played by Matt Damon, commits murder, fraud and adultery while the largely oblivious community turns its attention and indignation against the Myers family, the first African-American family to move there. Clooney said the movie was made before President Donald Trump was elected and racial tensions became a higher profile issue in American political life.

“It was in the middle of the campaign, and it seemed it was fun to talk about it and remind people that these are not new subjects — we continue to have these for the history of this country,” he said.

Though the film carries the satirical stamp of writers Joel and Ethan Cohen, it emerges rather disjointed in its effort to balance the irony of all-white suburbanites fearing for their security by their African-American neighbors, while their so-called respectable white neighbor gets away with murder.

Roman J. Israel Esq.

In Roman J. Israel Esq., filmmaker Gilroy crafts a character drama that targets institutionalized racism through a corrupt judicial system. The story takes place in present day Los Angeles and revolves around Roman, a socially awkward lawyer who takes on the justice system with supreme legal knowledge but no people skills.

When his boss dies, Roman, the firm’s backroom consultant for decades, is forced out of the shadows to actively represent clients in court. He comes face to face with an overburdened justice system which disproportionately affects African-Americans.

Gilroy says his story, like his character, is reminiscent of the political activism of the 1960s and ’70s.

“The story spoke to me on a very contemporary level,” he said. “There are things going on right now legally, constitutionally, nationally and internationally that the story became a focus. One of the elements of the film that I hope people take out is, feel empowered.”

Unfortunately, the film’s message gets buried under the legal jargon and Denzel Washington’s challenging performance as a loner who seems to have stepped out of the ’70s does not connect with the audience. 

Despite their hits and misses, all three films address racial tensions then and now, as well as the potential of racial reconciliation and tolerance.
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Bring on the turkey — but maybe hold the politics.

Thanksgiving is Glenn Rogers’ favorite holiday, when people gather around the table and talk about things to celebrate from the past year. But Donald Trump’s presidency isn’t something everyone in the Rogers family is toasting.

“For the most part, we get to the point where we know that we’re not going to agree with each other and it gets dropped,” says the 67-year-old manufacturing consultant, who says he voted less for Trump than against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

With a cascade of sexual misconduct scandals now echoing similar allegations against Trump during the campaign, tempers on the subject of Trump may not have cooled, says Rogers. “When you start talking about it now, there’s still some, I think, real animosity when you start talking about character.”

Rogers is among more than a third of Americans who say they dread the prospect of politics coming up over Thanksgiving, compared with just 2 in 10 who say they’re eager to talk politics, according to a new poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Four in 10 don’t feel strongly either way.

Democrats are slightly more likely than Republicans to say they’re uneasy about political discussions at the table, 39 percent to 33 percent. And women are more likely than men to say they dread the thought of talking politics, 41 percent to 31 percent.

Those who do think there’s at least some possibility of politics coming up are somewhat more likely to feel optimistic about it than Americans as a whole. Among this group, 30 percent say they’d be eager to talk politics and 34 percent would dread it.

The debate over whether to talk politics at Thanksgiving — or not — is about as American as the traditional feast itself. By Christmas 2016, 39 percent of U.S. adults said their families avoided conversations about politics, according to the Pew Research Center.

But Americans are still trying to figure out how to talk about the subject in the age of Trump, and amid the sexual misconduct allegations that have ignited a new debate over standards for conduct between men and women. The conversation, some analysts and respondents say, touches on identity among people who group themselves by other factors, such as family, friendship or geography.

Ten months into Trump’s difficult presidency, he remains a historically unpopular president and a deeply polarizing force in the United States. His drives to crack down on immigration in the name of national security and the economy cut right to the question of who is an American. And his defense on Tuesday of Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore, the former Alabama judge accused by six women of pursuing romantic relationships with them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s, comes amid a wider deluge of sexual misconduct scandals. Those engulfed include an array of politicians and policymakers — past, present, aspiring and presidential — of all partisan stripes.

For any mention of Moore, who denies the accusations against him, there’s Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota, who has apologized or said he feels bad about the allegations against him. For every mention of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump could be heard bragging about touching women without their consent, there are allegations that Democratic President Bill Clinton assaulted women. Both men deny the accusations.

Trump won the 2016 election, even though more than a dozen women accused him of sexual misconduct, and roughly half of all voters said they were bothered by his treatment of women, according to exit polls. Trump called the allegations false and said he would sue the women, but that hasn’t happened.

Then there’s the broader national conversation about what to do with the art, public policy work and legacies of public figures accused of sexual harassment or assault.

In the past, the Emily Post Institute Inc. received Thanksgiving etiquette questions that were typically about how to handle difficult relatives, says author Daniel Post Senning.

