Month: March 2017

Russia’s nationalist propaganda machine kicked into high gear after the 2014 annexation of Crimea sparked the worst East-West tensions since the Cold War.

 

State media quickly fell behind the Kremlin line while Russia’s few independent media came under increasing pressure to conform or self-censor.

 

As Russian authorities shrank the space for independent reporting, one group of Russian journalists escaped the pressure by relocating to the European Union in Latvia’s capital, Riga.

“Because, you know, a lot of white noise propaganda creates some kind of fake agenda. And, we want to provide [a] real agenda to our readers,” says Meduza Project founder Galina Timchenko.

 

Timchenko was fired in 2014 as chief editor of Russian news website Lenta.ru after publishing an interview with a far-right Ukrainian nationalist that Russia’s state media regulator called “extremist.”

 

Timchenko says she ran out of time and energy to fight Russian authorities and can work easier in the EU countries.

Baltic countries are willing hosts

In the Baltics, authorities responded to Kremlin propaganda with temporary suspensions for Russian state media that incited unrest. But also by hosting independent Russian media like Meduza.

“Those Russian journalists who left Moscow, who left [Saint] Petersburg, who left Russia and other cities, and who established their own media outlet here and who are also, to some extent, helping to tackle these propagandas,” says Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics.

 

Meduza battles increased cynicism about Russian politics and current events by focusing on online content and humor to attract young Russians.

Use of humor

A big focus is using humor to point out absurd politics and alleged corruption.

During a March visit to their office in Riga, reporters were shown an online game Meduza created, one of many on their website, that has players try to purchase more shoes and shirts than Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

The game refers to Russian anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny’s investigation of alleged corruption linked to Medvedev. The investigation started by tracing who paid for a pair of Medvedev’s sneakers and ended asking the same question about a massive villa estate in Tuscany that Navalny claims is Medvedev’s. Russian officials have dismissed Navalny’s previous allegations, though Medvedev has yet to comment himself.

 

Target young Russian internet users

Meduza aims to reach internet-savvy young Russians who, unlike 80 percent of their compatriots, are not yet hooked on state television.

“These people have more chances to see another Russia. These people have more chances to see Russia without the current government, the current president. So, that’s why we think that we have to invest all our resources exactly into this audience,” says Meduza Chief Editor Ivan Kolpakov.

 

But he says they are not activists or opposition media; just reporters trying to do independent journalism.

“And the main thing we’re trying to do, we’re trying to, you know, make news interesting again, Make News Great Again, for the people in Russia,” says Kolpakov with a slight grin in sarcastic reference to U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.”

 

Older Russians are harder target

Timchenko acknowledges reaching most older Russians is quite a challenge.

“They want to see themselves, with their beliefs and desires, in media. They just do not want to see different views. It’s the most difficult, difficult thing.”

While in Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, a news-comedy program is using a similar strategy.

 

 

Political satire

An online show called Laikykites Ten, or “Hang In There,” recently began a Russian-language version making fun of Russian politics.

“Inspiration comes from the — our beloved  — Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Also, Jon Stewart, [Stephen] Colbert,” says host of the show and TV journalist Andrius Tapinas.

 

The show’s name refers to a comment made by Russian Prime Minister Medvedev to a retied woman in annexed Crimea who confronted him in 2016, telling him pensions were too low to keep up with rising costs. Medvedev responded there was no money left in the budget and hastily left shouting “You hang in there. Best Wishes! Cheers! Take care!”

The comments sparked a social media storm.

 

The crowd-funded, online program uses satire to reach Russian speakers and poke holes in Kremlin propaganda.

“We’re making fun of Russian politics and Russian government. And, that’s where the market is pretty empty, I would say. Because, inside of Russia, it’s not advisable for your health reasons to be very critical or even a tiny bit critical of your government,” says Tapinas.

 

Like Meduza, Tapinas seeks the next generation of Russians who mainly get their information online, but are fed up with nationalist politics and could use a good laugh.

