Category: Entertainment

HIROSHIMA, Japan — Almost eight decades after an atomic bomb devastated her hometown of Hiroshima, Teruko Yahata carries the scar on her forehead from when she was knocked over by the force of the blast.

The U.S. bombs that laid waste to Hiroshima on the morning of August 6, 1945, and to Nagasaki three days later, changed the course of history and left Yahata and other survivors with deep scars and a sense of responsibility toward disarmament.

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday to the Nihon Hidankyo group of atomic bomb survivors, for its work warning of the dangers of nuclear arms, has given survivors hope and highlighted their work still ahead, Yahata and others said.

“It felt as if a light suddenly shone through. I felt like I could see the light,” the 87-year-old said on Saturday, describing her reaction to hearing about the award.

“This feels like the first step, the beginning of a movement toward nuclear abolition,” she told Reuters at the site of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.

She was just 8 years old and in the back garden of her home when the bomb hit. Although her house was 2.5 kilometers from the hypocenter, the blast was strong enough to throw her several meters back into her house, she said.

Seventy-nine years later, and a day after the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the survivors the prize, a long line formed outside the museum, with dozens of foreign and Japanese visitors queuing up to get in.

A bridge leading into the memorial park was decorated with a yellow sheet and other handmade signs against nuclear weapons. Campaigners gathered signatures for nuclear abolition from those passing by.

Nihon Hidankyo, formed in 1956, has provided thousands of witness accounts, issued resolutions and public appeals, sent delegations to the U.N. and peace conferences, and collected signatures advocating nuclear disarmament.

Yahata, who is not a Nihon Hidankyo member, said it was that drive to gather signatures that finally paid off after bearing little fruit for most of a century.

“It’s this amount of sadness and joy that led them to this peace prize. I think it’s something very meaningful,” she said.

Nihon Hidankyo’s co-chair, Toshiyuki Mimaki, said he felt the award meant more responsibility, adding that most atomic bomb survivors were more than 85 years old.

“Rather than feeling purely happy, I feel like I have more responsibility now,” he told Reuters, sitting in a Hidankyo office in Hiroshima in front of a map showing the impact of the bomb on the city.

In rural areas the group is on the verge of falling apart, the 82-year-old said. “The big challenge now is what to do going forward.”
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new orleans, louisiana — Louisiana’s Cajun and Creole heritage takes center stage this weekend when the Festivals Acadiens et Creoles marks a half-century of honoring and celebrating the culture through music, arts, food and community. 

What started as a one day concert in 1974 to entertain 150 French-speaking journalists gathered in Lafayette — considered the heart of Cajun country — has grown into a three-day event and possibly one of the largest Cajun and Zydeco festivals in the world, organizers said. And, they note, the entire event is free. 

Barry Jean Ancelet, one of the event’s organizers, said when the idea formed 50 years ago, nobody knew if anyone would even come to hear the music. 

“Cajun music at that time was largely considered ‘old people’s music,'” he said. “You’ve got to remember, we were in the throes of Rock ‘n’ Roll at the time. The people here loved it when they encountered it in dance halls, but this concert was designed to call attention to the music in a different way, to point out its value. They had to sit — not dance — and pay attention. And they ended up hearing it in a different way. It was so successful. We ended up turning it into an annual event where we could call positive attention to this important asset and get people to consider it.” 

The festival, now held annually in Lafayette’s Girard Park, brings together multi-generations of musicians and artists who annually fight to preserve a culture that continues to evolve. 

“We’ve always been about celebrating the past and handing it off to the future,” Ancelet said. “If you value and respect evolution, the culture will produce things that will continue to surprise you. It all comes out in the wash. What’s good will last and what’s not, won’t.” 

Festival co-founder Pat Mould said the festival is a “self-celebration of who we are, how we live, what we eat, the music and how we speak.” 

“If you know nothing and want to learn about the culture, this one weekend out of the year allows you to find out everything. Everything you want to know is represented at the festival. It’s a quick study of Cajun and Creole living,” he said. 

Event features homegrown talent

On tap musically for the Friday through Sunday event are performances by 60 musicians — all homegrown talent — including Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys, Wayne Toups, CJ Chenier, Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas, Chubby Carrier and the Bayou Swamp Band, The Revelers, Beausoleil avec Michael Doucet and The Lost Bayou Ramblers. 

On Friday, contemporary artists will pay tribute to the 1974 concert house band that included Zydeco pioneer Clifton Chenier, Cajun accordion maker Marc Savoy, the Balfa Brothers, a Cajun music ensemble of five brothers, Cajun accordion players Nathan Abshire and Blackie Forrester, and Jimmy C. Newman, a country music and Cajun singer-songwriter and long-time star of the Grand Ole Opry. 

“Get ready for Louisiana pure fun,” said Carrier, who’s scheduled to perform with his band on Sunday. “Get ready to eat some really good food and have the time of your life.” 

“People all over the word have these dates circled on their calendar,” he continued. “It’s an event that helps the younger generations continue the traditions. I’m a third generation Zydeco musician. This is a family oriented festival that brings people together of all ages.” 

A ‘celebration of everything Cajun’

Riley, who’s been performing at this festival since 1988, said he keeps returning for several reasons but especially because it helps preserve the culture. 

