Month: June 2017

The fate of comedian Bill Cosby is now in the hands of the jury after both sides wrapped up their cases Monday in his sexual assault trial near Philadelphia.

The 79-year-old Cosby is charged with drugging and assaulting Andrea Constand, a former director of operations of the Temple University women’s basketball team.

He allegedly gave her pills that paralyzed her and left her unable to resist when he started touching her in his Philadelphia home.

Constand had gone to Cosby’s house for dinner and to get advice about her career.

Cosby’s lawyers used their closing arguments to say Constand lied on the witness stand about her relationship with the comic. They pointed out that she telephoned Cosby more than 50 times after the alleged attack, but told police she had no contact with him.

“It’s not a fib. It’s not a mistake, It’s a stone cold lie,” Brian McMonagle told the jury.

Constand said the calls were just business and that Cosby, as a Temple alumnus, could help the basketball team.

“This isn’t talking to a trustee. This is talking to a lover,” McMonagle said, accusing Constand of trying to use Cosby’s name for financial gain.

The prosecution relied heavily on parts of the deposition Cosby gave to police in a 2005 civil suit brought by Constand.

In it, Cosby admitted getting a prescription to a sedative called Quaaludes back in the 1970s and giving the drug to women he wanted to sleep with.

District Attorney Kevin Steele told the jury these words prove Cosby knew exactly what he was doing when he allegedly gave pills to Constand, telling her they were herbal relaxants.

“Drugging somebody and putting them in a position where you can do what you want with them is not romantic. It’s criminal.”

Steele said no amount of “fancy lawyering” will save Cosby from his own words.

“Ladies and gentlemen, he has told you what he has done,” Steele said to the jurors. “It is about as straightforward as you are ever going to see in a sex crimes case.”

If found guilty, Cosby could go to prison for the rest of his life.

More than 50 women claim Cosby sexually assaulted them in incidents dating back to the 1960s, when he emerged as a major comedy star. Most of the alleged incidents occurred too long ago to be prosecuted now.

Constand’s complaint is the only one that has come to trial. Cosby has denied all the charges.

Cosby won fame for stand-up comedy routines focusing on his Philadelphia childhood and growing up in a middle class black family.

He played a wise and genial doctor in his 1980s television comedy series, The Cosby Show. It was the country’s most popular TV show for much of its eight-year run.
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Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” is playing to sold-out houses in a star-filled revival in London, and Peter Eotvos’ operatic version premiered Saturday in  New York at City Opera. A response to the AIDS epidemic and the lack of U.S. government action, the work still resonates in an era of polarized politics.

 

“The play in English has lasted now for 25 years, which is not long compared to ‘Oedipus,’ but it’s pretty long for a contemporary play to still be able to generate excitement, and it’s taught everywhere in colleges,” Kushner said. “All of my stuff does best during Republican administrations because I hate them so much, and there is an anger in the plays that I think really speaks in times of political mischief of a high order.”

 

Formally titled “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes,” the two-part play runs for nearly seven hours, not including intermissions. “Millennium Approaches” premiered in San Francisco in 1991 and “Perestroika” the following year in Los Angeles, Both parts won Tony Awards, and “Millennium Approaches” earned the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

 

An HBO miniseries in 2003 directed by Mike Nichols starred Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson. When Paris’ Theatre du Chatalet was seeking to commission a new work from Eotvos, a composer friend recommended “Angels.”

 

“He asked me if I would prepare a libretto. And I said no. I said I don’t quite understand how a 6 1/2 hour-long play can be turned into a libretto that’s anything shorter than the Ring Cycle,” Kushner said. “But I said that he was welcome to try.”

 

Eotvos’ wife, Mari Mezei, took about a year to condense “Angels” to an opera of just over 2 hours. They traveled to New York, attended “Rent,” “Cabaret” and other Broadway shows to get a feel for the city.

 

“I went out to Central Park at night and listened to the sounds,” the 73-year-old composer said through a translator. “There were remote sounds of city in the background. There was actually a guitar playing, and that’s where this guitar solo is actually coming from.”

 

“Angels” centers on Prior Walter, who has AIDS, the people in his life and controversial lawyer Roy Cohn. Central is Prior’s vision of an angel, who declares him a prophet.

 

“The idea of the angel and the hallucinations was musical inspiration,” Eotvos said. “Everything that is abstract can be put into the music.”

 

The opera version shifts the emphasis.

 

“Politics is not the territory of music,” Eotvos remembered telling Kushner. “The names of politicians are gone in a certain amount of time, so they’re not interesting anymore. It was much more important to emphasize this human condition.”