 

“When people laugh there is no place for fear,” says Meduza’s Timchenko. “You know, you can make those tough guys silly and stupid and funny and have some joy and to show that news is not boring.”
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The globally popular statue of a young girl will keep staring down Wall Street’s famed “Charging Bull” through February 2018 instead of being removed this coming Sunday, the mayor said.

She’s “standing up to fear, standing up to power, being able to find in yourself the strength to do what’s right,” said Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio, who appeared with the “Fearless Girl” statue Monday on the lower Manhattan traffic island where the two bronze figures face each other.

The mayor said the political turmoil surrounding Republican President Donald Trump makes the endearing child particularly relevant.

“She is inspiring everyone at a moment when we need inspiration,” he said.

The 4-foot-tall, 250-pound ponytailed girl in a windblown dress was installed this month to highlight the dearth of women on corporate boards as she stands strong against the 11-foot-tall, 7,100-pound bull. The girl became an instant tourist draw and internet sensation.

On Monday morning, Democratic U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, of New York, led a group of prominent women in front of City Hall to honor the artist, Kristen Visbal, and State Street Global Advisors, the asset management firm that commissioned the work and, with the McCann advertising firm, helped Visbal create her sculpture.

“She was created to bring attention to the courage and unrealized power of women in so many fields, and she has clearly struck a nerve,” said Maloney, who is pushing for the statue to become a permanent installation.

Visbal said the positive response to her artwork “renewed my faith in sculpture to make an impact on society, to create a debate the way a good piece of art should.”

She has received more than 1,000 emails from India, Denmark, Sweden, Spain and elsewhere, including one from a mother who wanted to wallpaper her daughter’s room with the girl’s image.

“I see men and women as the ying and yang of society,” Visbal said. “They bring different things to the table. They solve problems in a different way. But we need to work together.”

“Fearless Girl” will stay in place for another 11 months through an art program of the city’s Department of Transportation that manages lower Broadway near Wall Street.

Visbal said one of her models was a friend’s young daughter, whom she asked “to envision staring down a great big bull and, boy, she really had style.” The girl was white, and the creative team then incorporated another girl, a Latina, “to come up with a child that has universal appeal,” Visbal said.

The fictional figure is linked to a very real message: Women make up only about 16 percent of U.S. corporate boards, according to the ISS Analytics business research firm.

Artist Arturo Di Modica’s bull arrived after the 1987 stock market crash as a symbol of Americans’ financial resilience and can-do spirit. He wants the girl gone, calling the statue an “advertising trick” fashioned by two corporate giants, while his sculpture is “art.”
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With their gravity-defying trampoline flips, graceful acrobatics, juggling and tightrope walking, the children in San Francisco’s circus school are bringing a touch of Cirque du Soleil magic to this bohemian Pacific beach town.

In jewel-colored leotards with feather headdresses and intricate makeup, they romp through seamless routines in an exuberant take on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with pumping music and hula-hoops, under the direction of Cirque co-founder Gilles Ste-Croix.

Wearing an ethereal illuminated dress and carried as fairy queen Titania, Juliana Palomares Rodriguez — like many of the 150 children in the Circo de los Ninos school — has set her heart set on joining the world-famous Cirque du Soleil.

“I love it,” said Palomares, 15, from the town of around 3,000 residents, known locally as San Pancho. “It’s really exciting to be in the show — the circus school has taught me how to present myself and work in a team.”

Her dream now is go to circus school in Montreal, Canada, where Cirque du Soleil has its headquarters.

Ste-Croix raided costumes and circus gear from Cirque du Soleil’s warehouses for the children’s circus, which was set up in a converted warehouse six years ago.

Originally it worked with the Entreamigos community center next door, whose projects aim to equip the small town north of Puerto Vallarta to meet the challenges of increased tourism and development.