“It’s important to see us on stage, singing and speaking in French. That has an effect on people who come to see us and helps them fall in love with the culture,” he said. 

“There are a lot of events leading up to the weekend that focuses on the importance of the language, the culture, the food and, of course, the music. There’s none other that celebrates it like this one. I think it’s the biggest complete celebration of everything Cajun. It’s also inclusive of different generations, bands with lineage. That’s key,” he said. 

Riley, now 55, said he’s very proud that his three children play music. 

“It’s a beautiful thing for my family and others like mine,” he said. “Having your kids play with you is awesome. Most kids don’t want to have anything to do with what their parents do. Mine think what I do is fun and it is.” 

Riley said when he first started there weren’t too many young bands playing Cajun music. 

“There was real fear that the music would die off and dissipate like the language,” he said. “The opposite has happened. More young folks are preserving and playing this music than ever. The Zydeco scene down here is packed with young people. It’s super vibrant and alive. The same with the Cajun scene as well.” 
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NEW ORLEANS — On the eve of World War II, Nazis in Austria seized a pastel by renowned impressionist artist Claude Monet, selling it off and sparking a family’s decadeslong search that culminated Wednesday in New Orleans.

At an FBI field office, agents lifted a blue veil covering the Monet pastel and presented Adalbert Parlagi’s granddaughters with the artwork over 80 years after it was taken from their family. Helen Lowe said she felt that her grandfather would be watching and that he would be “so, so proud of this moment.”

Monet’s 1865 Bord de Mer depicts rocks along the shoreline of the Normandy coast, where Allied forces stormed the beaches of Nazi-occupied France during D-Day in 1944, marking a turning point in the war. The Monet pastel is one of 20,000 items recovered by the FBI Art Crime Team out of an estimated 600,000 artworks and millions of books and religious objects stolen by the Nazis.

“The theft was not random or incidental, but an integral part of the Nazis’ plan to eliminate all vestiges of Jewish life in Germany and Europe, root and branch,” U.S. State Department Holocaust adviser Stuart E. Eizenstat said in a March speech.

After Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Adalbert Parlagi, a successful businessman and art lover, and his wife, Hilda, left behind almost everything they owned and fled Vienna, using British license plates to drive across the border, their granddaughters said. Though the Parlagis hadn’t identified as Jewish for years and baptized their children as Protestants, they were still considered Jewish under Nazi laws, according to Austrian government records. Other relatives were killed in concentration camps.

The Parlagis attempted to ship their valuable carpets, porcelain and artworks out of Vienna to London, but found out later that their property had been seized and auctioned off by the Gestapo to support the Third Reich.

Multiple international declarations decried trading in Nazi-looted art, beginning with Allied forces in London in 1943. The 1998 Washington principles, signed by more than three dozen countries, reiterated the call and advocated for the return of stolen art.

Yet Adalbert Parlagi’s efforts were stonewalled by the Vienna auctioneer who had bought and sold the Monet pastel and another artwork owned by Parlagi. The records were lost after the fighting in Vienna, the auctioneer told Adalbert in a letter shortly after World War II, according to an English translation of a document prepared by an Austrian government body reviewing the Parlagi family’s art restitution claims.

“I also cannot remember two such pictures either,” the auctioneer said.

Many survivors of World War II and their descendants ultimately give up trying to recover their lost artwork because of the difficulties they face, said Anne Webber, co-founder of the London-based nonprofit Commission for Looted Art in Europe, which has recovered more than 3,500 looted artworks.

“You have to just constantly, constantly, constantly look,” Webber said.

Adalbert Parlagi and his son Franz kept meticulous ownership and search records. After Franz’s death in 2012, Françoise Parlagi stumbled upon her father’s cache of documents, including the original receipt from her grandfather’s purchase of the Monet pastel. She reached out to Webber’s commission for help in 2014.

The commission’s research team reviewed archives and receipts, contacted museums and art experts and scoured the internet, but initially found “absolutely no trace,” Webber said. Then, in 2021, the team discovered online that a New Orleans dealer acquired the Monet in 2017 and sold it to a Louisiana-based doctor and his wife.

The FBI investigated the commission’s research and, earlier this year, a federal court ruled the pastel should be returned to the Parlagis’ descendants.

“There was never a question” of returning the art to the rightful owners after learning of its sordid history, said Bridget Vita-Schlamp, whose late husband had purchased the Monet pastel.

“We were shocked, I’m not going to lie,” she said.

The family recovered another work in March from the Austrian government but there are still six more artworks missing, including from acclaimed artists Camille Pissarro and Paul Signac. The U.S. is likely the “largest illegal art market in the world,” said Kristin Koch, supervisory special agent with the FBI’s Art Crime Program.

The art world has a greater responsibility to investigate the origins of artworks and a moral obligation to return looted works to their rightful owners, Webber said.

“They represent the life and the lives that were taken,” Webber said. “They represent the world that they were exiled from.”

The granddaughters of Adalbert and Hilda Parlagi say they are grateful for what they have already gotten back. Françoise Parlagi, a broad smile on her face, said she hoped to hang a copy of the pastel in her home. She said the moment felt “unreal.”