 

A student of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Eotvos composed “Angels” with speech morphing into song, syncopating percussion and electronic keyboards.

 

The opera was given its world premiere at the Chatalet in 2004 with Barbara Hendricks and Julia Migenes. It has since appeared in Hamburg, Germany; Amsterdam; Boston; Fort Worth, Texas; Frankfurt, Germany; London; Wroclaw, Poland; and Los Angeles.

 

Michael Capasso, who brought New York City Opera out of bankruptcy last year, decided to cap the first full season of the company’s return with four performances of “Angels” running through June 16, the first installment of a LGBT Pride Initiative that will include Charles Wuorinen’s “Brokeback Mountain” next June.

 

And while the opera makes its New York premiere, Marianne Elliott’s acclaimed staging starring Andrew Garfield and Nathan Lane is running until Aug. 19 at London’s National Theatre. Kushner says it likely will transfer to Broadway next season.

 

“It feels to me like I can stop worrying about it once and for all. I think it’s going to last,” said Kushner, who turns 61 next month. “I don’t know if the human race is going to last. But I think that the play is.”
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The New Hampshire Political Library doesn’t include any books about President Donald Trump, but even he likely would agree its new collection of presidential biographies, memoirs and monographs is huge.

 

Arthur Young of Manchester spent 25 years collecting 2,744 books on the presidency, the founding fathers and other people and events related to the nation’s highest office.

 

He donated them to the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College, where staff spent the last six months cataloguing them and building custom glass-front display cabinets to hold them.

 

The collection spans from George Washington to Barack Obama, and includes scholarly tomes as well as what Young considers fun works, such as a book about Teddy Roosevelt written by his valet.

 

“A book itself is an object of art, from its binding to its font,” Young said at a dedication ceremony Friday. “Important ideas and skillful writing are enduring treasures of our culture.”

Young, 76, is a former director of libraries at the University of Rhode Island, University of South Carolina and Northern Illinois University. He said he grew up in a home with thousands of books and has spent his life dedicated to the care, preservation and dissemination of books.

 

He acknowledged he hasn’t read all of the presidential collection, but said he hopes they will be useful to students.

 

The collection shows how perceptions of presidents have changed over time. For example, the earliest book about Washington was written in 1931; the latest in 2009. The most recent addition is a 1,400-word book about Obama that covers his life until just before he became president.

 

“Washington is a good example — the first president continues to be cited as a model of decorum and honesty and all of those good virtues going back a couple hundred years,” Young said. “You learn how the presidency and its meaning changes over time.”

 

Neil Levesque, director of the institute, said the donation reinforces the facility’s value to scholars, journalists and the public and will provide rich research opportunities for students.

 

“The students here are going to use this for many, many years to come,” he said.

 

Until now, the library has mainly been devoted to campaign memorabilia and other items related to New Hampshire’s tradition of holding the first-in-the-nation presidential primary every four years.

 

The small room that is now lined with glass-front bookcases filled with Young’s donated books had been used as a meeting space and reading room but had few actual books. Young, who has seen many libraries, called it “beyond splendid.”

 

“I don’t have to make any exaggeration to say this is the best setting for books I have ever been in, and that’s not just because they used to be mine,” he said.
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Actor Bill Cosby could charm jurors at his sexual assault trial if he testifies this week, but experts say the risk would be considerable.

Accuser Andrea Constand has told her side of the story. The jury also heard Cosby’s version in the form of his police statement and his lurid deposition in her 2005 lawsuit. But will they hear from the 79-year-old actor himself when the defense starts Monday?

Cosby’s spokesman says maybe, but his lawyers remain mum.

“He could be a fantastic witness. … He’s an actor and he’s a very good actor,” said Duquesne University School of Law professor Wes Oliver. “(But) he is potentially opening the door to a whole lot of cross-examination that they fought really hard to keep out.”

Prosecutors wanted 13 other accusers to testify at the trial, but the judge allowed just one, an assistant to his agent at the William Morris Agency. That meant the prosecution rested its case on Friday, just five days after the trial began.

If Cosby testifies, and denies drugging and molesting Constand or anyone else, the judge might allow more accusers to testify as rebuttal witnesses.

“It would be very bad for him for the jury to even begin to think about the other women,” Oliver said.

