Month: June 2017

The hosting rights for both the 2024 and 2028 Olympic Games should be awarded at the same time, the International Olympic Committee’s executive board recommended on Friday.

Paris and Los Angeles are the only candidates left in the race for 2024 and, if passed, the recommendation would almost certainly mean that each would host one of the next two summer Games, with only the order still to be decided.

IOC president Thomas Bach said the recommendation would be put to an extraordinary IOC session in Lausanne in July.

Decision in September?

There is a further IOC session in Lima in September which was originally scheduled to choose the 2024 hosts and may now decide whether Paris or Los Angeles go first.

“Having two such great cities, two such great countries, two candidates who are really enthusiastic and promoting the Olympic Games and the Olympic spirit … this represents a golden opportunity for the Olympic Games,” Bach told reporters.

“It is a win-win-win situation.”

Bach heavily implied that, if the recommendation was passed, there would be no chance for other candidates to enter the race for 2028. He also denied that getting the 2028 would be a consolation prize.

“It is a fascinating race to have Paris and Los Angeles striving for the Olympic Games, it is hard to imagine something better and it is a very strong sign of stability,” he said.

Bach praised both cities for including a high number of existing venues in their plans, saying this would “lead to significant cost reductions in the organization of the Games and make them more sustainable and more feasible.”

The Paris and Los Angeles organizing committees both welcomed the announcement.

Cities pulled out of bidding

The Olympic Games, once perceived as the hottest of sports properties, is now seen by many cities as a liability that can potentially drag an entire country’s economy down.

Rome, Budapest, Hamburg and Boston all pulled out of bidding for 2024.

Bach said the board had proposed the same 28 sports for 2024 which featured in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, provided they “comply with the Olympic charter and this includes the world anti-doping code.”

Extra pressure on weightlifting 

But he said there was an extra condition for weightlifting, which has been plagued by doping with numerous participants testing positive in re-tests of samples from the 2008 and 2012 Olympics.

“The International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) has until December 2017 to deliver a satisfactory report to the IOC on how they will address the massive doping problem this sport is facing,” he said.

He added that the IOC had already sent a warning to the IWF by reducing the number of athletes for the 2020 Tokyo Games from 260 to 196.

 
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It’s another week of smooth sailing, with only the tiniest of changes in the hit list from the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles chart, for the week ending June 10, 2017.

Number 5: Ed Sheeran “Shape of You”

Let’s start in fifth place, where Ed Sheeran backs off a slot with “Shape Of You.”  This song’s a force to be reckoned with: it opened at number one back in January, one of less than 30 songs to accomplish that feat. It held the top slot for 12 non-consecutive weeks, and according to Billboard has spent the most time inside the Top Five since debuting there: 20 weeks.

Number 4: Kendrick Lamar “Humble”

Kendrick Lamar rebounds a slot to fourth place with his former champ “Humble.” Kendrick kicks off his North American tour on July 12 in Glendale, Arizona.

Number 3: DJ Khaled Featuring Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance The Rapper and Lil Wayne “I’m The One”

DJ Khaled treads water in third place with “I’m The One” featuring Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance the Rapper, and Lil Wayne. On June 23, Khaled drops his star-filled album Grateful – he tweeted the cover photo on Monday, featuring his young son Asahd.

He and Drake reunite on the next single, “To The Max.” Khaled and Drake have a long history of collaborations, including last year’s Top 20 hit “For Free.”

Number 2: Bruno Mars “That’s What I Like”

Bruno Mars spends yet another week in the runner-up slot with “That’s What I Like.” Fresh from a performance at the Billboard Music Awards, he’s prepping for another award show appearance. 

Bruno just signed on to appear at the 2017 BET Awards, happening June 25 in Los Angeles. Last month, Bruno sang his latest single “Versace On The Floor” at the Billboard Music Awards…then watched the track experience a 395 percent sales jump.

Number 1: Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee Featuring Justin Bieber “Despacito”

Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber share Hot 100 gold for a third week with “Despacito.” On June 4, Justin hit the stage at Ariana Grande’s One Love Manchester benefit concert. He sang some of his biggest hits accompanying himself on guitar and broke down onstage as he addressed the fans gathered in Manchester, England.

The Top Five machine just keeps on turning. Who’ll be number one next week? Join us to find out.
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Comedian Bill Cosby acknowledged in 2005 that he offered to pay for graduate school for the woman who has accused him of sexual assault after her mother confronted him, jurors at his trial were told on Friday.