“So many families are in this situation. Maybe they haven’t even been trying to recover because they don’t believe, they think this might not be possible,” she said. “Let us be hope for other families.”
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From pop superstar Taylor Swift to former wrestler Hulk Hogan, celebrity endorsements have been a feature of this year’s U.S. presidential race. But whether they will have any kind of impact on the election is difficult to predict. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports.
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seoul, south korea — South Koreans flocked to bookstores Friday and crashed websites in a frenzy to snap up copies of the work of novelist Han Kang in her home country, after her unexpected win of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature.

However, the author herself was keeping out of the limelight.

The country’s largest bookstore chain, Kyobo Book Centre, said sales of her books had rocketed on Friday, with stocks almost immediately selling out and set to be in short supply for the near future.

“This is the first time a Korean has received a Nobel Prize in Literature, so I was amazed,” said Yoon Ki-heon, a 32-year-old visitor at a bookstore in central Seoul.

“South Korea had a poor achievement in winning Nobel Prizes, so I was surprised by news that (a writer of) non-English books, which were written in Korean, won such a big prize.”

Soon after Thursday’s announcement, some bookstore websites could not be accessed due to heavy traffic. Out of the current 10 bestsellers at Kyobo, nine were Han’s books on Friday morning, according to its website.

Han’s father, well-regarded author Han Seung-won, said the translation of her novel The Vegetarian, her major international breakthrough, had led to her winning the Man Booker International Prize in 2016 and now the Nobel prize.

“My daughter’s writing is very delicate, beautiful and sad,” Han Seung-won said.

“So, how you translate that sad sentence into a foreign language will determine whether you win … It seems the translator was the right person to translate the unique flavor of Korean language.”

Han’s other books address painful chapters of South Korean history, including Human Acts which examines the 1980 massacre of hundreds of civilians by the South Korean military in the city of Gwangju.

Another novel, We Do Not Part, looks at the fallout of the 1948-54 massacre on Jeju island, when an estimated 10% of the island’s population were killed in an anti-communist purge.

“I really hope souls of the victims and survivors could be healed from pain and trauma through her book,” said Kim Chang-beom, head of an association for the bereaved families of the Jeju massacre.

Park Gang-bae, a director at a foundation that honors the victims and supports the bereaved families and survivors of the Gwangju massacre, said he was “jubilant and moved ” by her win.

“The protagonists in her book (Human Acts) are people we meet and live with every day, on every corner here, so this is deeply moving,” Park said.

Han’s father told reporters on Friday that she may continue to shun the limelight after giving no separate comments or interviews and eschewing media scrutiny since Thursday’s win.

“She said given the fierce Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine wars and people dying every day, how could she celebrate and hold a joyous press conference?” her father said.

Han Kang received the news of her win about 10 to 15 minutes before the announcement, her father said, and was so surprised that she thought it might be a scam at one point.
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WINTER PARK, Florida — Many Jews worldwide will mark Yom Kippur in fasting and prayer at their synagogues this weekend.

But for the faithful in Florida, destructive Hurricane Milton has disrupted plans for observing the Day of Atonement — the holiest day of the year in the Jewish faith — that begins Friday evening and caps off the High Holy Days that began with Rosh Hashana on October 2.

Across the storm-threatened areas, rabbis and their congregants spent part of the Days of Awe — the span between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur — protecting their homes and synagogues as Milton churned off the coast, spiraling into a Category 5 storm. Many — though not all — evacuated, heeding the voluntary and mandatory orders, and found safekeeping for their synagogues’ Torah scrolls and themselves.

Milton hit Florida’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday as a Category 3 cyclone, with damaging winds, heavy rains and tornadoes. By Thursday, the storm had moved eastward into the Atlantic Ocean.

Why this rabbi decided against evacuating before storm

Rabbi Yitzchok Minkowicz evacuated most of his family ahead of the storm, but chose to ride it out with his son, also a rabbi, at Chabad Lubavitch of Southwest Florida near Fort Myers. The center is hosting people displaced by the storm, including doctors, first responders and elderly who cannot evacuate.

It’s important to be “with the people and for the people,” and provide emotional and spiritual support, he said as the storm approached.

Near midnight Thursday, the Chabad center and the rest of the neighborhood lost power, said Minkowicz, making them among the millions without it. The center was spared from the storm surge, but homes and other buildings in the area were not, he said.

“Our pressing need is for Power so that we can help our community & hold Yom Kippur services,” Minkowicz told The Associated Press via email Thursday. “We’re praying for this to be resolved asap.”

The center planned to host Yom Kippur observances regardless of the storm. He said it was similar two years ago, when the holy day followed the major hurricane, Ian.

“Yom Kippur is a day that you open up your soul to God and you totally connect with God,” Minkowicz said. “When you go through a hurricane, anything materialistic is not important. They’re already in that zone where they’re totally focused on God.”

Congregation Beth Am in the Tampa Bay area also lost power and plans to hold Yom Kippur services online, said Rabbi Jason Rosenberg of the Reform synagogue.

“It’s important to keep perspective. Having a service online is not what anybody wants, but it could’ve been a lot worse,” he said. “This feels like a blessing.”

The storm underscored one of Yom Kippur’s annual reflections.

An implicit question, he said before Milton’s landfall, is “If this was going to be your last year on earth, how would you want to act differently? … When you’ve got a historical storm, a potentially life-threatening and life-altering storm bearing down on you, that message is really present.”