“Now, I am hearing questions like, ‘I don’t want to go,’ or ‘I can’t imagine sitting at a table with someone who has this perspective and staying through the meal,’” he says. “My impression is that it’s still out there. … The shock of that election is a little further in the rearview mirror, but I think people still have strong feelings about it.”

Fort Worth, Texas, resident Greg McCulley saw that firsthand last year. He recalls that of a dozen adults gathered around the Thanksgiving table, all but one was celebrating Trump’s election. That was his sister-in-law, who fumed about Trump and the “Access Hollywood” tape. Tension seethed.

“It was like, you say Donald Trump was bad, then someone says Bill Clinton was bad, so that extended to Hillary Clinton,” says McCulley, 43, an Air Force retiree who voted for Trump but doesn’t dispute that Trump’s recorded remarks were troubling. He does expect politics to come up this year, probably about sexual assault.

“The conservatives have more of a bigger bone. They’ll say look at Al Franken,” says McCully, who nonetheless looks forward to the conversation. “But it may be that my sister-in-law keeps her mouth zipped and says, ‘I don’t want to wade into those waters again like last year.’”

The AP-NORC poll of 1,070 adults was conducted Nov. 15-19 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.

Respondents were first selected randomly using address-based sampling methods and later interviewed online or by phone.

 
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There’s hardly a false note on Engelbert Humperdinck’s “The Man I Want to Be” (OK! Good Records). No rapping, no clumsy evidence of Auto-Tune, no heavy-handed attempts to sound hip and no screaming guitar solos.

Instead, 50 years after his first hits and closing in on his 82nd birthday, Humperdinck has created a heartfelt album anchored in archetypal orchestrations and honest, unspoiled performances of well-chosen songs.

Created as a message of love to his wife Patricia, who is suffering from Parkinson’s disease, her muse has brought the best out of her husband of over 50 years. You won’t hear the vocal power or range of his heyday, but Humperdinck can still transmit plenty of feeling without an ounce of schmaltz.

There are versions of contemporary hits like the Bruno Mars smash “Just the Way You Are” and Ed Sheeran’s “Photograph,” adapted to match Humperdinck’s natural style. “Just Like the First Time” seems to address his wife’s struggle head-on — “You don’t know me now/But in some way, somehow/Maybe there’s a moment you are mine.”

The only pure indulgence is a duet with granddaughter Olivia on “I’m Glad I Danced With You,” closing the first half of the record. The song itself, dedicated to Patricia, is fine — Humperdinck sounds a little like Gordon Lightfoot at times — and Olivia’s contribution surely made granddad proud.

Opener “Absolute Beginner” is clearly country, while the closing section of show favorites includes Willie Nelson’s “Crazy,” “On Broadway” and “Welcome to My World,” which was made famous by Jim Reeves and quotes the Sermon on the Mount.

Albums he made a decade ago or more were already said to be possibly his last but “The Man I Want to Be” is vintage Humperdinck and a rewarding listen.
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Disney Channel star Jordan Fisher has been crowned the winner of “Dancing with the Stars” alongside partner Lindsay Arnold.

Fisher beat out violinist Lindsey Stirling and actor Frankie Muniz for the Mirrorball Trophy on the season 25 finale of the ABC reality competition Tuesday.

Fisher paid tribute to Arnold on Twitter after the announcement, writing: “There aren’t words to describe the feeling of going through BATTLE with my SISTER. Putting in all the time and effort and energy for 12 weeks, then to be rewarded for it after having the most incredible time?! Unbelievable.”

Fisher has starred in several Disney Channel series and films. He has also appeared on Broadway in “Hamilton.”

This is the first “Dancing with the Stars” title for Arnold.

 
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David Cassidy, the teen and pre-teen idol who starred in the 1970s sitcom “The Partridge Family” and sold millions of records as the musical group’s lead singer, died Tuesday at age 67.

Cassidy, who announced earlier this year that he had been diagnosed with dementia, died surrounded by his family, a family statement released by publicist JoAnn Geffen said. No further details were immediately available, but Geffen said on Saturday that Cassidy was in a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, hospital suffering from organ failure.

“David died surrounded by those he loved, with joy in his heart and free from the pain that had gripped him for so long,” the statement said. Thank you for the abundance and support you have shown him these many years.”

“The Partridge Family” aired from 1970-74 and was a fictional variation of the `60s performers the Cowsills, intended at first as a vehicle for Shirley Jones, the Oscar winning actress and Cassidy’s stepmother. Jones played Shirley Partridge, a widow with five children with whom she forms a popular act that travels on a psychedelic bus. The cast also featured Cassidy as eldest son and family heartthrob Keith Partridge; Susan Dey, later of “L.A. Law” fame, as sibling Laurie Partridge and Danny Bonaduce as sibling Danny Partridge.