Jurors in a Norristown, Pennsylvania, courtroom read excerpts from a deposition Cosby gave under oath more than a decade ago, as prosecutors sought to use the comedian’s own words against him.

But Cosby’s defense lawyer, Brian McMonagle, noted that throughout the deposition that Cosby described the encounter with his accuser, Andrea Constand, as consensual.

Constand, a former administrator at Cosby’s alma mater, Temple University, has accused him of drugging and then sexually assaulting her at his Philadelphia-area home in 2004.

Dozens of women have leveled similar accusations against the 79-year-old entertainer, whose starring role in the 1980’s television comedy The Cosby Show made him a household name.

All the accusations but Constand’s are too old to support criminal charges under the state’s statute of limitations.

In the deposition, given in response to a civil lawsuit that Constand brought in 2005, Cosby said he gave her 1-1/2 Benadryl pills to help her relax before they engaged in what he called consensual sexual activity.

But Constand testified earlier this week the pills left her semi-conscious and unable to stop Cosby from sexually assaulting her.

Cosby also said in the deposition that he refused to tell Constand or her mother what type of pills he gave her during a phone call in 2005 because he did not trust their intentions.

“The mother is coming at me for being a dirty old man, which is bad also, but then, ‘What did you give my daughter?'” Cosby said. “What are they going to say if I tell them about it? And also to be perfectly frank, I’m thinking and praying that nobody is recording me.”

Cosby offered to pay for Constand to go to graduate school, but indicated in the deposition that he did so because she and her mother were upset, not to compensate her for anything he did wrong.

The testimony came after both sides tussled over whether the defense should be allowed to introduce evidence that Constand is gay. Judge Steven O’Neill sided with the prosecution, which called it “unfairly prejudicial and completely irrelevant” and said it would violate Pennsylvania’s rape shield law that bars defendants from referring to a victim’s sexual past.

Cosby’s deposition was unsealed in 2015 by a federal judge, prompting prosecutors in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, to reopen the case and later bring criminal charges before the statute of limitations expired.

Constand settled the civil lawsuit in 2006 for an undisclosed sum.
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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.

This week, in Fort Worth, Texas, the original field of 30 competitors has been winnowed to six, and the winners will be announced Saturday evening. 

Life-changing and surreal

Twenty-five-year-old Rachel Cheung from Hong Kong, one of the finalists, expects being here will 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.”

American Daniel Hsu says being a finalist at the Van Cliburn competition is 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.

Leonard Slatkin, conductor and chairman of the jury, says 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 said. “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.”

More than a concert

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,” he 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 says 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,” he sad. “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

No matter what the outcome of the competition, qualifying for the Cliburn validates their dedication to a life in music, says South Korean pianist Yekwon Sunwoo.

“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,” he said.

Leonard Slatkin explains 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,” he said.

The winner of the Van Cliburn competition earns a cash prize and three years of professional concert management.  But no matter who takes home the gold, all of the competitors in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition are winners, having had the opportunity to perform for audiences worldwide through global webcasts.
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Roman Polanski won’t take his chances and return to court to resolve his sexual assault case, so his victim is going to stand up for him.

Samantha Geimer, who was 13 at the time of the crime, is going to appeal directly to a judge Friday to end the long-running case, the fugitive director’s lawyer said.

Geimer, 54, has long supported Polanski’s efforts to end the legal saga that limits his freedom, but Friday will be the first time she’s appeared in Los Angeles Superior Court on his behalf, attorney Harland Braun said.

“She’s tired of this case,” Braun said. “The judge is just playing games with him.”

The Oscar-winner has been a fugitive since he fled to France in 1978 on the eve of sentencing for having unlawful sex with a minor. Prosecutors dropped charges that he drugged, raped and sodomized the girl.

Polanski feared the judge was going to renege on a plea agreement and send him away for more time than the six weeks he served in prison during a psychiatric evaluation prior to sentencing.

Polanski, 83, is trying to get the Interpol warrant lifted so he can move freely among most of the 190 countries in the global policing network. If that happened, the California warrant would remain valid.

The hearing Friday is an effort by Braun to get the court to unseal testimony by the now-deceased prosecutor in the case, who is believed to have testified in a closed session about backroom sentencing discussions.

Braun wants to use the transcript to show Polanski has served his time so the international warrant is dropped. 

Geimer has previously said she forgives Polanski for the assault that happened at Jack Nicholson’s compound in the Hollywood Hills during a March 1977 photo shoot.