Milton disrupts Yom Kippur and October 7 commemoration

Like most of her congregants, Rabbi Nicole Luna had evacuated after helping secure Temple Beth El in Fort Myers, and entrusting several Torah scrolls to congregants should the threatened surge devastate the synagogue.

While the congregation braved Hurricanes Irma in 2017 and Ian in 2022, Milton’s timing hit especially hard, having already forced the postponement of community-wide commemoration of Hamas attacking Israel on October 7, 2023. The war that followed is ongoing.

“It just feels like too much for our hearts to carry right now,” Luna said from Miami ahead of the storm. “It’s all very heavy.”

After the storm passed through, Luna told her congregation that their synagogue had emerged undamaged, though it lost power.

She announced plans for a service via Zoom on Friday evening, and in-person services Saturday.

“We hope by Saturday more traffic lights will be restored but please only come if you can safely navigate the roads,” she said in her message.

Luna said she was grateful for the “big outpouring of support” she received from fellow rabbis across the East Coast of Florida, who were opening their temples for the holidays to evacuees and have emphasized they can come as they are since few grabbed “holiday-appropriate clothing” in the rush to escape Milton’s fury.

The Chabad of Southwest Broward near Fort Lauderdale is hosting several evacuees from areas most affected by the storm, ranging from a mother with her newborn to an elderly couple, said director Rabbi Pinny Andrusier. They are invited to spend Yom Kippur with the Cooper City-based group, including sharing kosher meals before and after the day of fasting.

“We were spared, thank God,” Andrusier said of the storm. “We’ve been able to open up our doors” for those in the hurricane zone.

Synagogue skips holding Yom Kippur services

Hundreds of Jewish families on Longboat Key, a barrier island off Sarasota Bay, won’t be able to observe Yom Kippur in their synagogue for the very first time in their 45-year history, said Shepard Englander, CEO of The Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee.

Access to the island, specifically the John Ringling Causeway, was closed ahead of the storm. The congregation decided it wasn’t worth risking Milton’s might for Day of Atonement services. They had celebrated Rosh Hashana in their building despite a number of nearby homes being damaged by Hurricane Helene, which made landfall last month.

Englander said he and his family evacuated from their home on a riverbank outside Sarasota and were hunkered down at a friend’s home inland. From there, he was trying to make sure community members from Longboat Key and other temples that won’t have services can say their prayers and break their daylong Yom Kippur fast at a newly constructed conference center in Sarasota with food items like blintzes, bagels, cream cheese and smoked salmon.

Ahead of the storm, people were scattered in the region at emergency shelters or staying with family or friends, Englander said.

“It’s in difficult times that you really understand the power of community,” he said. “And this is a caring, tight-knit, generous Jewish community.”
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Taipei, Taiwan — Organizers of Taiwan’s premier film festival report a huge increase this year in entries from China, despite a ban imposed by Beijing six years ago on participation in the festival by Chinese filmmakers and actors.

As many as 100 Chinese entries had been submitted for Golden Horse Awards in recent years, in defiance of the ban and without apparent consequences. But this year organizers say the number of movies and documentaries submitted from China shot up to 276.

More than a dozen of the Chinese films are potential finalists, some in multiple categories. The winners will be announced on November 23.

Industry analysts and directors say many of the Chinese filmmakers may have turned to the Golden Horse Awards to earn exposure for their movies, fearing they would be banned at home. Others point to the festival’s reputation for hosting a diversity of films.

According to a list of finalists released on October 2, Chinese director Lou Ye’s pseudo-documentary, An Unfinished Film, and Geng Jun’s black-and-white gay film Bel Ami were shortlisted for multiple awards.

Wonder Weng, executive director of the Taiwan Film Critics Society in Taipei, said both movies are likely to be banned in China.

He said that Lou, a regular participant in the Golden Horse Awards, has never bowed to the Chinese system and that his An Unfinished Film deviates from Beijing’s favored narratives about the COVID-19 pandemic. Geng’s Bel Ami, Weng added, challenges the values of the Chinese Communist Party amid a heavy-handed crackdown on the LGBTQ community.

Among this year’s entrants is Zheng Yu, a 27-year-old independent director from Inner Mongolia who specializes in expressing thoughts and emotions through images and who has been involved in film and television production for eight years.

His entry, Her Dream in the Living Room is a short film that records how life for his family was changed by an elder’s chronic disease. Although he was not shortlisted in the end, he told VOA that he still dreams of standing on the stage of the Golden Horse Awards one day.

Zheng said there are three golden awards in the Chinese film industry: the Taiwan Golden Horse, the Hong Kong Golden Statue and the China Golden Rooster Awards.

Among the three, “The Golden Horse Awards are more welcoming to varieties of films, and it is also more supportive of young directors, so this is why I wanted to apply for the Golden Horse Awards,” he said.

In addition to the film entries from China, this year’s festival includes 277 entries from Taiwan, 72 from Hong Kong, 17 from Macau, 21 from Malaysia, 17 from Singapore and 67 from other countries.

Ng Kwok Kwan, an associate professor at the Academy of Film at Hong Kong Baptist University, said the Golden Horse Awards are the oldest Chinese film awards on either side of the Taiwan Strait.

