Singer-songwriter, record producer, philanthropist, and actor, Jon Bon Jovi the founder and front man of the Grammy Award-winning rock band Bon Jovi, which was formed in 1983. Bon Jovi has released 14 studio albums and has sold over 130 million albums worldwide and he has released two solo albums. Earlier this month Bon Jovi released their latest song, “Unbroken” which will be featured in the forthcoming documentary “To Be of Service.” The song is a compelling anthem that shines a spotlight on the thousands of veterans living with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Day: December 27, 2019
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Thursday won a resounding victory over Likud challenger Gideon Saar, winning more than 72% of the vote. The vote gives Netanyahu a boost going into Israel’s third general election in a year, scheduled for early March.
“This is a huge victory! Thank you Likud members for your trust, support and love,” Netanyahu said in a message to supporters, vowing to lead Likud “to a great victory in the upcoming [national] elections and continue to lead the State of Israel to unprecedented achievements.”
Saar called Netanyahu to concede defeat and said he would continue to support Likud in the coming election campaign. Saar’s supporters had said that if he reached 30% of the vote, it would be a big victory. He fell short, but not my much.
“The contest was vital to the Likud and its democratic character,” said Saar. “My decision to run was right and necessary. Whoever isn’t prepared to take a chance for the path he believes in, will never win.”
Saar was seen as the first serious challenger to Netanyahu in the 10 years that he has led the ruling Likud party. Netanyahu also recently became Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, overtaking the first prime minister, David Ben Gurion. The overwhelming victory seemed to show that the fact that Netanyahu has been indicted in three corruption cases has not dampened his Likud support.
In the last two election campaigns, Netanyahu has run a campaign in the style of U.S. President Donald Trump, denigrating the media and the justice system as making up “fake-news” allegations against him. He described investigations against him as ridiculous, repeating “there will be nothing (no indictment) because there is nothing.”
Since the November indictment, he has continued to insist he is innocent, and most analysts say it is Netanyahu who dragged Israel into an unprecedented third election in a year because he wants to gain strength before trying to get immunity.
“All Netanyahu is concerned about is his personal interest – it’s why we went through elections in April and September, and why we are going to a third election,” Gayil Talshir, a political science professor at Hebrew University said in an interview. “He needs 61 hands in the Knesset (the parliament) to vote for immunity for him. He needs each and every one of the right-wing members of the Knesset.”
In the past two elections, neither Netanyahu nor his former army chief Benny Gantz, who started a new party called Blue and White, was able to put together a coalition of 61 seats. Gantz had said he would not join a national unity coalition with Netanyahu at the head, although he is open to another Likud leader.
During negotiations after the September election, Netanyahu offered to step down after six months, but Gantz reportedly did not trust him to keep his promise.
Latest polls show that Blue and White has gained some strength but that neither Likud nor Blue and White can form a coalition. Netanyahu is also hoping that the next election will strengthen some of the right-wing parties who would be his natural coalition partners.
According to the Israeli electoral system, a party needs a minimum of four seats to enter the Knesset. The law was passed to prevent small one- and two-seat parties from entering the Knesset. In last April’s election, the Jewish Home party of Defense Minister Naftali Bennet and former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked fell just 1,500 votes short of the threshold number. For Netanyahu, it was four potential seats lost to the right wing.
Beyond strengthening his own base, Netanyahu hopes to encourage right-wing voters to come out and vote. In the Likud party primary, just under 50% of registered Likud voters came out, partly because of stormy weather. Netanyahu is worried that the third election in a year has left the Israeli public, which traditionally has high rates of voting, apathetic and voter turnout will decrease.
Although Netanyahu trounced Gideon Saar, the fact that anyone was willing to challenge Netanyahu may be the first chink in his armor. For the past 10 years, Netanyahu has completely dominated Likud.
It is not yet clear when Netanyahu’s corruption trial will begin. He has insisted that he can both be prime minister and defend himself in court at the same time.
Tony Award-winning composer Jerry Herman, who wrote the cheerful, good-natured music and lyrics for such classic shows as “Mame,” “Hello, Dolly!” and “La Cage aux Folles,” died Thursday. He was 88.
His goddaughter Jane Dorian confirmed his death to The Associated Press early Friday. He died of pulmonary complications in Miami, where he had been living with his partner, real estate broker Terry Marler.
