Day: March 17, 2024
LOS ANGELES — Usher was named entertainer of the year at the 55th annual NAACP Awards on Saturday night, which highlighted works by entertainers and writers of color.
After Usher accepted his award at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, the superstar R&B singer spoke about being thankful about the journey of his successful career that has lasted three decades.
He reeled off several of his recent big moments including his sold-out residency in Las Vegas, getting married, releasing his ninth studio album “Coming Home” and his Super Bowl halftime performance, which became the most-watched in the game’s history.
Usher beat out Colman Domingo, Fantasia Barrino, Halle Bailey and Keke Palmer.
“I don’t know how many people do that much stuff in one setting,” said the multi-Grammy winner, who was presented the award by Oprah Winfrey. After being surprised by Winfrey’s presence, he thanked those who have supported him throughout the years.
“This is for you, you, my number ones,” the singer said as the audience repeated his words back to him. The final words of his speech were recited lyrics from his popular song “Superstar” from his 2024 album “Confessions,” which has sold more than 10 million units in the U.S.
Earlier in the ceremony, Usher was honored with the President’s Award for the singer’s public service achievements through his New Look Foundation. He thanked the strong women in his life, including his mother and wife Jenn Goicoechea, whom he married after his Super Bowl halftime performance last month.
“The say behind or beside or with every strong man is a stronger woman,” he said.
Queen Latifah hosted the awards ceremony aired live on BET.
“The Color Purple” was awarded best motion picture. The musical film featured star-studded cast including Barrino, Taraji P. Henson, Domingo, H.E.R., Danielle Brooks, Corey Hawkins and Bailey.
Barrino, who starred as Celie in the film, won for best actress in a motion picture.
“I didn’t prepare a speech, because I didn’t think I was going to win,” the singer-actor said. “I was afraid to play Celie, but I’m glad I did. Because I kept saying ‘If I don’t win an award, the awards that I will win will come from the people who watched ‘Color Purple’ and the women who will relate to her and feel like Oscars when they walk out.’”
New Edition was inducted into the NAACP Image Awards Hall of Fame. The induction is bestowed on individuals who are viewed as pioneers in their respective fields and whose influence shaped their profession.
“We stand here in brotherhood,” said Michael Bivins while his group members behind him. The Grammy-nominated group includes Bobby Brown, Johnny Gill, Ralph Tresvant, Ronnie DeVoe and Ricky Bell.
“You’ve seen our story. You know what we’ve been through,” said Bivins, who spoke about the group overcoming conflict and tension in their earlier years to now holding a residency in Las Vegas.
“But we call each other every day,” he continued. “We text each other every day. We check on our families. You watched us grow up. We’re still growing.”
Damson Idris won best actor in a drama television series for his role in “Snowfall.” Henson and Domingo took home best supporting roles in “The Color Purple.” Domingo also won best actor in a motion picture for his role in “Rustin.”
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CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Mice accidentally introduced to a remote island near Antarctica 200 years ago are breeding out of control because of climate change, and they are eating seabirds and causing major harm in a special nature reserve with “unique biodiversity.”
Now conservationists are planning a mass extermination using helicopters and hundreds of tons of rodent poison, which needs to be dropped over every part of Marion Island’s 297 square kilometers (115 square miles) to ensure success.
If even one pregnant mouse survives, their prolific breeding ability means it may have all been for nothing.
The Mouse-Free Marion project — pest control on a grand scale — is seen as critical for the ecology of the uninhabited South African territory and the wider Southern Ocean. It would be the largest eradication of its kind if it succeeds.
The island is home to globally significant populations of nearly 30 bird species and a rare undisturbed habitat for wandering albatrosses — with their 10-foot wingspan — and many others.
An undisturbed habitat, at least, until stowaway house mice arrived on seal hunter ships in the early 1800s, introducing the island’s first mammal predators.
The past few decades have been the most significant for the damage the mice have caused, said Dr. Anton Wolfaardt, the Mouse-Free Marion project manager. He said their numbers have increased hugely, mainly due to rising temperatures from climate change, which has turned a cold, windswept island into a warmer, drier, more hospitable home.
“They are probably one of the most successful animals in the world. They’ve got to all sorts of places,” Wolfaardt said. But now on Marion Island, “their breeding season has been extended, and this has resulted in a massive increase in the densities of mice.”
Mice don’t need encouragement. They can reproduce from about 60 days old and females can have four or five litters a year, each with seven or eight babies.
Rough estimates indicate there are more than 1 million mice on Marion Island. They are feeding on invertebrates and, more and more, on seabirds — both chicks in their nests and adults.
A single mouse will feed on a bird several times its size.
Conservationists snapped a photo of one perched on the bloodied head of a wandering albatross chick.