Although entries from China, Hong Kong and Macao have been discouraged by politics, the Golden Horse Awards are still seen as major awards in the Chinese film industry, and being nominated for a festival award will greatly enhance a film’s visibility, he said.

Ng added that the festival has become the best channel for Chinese-speaking audiences to access excellent works, and it is also the ideal outlet for some non-mainstream Hong Kong and Chinese filmmakers.

He said Hong Kong-made films received a total of 18 nominations at last year’s Golden Horse Awards and finally won four awards: Best New Director, Best New Actor, Best Feature Short Film and Best Animated Short Film.

“In recent years, some of the Hong Kong films nominated have been very good. They belong to a relatively niche and non-mainstream, and [the festival] has a special [interest] in the themes of non-mainstream, social issues, and experimental films, and I think it really has a certain contribution [to Hong Kong films],” he said.

Seventy-two Hong Kong films participated in this year’s Golden Horse Awards. From Now On, which explores the situation of older lesbians, was shortlisted for the Best Feature Film, Best Director and Best Actress awards.

Among the five shortlisted films for Best Short Film, three are Hong Kong films, including Colour Ideology Sampling.mov, Something About Us and Letters from the Imprisoned: Chow Hang Tung.
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The vibrant world of yellow-skinned giants, surreal landscapes and a massive mechanical zoetrope have taken over the Hirshhorn Museum in the largest U.S. showcase of work by Brazilian twin brothers OSGEMEOS. It’s the most comprehensive display of the siblings’ art ever presented in the United States. Maxim Adams has the story. Camera: Sergii Dogotar.
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While online dating apps are as popular as ever, some singles prefer meeting in person. Karina Bafradzhian has a look at some services that offer face-to-face meetups for people who are looking for friends as often as dates. Camera: Sergii Dogotar
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BEIJING — Coco Gauff rallied Saturday from a set down for the third consecutive match as she beat Paula Badosa 4-6, 6-4, 6-2 to advance to the final of the China Open.

The sixth-ranked Gauff will play Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic in Sunday’s final as the 20-year-old American bids for her second WTA-1000 level title.

Muchova defeated Olympic gold medalist Zheng Qinwen 6-3, 6-4 in the other semifinal.

Gauff, who has a 7-1 record in tour finals, has made a habit of slow starts in Beijing this week and the script played out again as the No. 19-ranked Badosa took a tight opening set in 59 minutes, saving 10 of 11 break points.

The Spaniard then built a 3-1 lead in the second set before the 2023 U.S. Open champion shifted the momentum by saving four break points and then breaking back to level at 4-4.

Gauff then held for 5-4 and broke Badosa again to force a deciding set.

“I felt like I was playing the right way the whole time, just a couple of unforced errors, she was playing well too,” Gauff said in her on-court interview. “I was trying to stay focused. Mentally, I just tried to reset. I got down a couple of times, and I tried to bounce back.”

With all the momentum, Gauff then broke Badosa three more times — for the loss of one of her own — as she clinched the match in 2 hours, 20 minutes.

Gauff had also lost the first set to Naomi Osaka in the fourth round before winning by walkover as the four-time major winner retired with a back injury at one set-all.

“I’ve had tough opponents the whole tournament,” Gauff said.

In the quarterfinals, Gauff trailed the No. 115-ranked Yuliia Starodubtseva before rallying to win in three.

Shanghai masters

Carlos Alcaraz and top-ranked Jannik Sinner showed no signs of fatigue from their China Open final earlier this week to advance with comfortable straight-set victories in their opening matches.

The second-ranked Alcaraz, who beat the Italian in Beijing on Wednesday for his fourth title of the year, recorded his 10th consecutive win with a 6-2, 6-2 result against 19-year-old Shang Juncheng of China.

The 21-year-old Spaniard won the first nine points of the match and four of seven break points as he rushed into a third-round meeting with another Chinese player, Wu Yibing.

“I’m not used to playing against players younger than me,” Alcaraz said. “He has been playing good tennis lately, lifting his first ATP (title in Chengdu), so I’m pretty sure he’s going to climb the rankings. I’m just happy to be able to win these kinds of matches.”

Sinner, who is dealing with an ongoing doping case, had a comfortable 6-1, 6-4 outing against Taro Daniel of Japan for his 250th career win.

The Italian, who won the U.S Open last month for his second major of the year, fired 12 aces and 38 winners.

“I felt quite comfortable today,” said the 23-year-old Sinner, who next plays Tomas Martin Etcheverry of Argentina. “I feel in good shape also physically, which is very important for me. Of course I will try to improve for tomorrow’s performance, but today I was serving really, really well, especially in important moments, and was moving well.”

No. 65-ranked Jakub Mensik of the Czech Republic broke sixth-ranked Andrey Rublev seven times on his way to an upset 6-7 (7), 6-4, 6-3 victory.

Yosuke Watanuki also had a surprise win, beating Number 35-ranked Brendan Nakashima 7-6 (4), 6-3. The Japanese qualifier plays either seventh-ranked Taylor Fritz of the U.S. or French qualifier Terence Atmane next.

Also, 24th-ranked Alexei Popyrin of Australia beat Miomir Kecmanovic of Serbia 6-3, 6-2.