Geimer sued Polanski and reached a settlement in 1993 for $500,000 that included over $100,000 in interest payments. Her longtime lawyer Lawrence Silver did not return phone and email messages seeking comment.

The Associated Press doesn’t typically name victims of sex abuse, but Geimer went public years ago.
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The recent WannaCry computer virus infected more than 230,000 computers in more than 150 countries. It is not yet clear who was behind the ransomware attack that affected organizations, hospitals and telecom companies worldwide, but it was hardly unexpected.

Months earlier, filmmaker Alex Gibney released his documentary Zero Days, in which he warns of massive-scale cyberattacks and their devastating effect on modern life.

He documents a cyberweapon found lurking in computers around the world in 2010. 

Stuxnet

Recruiting the help of computer experts and NSA insiders, Gibney analyzes the Stuxnet computer virus that was developed in the United States in cooperation with Israel to infect and destroy Iran’s nuclear program.

Eric Chien, technical director of security response at the global cybersecurity company Symantec, told VOA the United States developed the virus as leverage against Iran, to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program remains exclusively peaceful.

“Certainly the Iran deal is connected to this story,” Chien said.

He tells VOA the Stuxnet worm and its more dangerous sister virus Nitro Zeus were designed to do a lot of harm, such as, “shutting down huge portions of the Iranian grid; and this was a subject we know, of some debate inside the government, because it would involve not just military targets but also civilian targets like hospitals.”

He says diplomacy achieved an agreement with Iran, but says an unstated aspect of that agreement is the United States had “a big stick to use” if Iran violated the treaty.

Pandora’s Box

“That’s a very interesting thing because a lot of the legality around Stuxnet is very much in doubt,” Chien said. “In point of fact, the United States and Israel attacked Iran’s critical infrastructure in peace time.”

Though the Stuxnet operation was originally successful, the film asserts, the virus was eventually discovered and fell into the wrong hands, which could enhance it and turn it against its creator.

“It became much clearer to us that this was no longer sort of evolution of some piece of malware but a revolution that became the first sort of cyber sabotage malware that could actually cause physical destruction. And it did open Pandora’s Box,” Chien said.

“That’s where we are today. Now, what we see is many likely nation states conducting attacks all over the world, we see staging, so that potentially one day if they need flip the switch they could cause some additional sabotage to occur.”

Many attacks, targets

The Symantec security expert says the number of cyberattacks has greatly increased over the years. He says Symantec is now “tracking close to maybe a hundred different attacks on a daily basis.”

Gibney says cyberwarfare is dangerous because it has no borders or rules. It can strike anywhere, anyone, at any time.

“People depend on trains, people depend on airplanes, and people depend on their electricity. This is modern life. So, what we’re saying in this film is these weapons threaten modern life as we know it,” Gibney said.

Chien says there is always a need for mitigation when viruses sabotage our computer-controlled infrastructures.

“We actually saw recently in Ukraine that their power grid was attacked through a cyber piece of malware,” he said, “and they were able to bring back the power within a few hours. And were able to do so because actually their infrastructure is frankly a little bit more behind and they had the ability to go a manual mode. And literally just flip the switch and put things back on.”

Though there doesn’t seem to be a correlation between the recent ransomware WannaCry and Stuxnet, experts such as Chien say they are both launched from remote, often undetected locations by unknown groups who are either allegiant to rogue nation states launching undercover attacks or are mercenary hackers paid by the highest bidder to conduct cyberterrorism.

Gibney says his goal in making Zero Days was to make the public aware of the extent and danger of cyberwarfare and allow us to ask questions and demand transparency from our governments.

“At the very least, we can all demand that our leaders start talking about it more openly and stop pretending that this stuff is not going on when it is, because it’s affecting all of us at a most basic level,” the filmmaker said.
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For a country that takes pride in even the smallest successes of its international celebrities, the debut of Wonder Woman has sparked an Israeli lovefest for homegrown hero Gal Gadot.

 

A huge billboard overlooking Tel Aviv’s main highway is tagged with a provincial “we love you” greeting, her Hebrew-accented appearances in the international media are reported upon daily and throngs of fans cheer wildly upon seeing her on the big screen. Even Lebanon’s ban of the film hasn’t dampened the mood in Israel, where Gadot’s superhero status has been embraced as a national treasure.