“Circo has become a project for the town … it’s something more than it was at the beginning, just to train kids in acrobatics,” said Ste-Croix, before walking through the school where girls swung upside down on aerial hoops and stilt-walkers practiced skipping. “It’s not a business plan for the sake of money — it’s more a human resource plan.”

Now aged 21, Jose Luis Herrera Botello graduated from Circo de los Ninos to a professional course in Mexico City. Here he is learning skills such as juggling, contortion, trapeze and acrobatics from Russian, Cuban and other teachers, which he will eventually pass on to the children in San Pancho.

“What I learned from the Circo de los Ninos is do things well or don’t do them. If you really want something, just go for it,” said Herrera, who is sponsored by Circo de los Ninos and Entreamigos.

Ready for change

For American Nicole Swedlow, whose Entreamigos project began at a table set up under a tree, access to good education is key to ensuring children from local families can earn a living, find professional jobs, and lead the town as it rapidly evolves along with an influx of tourists.

Entreamigos is now a vibrant focal point, with around 300 people passing through its shutter doors each day for free activities such as football, technology, English, art and capoeira. Others shop at its gallery and secondhand store.

“The danger for me is that we leave behind some of our most local families because they don’t have access to the resources that you need to live in a growing community,” said Swedlow in the airy library where children sit on the floor playing games and battle noisily over table football.

“Entreamigos is a classic example of resilience,” she added. “We’re asking a community to prepare themselves, or become prepared for everything that’s coming, so they can be active leaders in that process.”

Picking motivated children from low-income backgrounds for Entreamigos’ scholarship scheme is crucial, she said.

Around 90 are now enrolled, with some at local universities, while two brothers with barely literate parents are at a nautical school.

Some women have trained as beauticians, allowing them to earn a living from their front yard while looking after their children, said Swedlow, whose work has been recognized by the Dalai Lama.

New path

One of six siblings, Glenda Ponce said she secretly applied to university and finally got a scholarship through Entreamigos, despite objections from her parents who could not afford to pay and wanted her to get married and work as a cleaner.

She is on the leadership council that will soon take over running Entreamigos, where her parents both now work. Having completed only a couple of years of primary school themselves, they are improving their literacy as part of a deal that all employees study.

“The biggest impact of Entreamigos has been to change patterns — the course of a generation,” said Ponce, 25, sitting in front of a huge banner with photos of scholarship recipients.

Isis del Rosario Vivas Rodriguez, 20, who met Swedlow when she first started classes under a tree, said her scholarship had changed her options, and she is now training to be a teacher while working at Entreamigos.

“It’s helped find a path to follow. … In my generation, hardly anyone studies. Normally they work in a little grocers’ or stationery shop,” she said.

Entreamigos also generates jobs and a chunk of its income from a town-wide recycling program, selling upcycled products such as glasses in its gallery.

More than 1,000 people come to volunteer with the organization each year, many of them U.S. and Mexican university students, while others visit to work out how to replicate parts of its model elsewhere.

“We’ll educate anybody and everybody to give them the ability to do this in their own communities,” Swedlow said.
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A Houston high school student has lost her battle with terminal cancer days after having a dream come true in a talk with Beyonce over a video chat.

 

Alief Independent School District spokeswoman Kimberly Smith says senior Ebony Banks died late Saturday night.

 

The teen’s Hastings High School classmates started an online campaign before her death to give her a chance to meet her favorite singer, Beyonce. Banks received a FaceTime call Wednesday from the star.

 

The school gave Banks her diploma during a graduation ceremony in the hospital last week.

 

Students gathered at a candlelight vigil Sunday to remember Banks. Video posted on social media shows students raising candles to Beyonce’s “Halo.”

 
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Hollywood actress Shailene Woodley has reached a plea deal that calls for no jail time over her involvement in protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline in North Dakota.

 

The “Divergent” star was among 27 activists arrested Oct. 10. She livestreamed her arrest on Facebook.

 

Woodley initially pleaded not guilty to criminal trespass and engaging in a riot, misdemeanors carrying a maximum punishment of a month in jail and a $1,500 fine.