Later Saturday, third-ranked Alexander Zverev began his campaign against Italian qualifier Mattia Bellucci, while fourth-ranked Novak Djokovic faced Alex Michelsen of the United States. 
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LIMA, Peru — Peru on Thursday celebrated two decades since the creation of a genetically modified breed of guinea pig, a rodent whose meat has formed a part of the diet of people in the Andean nation for thousands of years.

The genetically modified breed of guinea pig — known as cuy locally — is called “Peru.” It was created in 2004 at the National Institute of Agrarian Innovation, Juan Solórzano, a research zootechnician, said in the middle of one of the institute’s farms where thousands of guinea pigs are raised for study.

What characterizes the Peru breed is that grows faster, reaching a weight of 1 kilogram in 56 days, rather than the 160 days that was needed before, Solórzano said.

“It is a precocious breed,” said Solórzano.

Guinea pigs are native to the Andes Mountains and are raised in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia, areas where the Inca Empire spread almost 500 years ago.

There are more than 25 million guinea pigs in Peru, according to official figures. The rodent is so popular in the South American country that authorities have decreed the second Friday of October as National Guinea Pig Day to encourage its consumption.

Internal migration from Peru’s Andes in the 20th century brought the custom of eating guinea pigs to the country’s Pacific coast.

“It is eaten at sporting events or religious festivals. Guinea pig is a festive dish,” Solórzano said. It is also used in ritual healing practices by being rubbed over the body of a sick person.

Marina Isabel Briceño, an employee at an air conditioning supply company, said she has eaten guinea pigs since she was a child, calling them a delicacy served at “special events.”

Born in the Cajamarca region, Briceño said that at baptisms the parents often give the godfather and godmother a tray with more than a dozen guinea pigs that have been fried and are “crispy and ready to eat.”

“I know it is a rodent, a distant relative of rats, but those animals eat garbage, whereas guinea pigs eat something else, tender corn leaves which is why they are tasty,” she said.
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LOS ANGELES — American actor John Amos, who starred as the family patriarch on the hit 1970’s sitcom Good Times and earned an Emmy nomination for his role in the seminal 1977 miniseries Roots, has died. He was 84. 

Amos’ publicist, Belinda Foster, confirmed the news of his death Tuesday. No other details were immediately available. 

He played James Evans Sr. on Good Times, which featured one of television’s first Black two-parent families. Produced by Norman Lear and co-created by actor Mike Evans, who co-starred on All in the Family and The Jeffersons, it ran from 1974-79 on CBS. 

“That show was the closest depiction in reality to life as an African American family living in those circumstances as it could be,” Amos told Time magazine in 2021. 

His character, along with wife Florida, played by Esther Rolle, originated on another Lear show, Maude. James Evans often worked two manual labor jobs to support his family that included three children, with Jimmie Walker becoming a breakout star as oldest son J.J. 

Such was the show’s impact that Alicia Keys, Rick Ross, the Wu-Tang Clan are among the musicians who name-checked Amos or his character in their lyrics. 

Amos and Rolle were eager to portray a positive image of a Black family, struggling against the odds in a public housing project in Chicago. But they grew frustrated at seeing Walker’s character being made foolish and his role expanded. 

“The fact is that Esther’s criticism, and also that of John and others — some of it very pointed and personal — seriously damaged my appeal in the Black community,” Walker wrote in his 2012 memoir Dyn-O-Mite! Good Times, Bad Times, Our Times. 

After three seasons of critical acclaim and high ratings, Amos was fired. He had become critical of the show’s white writing staff creating storylines that he felt were inauthentic to the Black characters. 

“There were several examples where I said, ‘No, you don’t do these things. It’s anathema to Black society. I’ll be the expert on that, if you don’t mind,'” he told Time magazine. “And it got confrontational and heated enough that ultimately my being killed off the show was the best solution for everybody concerned, myself included.” 

Amos’ character was killed in a car accident. Walker lamented the situation. “If the decision had been up to me, I would have preferred that John stay and the show remain more of an ensemble,” he wrote in his memoir. “Nobody wanted me up front all the time, including me.” 

Amos and Lear later reconciled and they shared a hug at a Good Times live TV reunion special in 2019. 

Amos quickly bounced back, landing the role of an adult Kunta Kinte, the centerpiece of Roots, based on Alex Haley’s novel set during and after the era of slavery in the U.S. The miniseries was a critical and ratings blockbuster, and Amos earned one of its 37 Emmy nominations. 

“I knew that it was a life-changing role for me, as an actor and just from a humanistic standpoint,” he told Time magazine. “It was the culmination of all of the misconceptions and stereotypical roles that I had lived and seen being offered to me. It was like a reward for having suffered those indignities.” 

Early years

Born John Allen Amos Jr. on Dec. 27, 1939, in Newark, New Jersey, he was the son of an auto mechanic. He graduated from Colorado State University with a sociology degree and played on the school’s football team. 

Before pursuing acting, he moved to New York and was a social worker at the Vera Institute of Justice, working with defendants at the Brooklyn House of Detention. 

He had a brief professional football career, playing in various minor leagues. He signed a free-agent contract in 1967 with the Kansas City Chiefs, but coach Hank Stram encouraged Amos to pursue his interest in writing instead. He had jobs as an advertising and comedy writer before moving in front of the camera. 