The creator of 10 Broadway shows and contributor to several more, Herman won two Tony Awards for best musical: “Hello, Dolly!” in 1964 and “La Cage aux Folles” in 1983. He also won two Grammys — for the “Mame” cast album and “Hello, Dolly!” as song of the year — and was a Kennedy Center honoree.
Herman wrote in the Rodgers and Hammerstein tradition, an optimistic composer at a time when others in his profession were exploring darker feelings and material. Just a few of his song titles revealed his depth of hope: “I’ll Be Here Tomorrow,” “The Best of Times,” “Tap Your Troubles Away,” “It’s Today,” “We Need a Little Christmas” and “Before the Parade Passes By.” Even the title song to “Hello, Dolly!” is an advertisement to enjoy life.
Herman also had a direct, simple sense of melody and his lyrics had a natural, unforced quality. Over the years, he told the AP in 1995, “critics have sort of tossed me off as the popular and not the cerebral writer, and that was fine with me. That was exactly what I aimed at.”
In accepting the Tony in 1984 for “La Cage Aux Folles,” Herman said, “This award forever shatters a myth about the musical theater. There’s been a rumor around for a couple of years that the simple, hummable show tune was no longer welcome on Broadway. Well, it’s alive and well at the Palace” Theatre.
Some saw that phrase — “the simple, hummable show tune” — as a subtle dig at Stephen Sondheim, known for challenging and complex songs and whose “Sunday in the Park with George” Herman had just bested. But Herman rejected any tension between the two musical theater giants.
“Only a small group of ‘showbiz gossips’ have constantly tried to create a feud between Mr. Sondheim and myself. I am as much of a Sondheim fan as you and everybody else in the world, and I believe that my comments upon winning the Tony for ‘La Cage’ clearly came from my delight with the show business community’s endorsement of the simple melodic showtune which had been criticized by a few hard-nosed critics as being old fashioned,” he said in a 2004 Q&A session with readers of Broadway.com.
Herman was born in New York in 1931 and raised in Jersey City. His parents ran a children’s summer camp in the Catskills and he taught himself the piano. He noted that when he was born, his mother had a view of Broadway’s Winter Garden Theatre marquee from her hospital bed.
Herman dated his intention to write musicals to the time his parents took him to “Annie Get Your Gun” and he went home and played five of Irving Berlin’s songs on the piano.
“I thought what a gift this man has given a stranger. I wanted to give that gift to other people. That was my great inspiration, that night,” he told The Associated Press in 1996.
After graduating from the University of Miami, Herman headed back to New York, writing and playing piano in a jazz club. He made his Broadway debut in 1960 contributing songs to the review “From A to Z” — alongside material by Fred Ebb and Woody Allen — and the next year tackled the entire score to a musical about the founding of the state of Israel, “Milk and Honey.” It earned him his first Tony nomination.
“Hello, Dolly!” starring Carol Channing opened in 1964 and ran for 2,844 performances, becoming Broadway’s longest-running musical at the time. It won 10 Tonys and has been revived many times, most recently in 2017 with Bette Midler in the title role, a 19th-century widowed matchmaker who learns to live again.
“Mame” followed in 1966, starring Angela Lansbury, and went on to run for over 1,500 performances. She handed him his Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2009, saying he created songs like him: “bouncy, buoyant and optimistic.”
In 1983 he had another hit with “La Cage aux Folles,” a sweetly radical musical of its age, decades before the fight for marriage equality. It was a lavish adaptation of the successful French film about two gay men who own a splashy, drag nightclub on the Riviera. It contained the gay anthem “I Am What I Am” and ran for some 1,760 performances. Three of his shows, “Dear World,” “The Grand Tour” and “Mack and Mabel,” failed on Broadway.
Many of his songs have outlasted their vehicles: British ice skaters Torvill and Dean used the overture from “Mack and Mabel” to accompany a gold medal-winning routine in 1982. Writer-director Andrew Stanton used the Herman tunes “Put on Your Sunday Clothes” and “It Only Takes a Moment” to express the psyche of a love-starved, trash-compacting robot in the film “WALL-E.”
Later in life, Herman composed a song for “Barney’s Great Adventure,” contributed the score for the 1996 made-for-TV movie “Mrs. Santa Claus” — earning Herman an Emmy nomination — and wrote his autobiography, “Showtune,” published by Donald I. Fine.
He is survived by his partner, Marler, and his goddaughters — Dorian and Dorian’s own daughter, Sarah Haspel. Dorian said plans for a memorial service are still in the works for the man whose songs she said “are always on our lips and in our hearts.”