The defense’s main goal this past week has been to attack the credibility of Constand and the William Morris assistant, Kelly Johnson. Johnson had corroborating evidence in the form of her 1996 worker’s compensation claim. A lawyer on the case recalled her startling account of being drugged and sexually assaulted by Cosby, but his notes revealed a glaring discrepancy in the account. He said the encounter occurred in 1990, while Johnson insists it was 1996, the year she left her job.

The defense had more trouble trying to discredit Constand. They hammered home the point that she doesn’t know just when it happened, and they questioned why she had regular phone contact with Cosby later that spring. Constand said she had to return calls from the Temple University trustee because he was an important booster and she worked for the women’s basketball team.

She filed a police complaint in January 2005 after moving back home to the Toronto area, and then sued Cosby in March 2005 when the local prosecutor decided not to charge him.

Cosby’s testimony in her civil case shows just how hard a witness he would be to control. His answers, like his comedy routines, meander from point to point and veer toward stream of consciousness.

And he uses jarring language to describe his sexual encounters with various young women. He talks in the deposition of “the penile entrance” and “digital penetration,” and he told Constand’s mother, when she called to confront him, that her daughter had had an orgasm. And he can display hints of arrogance.

“One of the greatest storytellers in the world and I’m failing,” Cosby said when asked to repeat an answer in the deposition.

The defense could call other witnesses to try to bolster their argument that Cosby had a consensual relationship with Constand, 35 years his junior.

The trial would move to closing arguments on Monday if they decide not to put anyone on the stand.

The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission, which Constand and Johnson have done.
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Katy Perry opened up about having suicidal thoughts during a marathon weekend livestream event.

 

“I feel ashamed that I would have those thoughts, feel that low, and that depressed,” she said Saturday on YouTube during a tearful session with Siri Singh from the Viceland series “The Therapist.”

 

The pop star has been livestreaming herself since Friday, filming her life for anyone with an internet connection to see. She’s been doing yoga, hosting dinner parties, sleeping, applying makeup and singing, of course.

 

By Sunday, the most revealing 60 minutes of the four-day “Katy Perry – Witness World Wide” event was her time with Singh.

 

Perry told Singh she struggles with her public persona. In the past, she said, she has had suicidal thoughts. She talked about the challenge of being her authentic self while promoting her public image as she lives “under this crazy microscope.”

 

“I so badly want to be Katheryn Hudson (her birth name) that I don’t even want to look like Katy Perry anymore sometimes – and, like, that is a little bit of why I cut my hair, because I really want to be my authentic self,” she said.

 

Perry is sporting a new short, blond hairstyle.

 

The YouTube event is a promotion for her new album “Witness.” The livestream will culminate in a free concert Monday in Los Angeles for 1,000 fans.
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Dear Evan Hansen, a musical about a lonely high school student who pretends to have been a friend of a classmate who committed suicide, won six awards during Sunday’s annual Tony Awards ceremony.

The surprise hit of the 2016-17 season took home Tonys for best musical, best book (the combination of the show’s music, lyrics and story) for playwright Steven Levenson, best score, orchestrations, best leading actor in a musical for Broadway newcomer Ben Platt, and best featured actress for Rachel Bay Jones.

The Tony Award for best play went to Oslo, an examination of the negotiations that led to the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian peace accords; cast member Michael Aronov won the for Tony for best featured actor.

Three well-known Hollywood actors took home Tony Awards Sunday.  Kevin Kline took home his third Tony for playing the lead in Noel Coward’s Present Laughter; Laurie Metcalf, a three-time Emmy Award winner for her work on the television comedy Roseanne, won her first Tony as leading actress in a play for A Doll’s House, Part 2, a sequel of the Henrik Ibsen classic; and Cynthia Nixon, a star of the 1990s television comedy Sex and the City, won her third Tony, this one for featured actress in a play for her role in the Lillian Hellman classic The Little Foxes.

The highlight of the night was 71-year-old actress/singer Bette Midler winning her first competitive Tony as leading actress in a musical for Hello, Dolly!, which won for best revival for a musical. Midler’s award came 50 years after her she made her Broadway debut in Fiddler on the Roof.  She won a special Tony Award in 1974.

Veteran actor James Earl Jones received the lifetime achievement award.

The Tony Awards, named after Antoinette Perry, an actress and director and co-founder of the American Theater Wing, celebrates the best plays and musicals of New York City’s Broadway theater district during the previous season. 
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Judy Garland has been laid to rest in a mausoleum named for her at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

 

A spokeswoman for Garland’s estate says her family and friends held a private memorial service for the actress Saturday, which would have been Garland’s 95th birthday. She was buried in the Judy Garland Pavilion.