Amos’ first major TV role was as Gordy Howard, the weatherman on The Mary Tyler Moore Show from 1970-73. As the show’s only Black character, he played straight man to bombastic anchor Ted Baxter. 

Among Amos’ film credits were Let’s Do It Again with Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier, Coming to America with Eddie Murphy and its 2021 sequel, Die Hard 2, Madea’s Witness Protection and Uncut Gems with Adam Sandler. He was in Ice Cube and Dr. Dre’s 1994 video “Natural Born Killaz.” 

He was a frequent guest star on The West Wing, and his other TV appearances included Hunter, The District, Men in Trees, All About the Andersons, Two and a Half Men, and The Ranch. 

In 2020, Amos was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame. He served in the New Jersey National Guard.
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NEW YORK — Pete Rose, baseball’s career hits leader and fallen idol who undermined his historic achievements and Hall of Fame dreams by gambling on the game he loved and once embodied, has died. He was 83.

Stephanie Wheatley, a spokesperson for Clark County in Nevada, confirmed on behalf of the medical examiner that Rose died Monday. Wheatley said the cause and manner of death had not yet been determined.

For fans who came of age in the 1960s and ’70s, no player was more exciting than the Cincinnati Reds’ No. 14, “Charlie Hustle,” the brash superstar with the shaggy hair, puggish nose and muscular forearms. At the dawn of artificial surfaces, divisional play and free agency, Rose was old school, a conscious throwback to baseball’s early days. Millions could never forget him crouched and scowling at the plate, running full speed to first even after drawing a walk, or sprinting for the next base and diving headfirst into the bag.

A 17-time All-Star, the switch-hitting Rose played on three World Series winners. He was the National League MVP in 1973 and World Series MVP two years later. He holds the major league record for games played (3,562) and plate appearances (15,890) and the NL record for the longest hitting streak (44). He was the leadoff man for one of baseball’s most formidable lineups with the Reds’ championship teams of 1975 and 1976, with teammates that included Hall of Famers Johnny Bench, Tony Perez and Joe Morgan.

But no milestone approached his 4,256 hits, breaking his hero Ty Cobb’s 4,191 and signifying his excellence no matter the notoriety that followed. It was a total so extraordinary that you could average 200 hits for 20 years and still come up short. Rose’s secret was consistency, and longevity. Over 24 seasons, all but six played entirely with the Reds, Rose had 200 hits or more 10 times, and more than 180 four other times. He batted .303 overall, even while switching from second base to outfield to third to first, and he led the league in hits seven times.

“Every summer, three things are going to happen,” Rose liked to say, “the grass is going to get green, the weather is going to get hot, and Pete Rose is going to get 200 hits and bat .300.”

Rose was Rookie of the Year in 1963, but he started off 0 for 12 with three walks and a hit by pitch before getting his first major league hit, an eighth-inning triple off Pittsburgh’s Bob Friend. It came in Cincinnati on April 13, 1963, the day before Rose’s 22nd birthday. He reached 1,000 in 1968, 2,000 just five years later and 3,000 just five years after that.

He moved into second place, ahead of Hank Aaron, with hit No. 3,772, in 1982. No. 4,000 was off the Phillies’ Jerry Koosman in 1984, exactly 21 years to the day after his first hit. He caught up with Cobb on Sept. 8, 1985, and surpassed him three days later, in Cincinnati, with Rose’s mother and teenage son, Pete Jr., among those in attendance.

Rose was 44 and the team’s player-manager. Batting left-handed against the San Diego Padres’ Eric Show in the first inning, he smacked a 2-1 slider into left field, a clean single. The crowd of 47,000-plus stood and yelled. The game was halted to celebrate. Rose was given the ball and the first base bag, then wept openly on the shoulder of first base coach and former teammate, Tommy Helms.

Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth, watching from New York, declared that Rose had “reserved a prominent spot in Cooperstown.” After the game, a 2-0 win for the Reds in which Rose scored both runs, he received a phone call from President Ronald Reagan.

“Your reputation and legacy are secure,” Reagan told him. “It will be a long time before anyone is standing in the spot where you’re standing now.”

Four years later, he was gone.

On March 20, 1989, Ueberroth (who would soon be succeeded by A. Bartlett Giamatti) announced that his office was conducting a “full inquiry into serious allegations” about Rose. Reports emerged that he had been relying on a network of bookies and friends and others in the gambling world to place bets on baseball games, including some with the Reds. Rose denied any wrongdoing, but the investigation found that the “accumulated testimony of witnesses, together with the documentary evidence and telephone records reveal extensive betting activity by Pete Rose in connection with professional baseball and, in particular, Cincinnati Reds games, during the 1985, 1986, and 1987 baseball seasons.”

Betting on baseball had been a primal sin since 1920, when several members of the Chicago White Sox were expelled for throwing the 1919 World Series — to the Cincinnati Reds. Baseball’s Rule 21, posted in every professional clubhouse, proclaims that “Any player, umpire or club or league official or employee who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform shall be declared permanently ineligible.”