Montenegro’s parliament adopted a contested law on religious rights early Friday after chaotic scenes in the assembly that resulted in the detention of all pro-Serb opposition lawmakers.
The vote followed a day of nationwide protests by supporters of the Serbian Orthodox Church who say the law will strip the church of its property, including medieval monasteries and churches. The government has denied that.
Trying to prevent the vote, the pro-Serb lawmakers hurled what appeared to be a tear gas canister, or a firecracker, and tried to destroy microphones in the parliament hall. Plainclothes police wearing gas masks intervened, detaining 24 people, including 18 opposition lawmakers.
“We are ready to die for our church and that’s what we are demonstrating tonight,” opposition leader Andrija Mandic said shortly after midnight during the tumultuous session.
Law passes
The law, approved by 45 ruling coalition lawmakers, says religious communities would need to produce evidence of ownership of their property from before 1918, when Montenegro joined a Balkan kingdom and lost its independence.
The Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro described the law as “discriminatory and unconstitutional.”
The church Friday accused the Montenegrin authorities of “inciting divisions and hatred,” and leading Montenegro “into a situation that cannot bring any good to anyone.”
“Thanks to this, the Orthodox Christian faithful in Montenegro are facing one of the saddest Christmases in recent history,” a church statement said. Serbian Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas Jan. 7.
Montenegro’s population of around 620,000 is predominantly Orthodox Christian and the main church is the Serbian Orthodox Church. A separate Montenegrin Orthodox Church isn’t recognized by other Orthodox Christian churches.
Torn over Serbia
Montenegro’s pro-Western president has accused the Serbian Orthodox Church of promoting pro-Serb policies and seeking to undermine the country’s statehood since it split from much larger Serbia in 2006.
Montenegrins remain divided over whether the small Adriatic state should foster close ties with Serbia. About 30 percent of Montenegro’s population identify as Serbs and were mostly against the split from Serbia.
Hundreds of pro-Serb opposition supporters Thursday staged an all-day protest against the law, blocking roads and entrances to the capital. Dozens of riot officers used metal barriers to prevent crowds, including Orthodox priests, from reaching the parliament building where lawmakers debated the bill.
The Montenegrin prime minister said the country has the power to prevent more rioting.
“I believe in peace in Montenegro,” Dusko Markovic said.
Indian authorities stepped up security in major cities on Friday and suspended mobile data services in some places in an effort to maintain order ahead of protests planned against a new citizenship law.
At least 25 people have been killed in protests across the country since the law, seen as discriminatory toward Muslims, was adopted Dec. 11.
The backlash against the law, pushed through parliament by the Hindu-nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is the biggest challenge he has faced since he was first elected in 2014.
Violence peaked last Friday when police clashed with protesters in several cities after weekly Muslim congregational prayers, especially in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh.
Internet cut, police deployed
With more protests expected this week, the Uttar Pradesh administration banned mobile internet services in many parts of the state, including in the provincial capital Lucknow, the state government said.
In the Uttar Pradesh city of Meerut, about 90 km (55 miles) from New Delhi, nearly 3,000 police were deployed, four times more than last Friday, the city’s police chief told Reuters.
At least five people were killed in the city last Friday.
A Reuters witness saw a riot control vehicle with a tear gas cannon mounted on its roof. A vehicle carrying a water cannon was stationed nearby as several policemen in riot gear kept watch.
“We’re working with local politicians, religious leaders and community members to appeal for calm,” Ajay Kumar Sahni, Senior Superintendent of Police in Meerut said. “We expect the situation to remain normal.”
Emergency law in Delhi
In the capital of New Delhi, police imposed an emergency law in some parts of the city, forbidding large gatherings, news channels reported. Such prohibitions have been in place in Uttar Pradesh for more than a week.
Despite the restrictions, thousands are expected to gather for protests after Friday prayers in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru and Chennai, protest organizers said.
The citizenship legislation makes it easier for minorities from India’s Muslim majority neighbors — Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan — who settled before 2015 to get citizenship.
Critics say the exclusion of Muslims is discriminatory and that the award of citizenship based on religion violates India’s secular constitution.
Muslims, India’s second biggest community by religion, account for about 14% of its 1.3 billion people.
The protests have come as India’s economic growth has slumped to its lowest in more than six years and unemployment remains high.