It was an era for singing families – the Osmonds, the Jacksons. “The Partridge Family” never cracked the top 10 in TV ratings, but the recordings under their name, mostly featuring Cassidy, Jones and session players, produced real-life musical hits and made Cassidy a real-life musical superstar. The Partridges’ best known song, “I Think I Love You,” spent three weeks on top of the Billboard chart at a time when other hit singles included James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles’ “The Tears of a Clown.” The group also reached the top 10 with “I’ll Meet You Halfway” and “Doesn’t Somebody Want to be Wanted” and Cassidy had a solo hit with “Cherish.”

“In two years, David Cassidy has swept hurricane-like into the pre-pubescent lives of millions of American girls,” Rolling Stone magazine noted in 1972. “Leaving: six and a half million long-playing albums and singles; 44 television programs; David Cassidy lunch boxes; David Cassidy bubble gum; David Cassidy coloring books and David Cassidy pens; not to mention several millions of teen magazines, wall stickers, love beads, posters and photo albums.”

Cassidy’s appeal faded after the show went off the air, although he continued to tour, record and act over the next 40 years, his albums including “Romance” and the awkwardly titled “Didn’t You Used To Be?” He had a hit with “I Write the Songs” before Barry Manilow’s chart-topping version and success overseas with “The Last Kiss,” featuring backing vocals from Cassidy admirer George Michael. He made occasional stage and television appearances, including an Emmy-nominated performance on “Police Story.”

Meanwhile, “The Partridge Family” remained popular in re-runs and Cassidy, who kept his dark bangs and boyish appearance well into middle age, frequently turned up for reunions and spoke often about his early success.

“So many people come up to me and talk to me about the impact it (the show) had,” he told Arsenio Hall in 1990.
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Olympic champion gymnast Gabby Douglas says she is among the group of athletes sexually abused by a former team doctor.

Douglas, the 2012 Olympic all-around champion and a three-time gold medalist, wrote in an Instagram post Tuesday night that she waited so long to reveal the abuse by Larry Nassar because she was part of a group “conditioned to stay silent.”

The 21-year-old Douglas is the latest high-profile gymnast to come forward against Nassar, who spent nearly two decades as the national team doctor for USA Gymnastics before being fired in 2015. Two-time Olympic teammate Aly Raisman detailed her abuse by Nassar in her autobiography “Fierce” released earlier this month. Two-time Olympic medalist McKayla Maroney disclosed abuse by Nassar in October.

Nassar, 54, is accused of molesting several girls while working for USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University. He’s facing similar charges in a neighboring county and lawsuits filed by more than 125 women and girls.
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The CBS television network fired veteran newsman Charlie Rose on Tuesday, a day after an explosive Washington Post report recounted stories from eight women who said he had sexually abused them with lewd comments, groping and walking around naked in their presence.

Rose, 75, was co-host of the network’s CBS This Morning news and talk show, and he occasionally appeared on its 60 Minutes investigative news show.

But Rose is perhaps better known for his acclaimed Charlie Rose interview show he has conducted since 1991, in which he has interviewed newsmakers from the worlds of politics, the media and entertainment. PBS and Bloomberg Television, which distributed his self-produced interview show, suspended him Monday after the newspaper account, and they both also ended their contracts with Rose on Tuesday.

Co-hosts critical

Rose’s firing at CBS came hours after his co-hosts on the morning news show sharply condemned him, expressing shock at allegations that he had sexually abused young women who worked with him on the interview show or sought employment from the late 1990s to 2011.

“What do you say when someone that you deeply care about has done something so horrible?” anchor Gayle King said at the opening of CBS This Morning, which she has hosted alongside Rose and Norah O’Donnell. “How do you wrap your brain around that? I’m really grappling with that. That said, Charlie does not get a pass here. He doesn’t get a pass from anyone in this room.”

King said that while the Post’s story did not represent a Rose she knew, “I’m also clearly on the side of the women who have been very hurt and damaged by this.”

O’Donnell said, “This has to end. This is a moment that demands a frank and honest assessment about where we stand and, more generally, the safety of women. Let me be very clear: There is no excuse for this alleged behavior.”

The eight women alleged that Rose had unexpectedly sexually abused them when they were alone with him in work-related settings or on lewd telephone calls. They said he had walked around naked in their presence and had groped their breasts, buttocks or genital areas.

Other allegations

Rose is the latest prominent U.S. man to be the subject of allegations of long-running sexual abuse, a list that includes President Donald Trump, actor Bill Cosby, film producer Harvey Weinstein, journalists, corporate executives and other politicians, including former President Bill Clinton when he was in office in the 1990s.

Rose said in a tweet after the Post published its story, “I deeply apologize for my inappropriate behavior. I am greatly embarrassed.” He admitted behaving insensitively, but wrote that he did not “believe that all of these allegations are accurate.”
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