 

She signed a court document Friday agreeing to plead guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct, serve one year of unsupervised probation and forfeit $500 bond. The agreement is awaiting a judge’s approval. Woodley was scheduled to stand trial this Friday.

 

Opponents of the $3.8 billion pipeline worry about potential environmental damage. About 750 protesters have been arrested since August.

 
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Driving around the hallowed grounds at Vicksburg National Military Park in the state of Mississippi reminded National Parks traveler Mikah Meyer of another famous battlefield: Gettysburg, in Pennsylvania. The Battle of Gettysburg was the bloodiest battle of the American Civil War and where President Abraham Lincoln gave his immortal “Gettysburg Address.”

Gettysburg of the south

“Having lived in Maryland before this trip, which is very close to Gettysburg — one of the most popular battlefields to visit — I heard people often talk about Vicksburg as kind of a similar experience… just in the South,” Mikah said.

Tour Vicksburg National Military Park:

Like Gettysburg, Vicksburg is a large battlefield site, with licensed national park guides who cheerfully help visitors navigate the grounds.

Mikah, who’s on a mission to visit all of the more than 400 sites within the National Park Service, says he felt lucky to have had “one of their best guides,” David Maggio, who accompanied Mikah during his drive around the battlefield to explain the significance of the site.

Vicksburg is the key!

As the National Park Service explains it, at the time of the Civil War, the Mississippi River was the single most important economic feature of the continent — the very lifeblood of America. Upon the secession of the southern states, Confederate forces closed the river to navigation, which threatened to strangle northern commercial interests.

President Abraham Lincoln told his civilian and military leaders, “See what a lot of land these fellows hold, of which Vicksburg is the key! The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket…”

47 day siege

Historians say the battle that took place at Vicksburg between the Union (northern) and Confederate (southern) armies was a turning point in America’s civil war.

“It was actually a 47 day siege,” Mikah explained. “The Union was trying to control access of the entire Mississippi River… so the only thing stopping them from having a complete shipping route was this last Confederate stronghold at Vicksburg.”

Aware that the Union army was planning to take Vicksburg, the Confederates built a perimeter around the entire city, so that when the Union came the defenders would have more of a buffer zone. They were fortified so well, apparently, that despite various attacks, General Ulysses S. Grant and his soldiers were never able to penetrate them.

War tactics

“So rather than beat them, they (Union Army) just laid siege to their fortifications for 47 days until they ran out of food and ran out of clean water,” Mikah explained. “There were examples of everything from General Grant throwing dead animals in the creeks that supplied them water so that it would spoil their water and poison them… to kind of really starve and dehydrate them into giving up, which they eventually did after 47 days.”

The National Park Service states that Vicksburg’s surrender on July 4, 1863, coupled with the fall of Port Hudson, Louisiana a few days later, divided the South, and gave the North undisputed control of the Mississippi River, thus providing President Lincoln with the highly coveted key to victory.

Today, Vicksburg National Cemetery, spread out across 47 hectares (116 acres), holds the remains of 17,000 Union soldiers. The first national cemeteries established by Congress in 1862 were to provide a burial place for “soldiers who shall die in the service of the country,” so that applied only to Union troops.

Confederate dead from the Vicksburg campaign, originally buried behind Confederate lines, were re-interred in the Vicksburg City Cemetery, in an area called “Soldiers’ Rest.” Approximately 5,000 Confederates have been re-interred there, of which 1,600 are identified.

Historic accuracy

Mikah observed that the battlefield is an extremely well laid-out park and very historically accurate “because it was turned into a park in the 1800s, so when they were creating it, they had soldiers from both the Union and the Confederate fill out maps, and basically put markings where their unit was.”

“So as you drive around now, there’s a stone marker in every single place that there was a unit.”

There are also many stone monuments where those units were… and “every state that had people in the battle also built a memorial, so you have these really gorgeous memorials that are set up all around the perimeter of this battle,” Mikah added.