 

Garland’s children, Liza Minnelli, Lorna Luft and Joe Luft, wanted to bring their mother’s remains “home to Hollywood” from her original burial site at New York’s Ferncliff Cemetery, publicist Victoria Varela said. They attended the service, along with Garland’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

 

In a statement released to The Associated Press, they offered gratitude to their mother’s “millions of fans around the world for their constant love and support.”

 

Garland’s children announced earlier this year that they had relocated their mother’s remains to Los Angeles. Garland’s third husband, Mickey Deans, buried her in New York, but her children said she wished to be interred with her family in Hollywood, Varela said.

 

The Judy Garland Pavilion is intended as a final resting spot for Minnelli, Luft and other family members, cemetery spokeswoman Noelle Berman said in January.

 

Garland, star of classic films including The Wizard of Oz and Meet Me in St. Louis, died in 1969 at age 47 in London.

 

Jayne Mansfield, Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino and Cecil B. DeMille are among the entertainment luminaries buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Rocker Chris Cornell was laid to rest there last month.
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Natural caves where desert natives once made their homes … places where massive boulders appear to rise up from the desert … ancient rocks inscribed with symbolic carvings … a once-active volcano where visitors can walk down into its center. These are just a few of the timeless wonders that national parks traveler Mikah Meyer recently visited during his journey through the southwestern state of New Mexico. He shared highlights with VOA’s JulieTaboh.
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Music is as much about math, as it is about sound. It’s also about imagination and learning. But it’s out of reach for some disabled or physically challenged students, until now. A team of Polish inventors has created a push-button instrument that almost anyone can play. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Pianists from South Korea and the United States took the top three places Saturday in the 15th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition held in Fort Worth, Texas, this past week.

Yekwon Sunwoo, 28, of South Korea claimed the gold medal, while Americans Kenneth Broberg and Daniel Hsu followed as silver and bronze medalists, respectively.

More than half a century ago, international relations between the United States and Russia warmed when a tall, soft-spoken young pianist from Texas claimed first prize at the prestigious International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

Not long after, the piano competition that bears his name — Van Cliburn — was founded, attracting outstanding young talent from around the globe to compete for the coveted gold, silver and bronze medals every four years.

The competition began with 30 competitors, and the winners were announced Saturday evening.

As the gold medalist, Yekwon earns a $50,000 cash prize, Broberg, $25,000, and Hsu, $15,000. All three receive three years of professional concert management.

Leonard Slatkin, conductor and chairman of the jury, said the Cliburn competition, one of more than 200 piano competitions in the world, is an important one.

“Clearly the Cliburn is the premiere competition in the United States,” he notes. “It attracts the highest level. … The Cliburn ranks in a similar manner as, say, the Queen Elizabeth or the Tchaikovsky in terms of the international prestige it brings.”

​Life-changing and surreal

Twenty-five-year-old Rachel Cheung from Hong Kong, one of the finalists, said earlier this week that attending the competition would change her life, “because this is really the biggest competition in the world, and the engagements that would bring with winning it, would be very, very helpful to my career, and there will be a lot of opportunities and exposures.”

Hsu said being a finalist at the Van Cliburn competition was a bit surreal. 

“Even though it’s a competition, and there’s a lot of stress and preparation, but the overall feeling is just incredible and it’s a lot of fun, and I’m having a blast,” he said.

All of the competitors have played concerts. But for some, including Georgy Tchaidze, a 29-year-old finalist from Russia, playing in a competition is different from an ordinary performance.

“It’s all about pressure,” Tchaidze said. “Pressure is so high that sometimes you forget to enjoy the music. And music making is all about enjoying it. And to bring the joy and pass it to the audience.”

On the other hand, Hsu said he doesn’t approach a competition performance any differently from a concert.

“I’ve heard people say that, in competitions you should be more careful, and you should try and play for the jury. I didn’t particularly take that approach for this competition. I played how I felt in the moment, and how I thought the music should be portrayed.”

A life in music

Earlier this week, Yekwon said no matter the outcome of the competition, qualifying for the Cliburn validates a dedication to a life in music.

“My passion and love for music is just, deeply enough, and I can never get enough of it. You have to spend a lot of hours, and really such dedication to it,” she said.

Slatkin added that the Van Cliburn is not the be-all and end-all to a career.

“It should be just one possible step among many paths that the pianist can take. They wouldn’t have gotten this far if they weren’t good enough to be at the Cliburn.”
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Danger lurks at Dracula’s castle.