The phenomenon of mice eating seabirds has been recorded on only a handful of the world’s islands.
The scale and frequency of mice preying on seabirds on Marion has risen alarmingly, Wolfaardt said, after the first reports of it in 2003. He said the birds have not developed the defense mechanisms to protect themselves against these unfamiliar predators and often sit there while mice nibble away at them. Sometimes, multiple mice swarm over a bird.
Conservationists estimate that if nothing is done, 19 seabird species will disappear from the island in 50 to 100 years, he said.
“This incredibly important island as a haven for seabirds has a very tenuous future because of the impacts of mice,” Wolfaardt said.
The eradication project is a single shot at success, with not even a whisker of room for error. Burgeoning mice and rat populations have been problematic for other islands. South Georgia, in the southern Atlantic, was declared rodent-free in 2018 after an eradication, but that was a multiyear project; the one on Marion could be the biggest single intervention.
Wolfaardt said four to six helicopters will likely be used to drop up to 550 tons of rodenticide bait across the island. Pilots will be given exact flight lines and Wolfaardt’s team will be able to track the drop using GPS mapping.
The bait has been designed to not affect the soil or the island’s water sources. It shouldn’t harm the seabirds, who feed out at sea, and won’t have negative impacts for the environment, Wolfaardt said. Some animals will be affected at an individual level, but those species will recover.
“There’s no perfect solution in these kinds of things,” he said. “There is nothing that just zaps mice and nothing else.”
The eradication project is a partnership between BirdLife South Africa and the national Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, which designated Marion Island as a special nature reserve with the highest level of environmental protection. It has a weather and research station but is otherwise uninhabited and dedicated to conservation.
The department said the eradication of mice was “essential if the unique biodiversity of the island is to be preserved.”
Wolfaardt said the amount of planning needed means a likely go-ahead date in 2027. The project also needs to raise about $25 million — some of which has been funded by the South African government — and get final regulatory approvals from authorities.
Scientists have tried to control the mice of Marion in the past.
They were already a pest for researchers in the 1940s, so five domestic cats were introduced. By the 1970s, there were around 2,000 feral cats on the island, killing half a million seabirds per year. The cats were eliminated by introducing a feline flu virus and hunting down any survivors.
Islands are critical to conservation efforts, but fragile. The Island Conservation organization says they are “extinction epicenters” and 75% of all species that have gone extinct lived on islands. About 95% of those were bird species.
“This really is an ecological restoration project,” Wolfaardt said. “It’s one of those rare conservation opportunities where you solve once and for all a conservation threat.”
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Warsaw, Poland — A Russian-Belarusian rock band that denounces Moscow’s Ukraine invasion returned to the stage this week, voicing defiance after being detained in Thailand in January and threatened with deportation to Russia.
The band, Bi-2, formed in the 1980s in Belarus when it was part of the Soviet Union, left Russia in protest over the invasion and has been touring ever since in countries with large Russian-speaking communities.
Ahead of a concert in Vilnius on Thursday, band members met with exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and supporters of late Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison last month.
“We have become hostages to Russian history,” Egor Bortnik, one of the band’s two founders, told AFP ahead of a concert in Warsaw on Saturday.
But 51-year-old Bortnik, who is better known by his stage name “Lyova,” said he was “not against the war.”
“On the contrary, I’m for the war. I just want Ukraine to liberate its own territory,” he said.
“Putin has to gather his orcs and get out of Ukraine,” Bortnik said, using a disparaging term for Russian soldiers frequently used by Ukrainians.
The band was detained in Phuket, Thailand, in January on immigration charges in a case that has alarmed Russians critical of President Vladimir Putin living abroad.
The organizers of their concerts said all the necessary permits had been obtained, but the band was issued with tourist visas in error, and they accused the Russian consulate of waging a campaign to cancel the concerts.
After a week in detention, the band members were released and traveled to Israel, where they met with Foreign Minister Israel Katz who said in a statement that the episode showed that “music will win.”
Several of their concerts in Russia were canceled in 2022 after they refused to play at a venue with banners supporting the war in Ukraine, after which they left the country.
“I put my prosperity on the line when the war began, and I had to leave Russia. It was unexpected, it was not a process we had prepared for,” Bortnik said.
Bortnik, who moved to Israel while still a teenager, said he was more used to emigration than some of his peers who left Russia in the wake of the war.
“I understand how difficult it is,” he said.
Bortnik said he was no “geopolitician” and does not write explicitly “political songs” although their lyrics can “hit a nerve that is constantly vibrating.”
He said Putin’s demise could be sudden and violent and would also bring down Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in power for three decades.
“If something happens to Putin then there could be a civil war — the finale for any tyranny,” he said.
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