Visiting Vicksburg, “was a very unique experience,” Mikah said, “and thus far, one of the most interesting and most well-told battles of the Civil War” that he’s seen.

Mikah invites you to learn more about his travels across America by visiting his website, Facebook and Instagram.

 
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Adele fans who didn’t catch her on her world tour that’s winding down may be out of luck in the future.

The New Zealand Herald reports Adele told the audience during Sunday night’s show in Auckland that “touring isn’t something I’m good at” and she doesn’t know if she “will ever tour again.”

The concert was Adele’s last one before she formally finishes the tour in her hometown of London with four sold-out dates at Wembley Stadium this summer.

 

Adele sang through heavy rain at the outdoor show in Auckland on Sunday. Photos show her in a drenched dress for part of the concert and also donning a plastic poncho.

 

She joked that she “just spent two hours in hair and makeup for nothing.”
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Authorities have made an arrest stemming from a shooting involving hip-hop star Fetty Wap in his New Jersey hometown that left three people wounded.

 

The shooting happened outside a 24-hour deli in Paterson at about 5 a.m. Sunday.

 

Authorities on Monday charged Raheem Thomas with assault and weapons offenses.

 

Investigators say the rapper, whose real name is Willie Maxwell, and several friends, became involved in a heated altercation with another group.

 

Officials say the rapper was not hurt and the three victims were taken to a hospital.

 

There was no immediate word on the extent of the injuries to the shooting victims. The investigation is ongoing

 
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Stars and fans will gather Saturday for a public memorial to honor late actresses Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher nearly three months after their deaths. 

 

The ceremony honoring the lives of the mother-daughter duo will be at Forest Lawn-Hollywood Hills, the storied cemetery that is their final resting place. People will be granted attendance at the event on a first-come, first-served basis, and it will be live-streamed beginning at 1 p.m. PDT. 

 

The ceremony is slated to feature music by James Blunt and “Star Wars” composer John Williams and display Hollywood memorabilia that Reynolds collected throughout her life. 

Deaths a day apart 

Fisher, 60, an actress and writer who starred as Princess Leia in the original “Star Wars” trilogy, died December 27 after suffering a medical emergency days earlier aboard a flight from London. Reynolds, 84, an Oscar-nominated actress who shot to fame after starring in “Singin’ in the Rain” at age 19, died the following day after being briefly hospitalized. 

 

“She said, ‘I want to be with Carrie,’” Reynolds’ son, Todd Fisher, told The Associated Press after his mother’s death. “And then she was gone.” 

The back-to-back deaths of two prominent actresses were stunning, but they were made even more poignant by the women’s complex history. Fisher and Reynolds had a strained relationship that Fisher explored in her writing, but they later reconciled and became trusted confidantes brought closer by painful events in their lives. 

 

Reynolds lost one husband to Elizabeth Taylor, and two other husbands plundered her for millions. Fisher struggled with addiction and mental illness, which she candidly described in books and interviews. 

Fisher’s last role

 

Fisher died after finishing work on “The Last Jedi,” the eighth film in the core “Star Wars” saga. Disney CEO Bob Iger said this week that Fisher appears throughout the film, and her performance will not be changed. 

 

Reynolds earned an Oscar nomination for her starring role in “The Unsinkable Molly Brown.” 

 

The actresses participated in an HBO documentary on their lives called “Bright Lights,” which aired in January. 

 

Todd Fisher organized Saturday’s memorial to give fans an opportunity to honor his mother and sister. Fisher’s daughter, actress Billie Lourd, is expected to attend. 

 

Stars including Meryl Streep, Tracey Ullman and Stephen Fry mourned the actresses at a private memorial in January. 
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Fallingwater is a house in rural southwestern Pennsylvania designed in 1935 by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Although it is not easy to get to, Fallingwater is a must-see, and not just for architecture buffs. VOA’s Masha Morton takes us on a tour.
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