 

Romanian authorities have closed a 13th-century fortress connected to Vlad the Impaler after a mother bear and her cubs were found roaming in the area.

 

The citadel, atop a mountain in central Romania, can be reached only by climbing 1,480 steps. It was shut in late May “for the safety of visitors,” its website said Saturday.

 

Local prefect Emilian Dragnea says the Environment Ministry had agreed to capture the four bears and relocate them elsewhere. Authorities blame people for leaving food in the area.

 

The citadel was repaired by 15th-century Romanian prince Vlad the Impaler, who inspired Bram Stoker’s 1897 gothic novel “Dracula.”

 

Bran Castle, also associated with Dracula, is a bigger tourist attraction.

 

Romania is home to between 5,000 and 6,000 brown bears.

 

 

 
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Adam West, the actor who played the title role in the kitschy 1960’s “Batman” television series, has died at age 88, Variety reported on Saturday, citing a family statement.

West, who was so closely identified with his tongue-in-cheek portrayal of the cartoon superhero that he had trouble landing other roles when the show ended, died on Friday evening after a struggle with leukemia, his representative told Variety.

His representatives did not immediately return calls or emails seeking comment.
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U2 turned their first headlining appearance at a U.S. music festival into Bono-roo.

 

The Irish rockers performed a two-hour set Friday night at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee, as part of their world tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of their Grammy-winning The Joshua Tree album.

 

They played the full album, as well as some of their other hits, including New Year’s Day and Beautiful Day, to tens of thousands of music fans.

 

Toward the end of the performance, lead singer Bono asked if they had made a mistake in not coming to the festival sooner, and later added, “Thanks for naming it after me.”

 

The band kicked off their tour last month in Canada, which hits the United Kingdom, Europe and Central America through Oct. 19.

 

The band has previously played the Glastonbury Festival, but their appearance on the Bonnaroo lineup this year was a huge get for the 16-year-old music festival.

Before their set, U2 guitarist The Edge received the Les Paul Spirit Award in a presentation from the Les Paul Foundation on the festival grounds. The Edge, whose name is David Evans, called Paul an inventor and innovator who pioneered advances in electric guitars and recording.

 

“I owe him a great debt of gratitude not only for the contributions he made to music, but in terms of his contributions to the technology,” Evans said.

 

The political nature of the album, which was inspired by the band’s fascination with America, was reflected on the giant screens behind the band. The screens showed images of female activists, scenes of the American desert and poems from American writers. Often Bono would stop singing to let the chorus of voices from fans complete the song.

 

As he ended the performance with their hit, One, he called it “a night we will never forget.”
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Thousands of people from around the world packed Israel’s streets of Tel Aviv for the city’s annual Gay Pride march, one of many festivals for gay rights taking place this weekend.

The festival is billed as the largest event of its kind in the deeply conservative Middle East.

Israeli police estimated that more than 100,000 people participated Friday with many coming from other countries.

The annual parade featured floats and dancers with this year’s theme being “Bisexuality Visibility.”

The festival is sponsored by the city of Tel Aviv, which has promoted gay tourism in recent years, becoming one of the world’s most gay-friendly travel destinations.

While Tel Aviv is seen as liberal and welcoming of gays, Jerusalem is seen as more conservative with the population’s views varying on gay rights. A gay pride parade there in 2015 ended in tragedy when an extremist ultra-Orthodox Jew stabbed a 16-year-old girl to death.

Across the rest of the Middle East, gay and lesbian relationships are largely taboo.

Watch: From a Jail Term to Legal Marriage in US

Gay pride festivals are taking place this weekend in dozens of cities around the world, including Los Angeles, Athens, Sydney and Rome.

A large-scale “Equality March” is planned for Sunday in Washington, with organizers saying they want to combat anti-LGBT rhetoric in the country.

Many more gay pride events are scheduled around the world later in June, the month gay pride is traditionally celebrated, chosen because of New York’s 1969 Stonewall riots in Manhattan, which is regarded as a catalyst for the gay rights movement.

Next week, Shanghai, China, will host its ninth gay pride event, but without a parade that accompanies most events in other cities around the world. Organizers say they expect around 6,000 people to attend. For the 10th anniversary next year, they said, they hope to expand to other cities including Beijing.
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Every springtime in the United States, boys don tuxedos or suits and girls wear elegant gowns on one special night. For decades, the high school prom has been a major moment in the teenage experience. While movies portray the evening as a night of magic and romance, the reality can be quite different. Jesusemen Oni followed a couple of high school students to their prom for an inside look at this decades-old tradition.
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