As far back as the 1970s, Bench and others had worried about Rose. By all accounts, he never bet against his own team, but even betting on the Reds left himself open to blackmail and raised questions about whether a given managerial decision was based on his own financial interest.

In August 1989, at a New York press conference, Giamatti spoke some of the saddest words in baseball history: “One of the game’s greatest players has engaged in a variety of acts which have stained the game, and he must now live with the consequences of those acts.” Giamatti announced that Rose had agreed to a lifetime ban from baseball, a decision that in 1991 the Hall of Fame would rule left him ineligible for induction. Rose attempted to downplay the news, insisting that he had never bet on baseball and that he would eventually be reinstated.

Within weeks of his announcement, Giamatti was dead from a heart attack. But the ban remained in place and Rose never made it to the Hall in his lifetime, although he did receive 41 votes in 1992 (when 323 votes were needed), around the time the Hall formally ruled that those banned from the game could never be elected. His status was long debated. Rose’s supporters including Donald Trump, who in 2015, the year before he was elected president, tweeted: “Can’t believe Major League Baseball just rejected @PeteRose_14 for the Hall of Fame. He’s paid the price. So ridiculous — let him in!”

Meanwhile, his story changed. In a November 1989 memoir, written with “The Boys of Summer” author Roger Kahn, Rose again claimed innocence, only to reverse himself in 2004. He desperately wanted to come back, and effectively destroyed his chances. He would continue to spend time at casinos, insisting he was there for promotion, not gambling. He believed he had “messed up” and that his father would have been ashamed, but he still bet on baseball, albeit legally.

“I don’t think betting is morally wrong. I don’t even think betting on baseball is morally wrong,” he wrote in “Play Hungry,” a memoir released in 2019. “There are legal ways, and there are illegal ways, and betting on baseball the way I did was against the rules of baseball.”
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Los Angeles — Kris Kristofferson, a Rhodes scholar with a deft writing style and rough charisma who became a country music superstar and A-list Hollywood actor, has died.

Kristofferson died at his home in Maui, Hawaii on Saturday, family spokesperson Ebie McFarland said in an email. He was 88.

McFarland said Kristofferson died peacefully, surrounded by his family. No cause was given. He was 88.

Starting in the late 1960s, the Brownsville, Texas native wrote such classics standards as “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” “For the Good Times” and “Me and Bobby McGee.” Kristofferson was a singer himself, but many of his songs were best known as performed by others, whether Ray Price crooning “For the Good Times” or Janis Joplin belting out “Me and Bobby McGee.”

Kristofferson, who could recite William Blake from memory, wove intricate folk music lyrics about loneliness and tender romance into popular country music. With his long hair and bell-bottomed slacks and counterculture songs influenced by Bob Dylan, he represented a new breed of country songwriters along with such peers as Willie Nelson, John Prine and Tom T. Hall.

“There’s no better songwriter alive than Kris Kristofferson,” Nelson said during a November 2009 award ceremony for Kristofferson held by BMI. “Everything he writes is a standard and we’re all just going to have to live with that.”

As an actor, he played the leading man opposite Barbara Streisand and Ellen Burstyn, but also had a fondness for shoot-out Westerns and cowboy dramas.

He was a Golden Gloves boxer and football player in college, received a master’s degree in English from Merton College at the University of Oxford in England and turned down an appointment to teach at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, to pursue songwriting in Nashville. Hoping to break into the industry, he worked as a part-time janitor at Columbia Records’ Music Row studio in 1966 when Dylan recorded tracks for the seminal “Blonde on Blonde” double album.

At times, the legend of Kristofferson was larger than real life. Johnny Cash liked to tell a mostly exaggerated story of how Kristofferson, a former U.S. Army pilot, landed a helicopter on Cash’s lawn to give him a tape of “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” with a beer in one hand. Over the years in interviews, Kristofferson said with all respect to Cash, while he did land a helicopter at Cash’s house, the ‘man in black’ wasn’t even home at the time, the demo tape was a song that no one ever actually cut, and he certainly couldn’t fly a helicopter holding a beer.

In a 2006 interview with The Associated Press, he said he might not have had a career without Cash.

“Shaking his hand when I was still in the Army backstage at the Grand Ole Opry was the moment I’d decided I’d come back,” Kristofferson said. “It was electric. He kind of took me under his wing before he cut any of my songs. He cut my first record that was record of the year. He put me on stage the first time.”

One of his most recorded songs, “Me and Bobby McGee,” was written based on a recommendation from Monument Records founder Fred Foster. Foster had a song title in his head called “Me and Bobby McKee,” named after a female secretary in his building. Kristofferson said in an interview in the magazine, Performing Songwriter, that he was inspired to write the lyrics about a man and woman on the road together after watching the Frederico Fellini film, “La Strada.”

Joplin, who had a close relationship with Kristofferson, changed the lyrics to make Bobby McGee a man and cut her version just days before she died in 1970 from a drug overdose. The recording became a posthumous No. 1 hit for Joplin.

Hits that Kristofferson recorded include “Why Me,” “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do),” “Watch Closely Now,” “Desperados Waiting for a Train,” “A Song I’d Like to Sing” and “Jesus Was a Capricorn.”

In 1973, he married fellow songwriter Rita Coolidge and together they had a successful duet career that earned them two Grammy awards. They divorced in 1980.
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