 

“It’s so cool that someone from here is succeeding and is famous overseas. Everyone in the theater was so excited,” said 20-year-old Ela Hofshi of Jerusalem, who watched the movie on opening night. “I think all the enthusiasm here is very supportive and encourages her to keep growing in the world and representing us.”

 

Eager for diversions from politics and conflict with the Palestinians, Israelis often rejoice when one of their own breaks through on the international stage, whether it’s Omri Casspi in the NBA, medal-winning Olympic athletes or big-name model Bar Refaeli. But Gadot’s ascendance to stardom has entered a whole new stratosphere as she has assumed the identity of Wonder Woman in a box-office smash that raked in more than $100 million in its first weekend in theaters.

The role has instantly transformed Gadot into arguably the world’s most famous Israeli and the country’s most high-profile ambassador. In contrast to Refaeli, whose aloof demeanor, refusal to perform her compulsory military service and a tax-dodging scandal have alienated many Israelis, Gadot has been widely embraced. In interviews, she often speaks in accented English of her military service, a rite of passage for most Israeli Jews, which has made her even more beloved at home.

 

“She bears the burden of being Israeli with grace and you can see that fame hasn’t changed her,” said Ariel Oseran, 27. “She represents the `good Israeli’ and does us a great service. When she talks about the army, it shows that serving in the military is not a bad thing. It’s something inspiring. It makes every one of our female soldiers seem like Wonder Woman.”

Gadot grew up in the Tel Aviv suburb of Rosh Haayin and somehow stumbled into stardom. She was chosen Miss Israel in 2004 at the age of 18 and represented the country in the Miss Universe pageant that year. She then put off her modeling career to enlist in the military, where she served two years as a combat fitness instructor. In 2007, she took a part in the Maxim photo shoot “Women of the Israeli Army.”

 

After a year of law school, a casting director invited her to audition for a James Bond movie. She didn’t get the part, but it led to her big Hollywood break in 2008 when she was cast in the “Fast & Furious” movie franchise as Gisele Yashar, an ex-Mossad agent.

She first portrayed Wonder Woman in last year’s “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” before headlining this weekend’s release of “Wonder Woman,” the first Hollywood film exclusively devoted to the DC Comics heroine.

 

In promoting the film, Gadot made the rounds of American talk and late night shows, charming the hosts with her down-to-earth personality. In an interview with ABC’s morning show, Gadot, who recently gave birth to her second child, joked that being pregnant as Wonder Woman was harder than being a soldier in the Israeli army.

 

Gadot, who performs her own stunts, has attracted fans with a public image that empowers women. For the film’s Los Angeles premiere, she showed up in $50 flats from Aldo rather than pricey heels. When asked, she responded “it’s more comfortable.”

Her mother, Irit Gadot, a former gym teacher, said that’s just who her daughter is.

 

“She has a certain personal charm, a certain simplicity,” she told Israel’s Channel 10 TV. “What she is is what you see.”

In Israel, she has avoided the types of scandals that often plague celebrities and has been showered with love. Theaters have erupted into cheers when she appears on screen, and some fans even broke into tears of joy on opening weekend.

 

Locals excitedly noted how Gadot’s Israeli accent was mimicked by her co-stars as the supposed dialect of Wonder Woman’s idyllic Amazonian island of Themyscira.

 

Haaretz film critic Uri Klein praised her performance, which he said was “likely to contribute to the pleasure for those who want to envelop the viewing experience in national Israeli pride.”

 

Her identity has also made her a target of anti-Israel boycott activists who attacked her on Twitter as a “Zionist” and pushed to have the film banned in Lebanon. Opponents noted Gadot had praised Israel’s military on Facebook during the 2014 Israel-Gaza war, sending prayers to soldiers “who are risking their lives protecting my country against the horrific acts conducted by Hamas.” The military, while defending its actions as a response to Hamas rocket fire, nonetheless draw heavy international criticism for the heavy Palestinian civilian death toll.

 

Michal Kleinberg argued in a column on the Nana10 website that Gadot represented far more than mere national pride.

 

“This is not one of ours who managed to squeeze into a fashion show or an important competition, it’s one of ours in the most leading role a woman can get in a Hollywood film,” she wrote. “Gadot is objectively [really!] perfectly cast for the role. It’s not that Hollywood has a shortage of beautiful, fit, athletic brunettes, but an Israeli actress has something a Hollywood one doesn’t. As much as it sounds cliche, she offers a sort of chutzpah, spice and relatability.”
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Of all the supernatural forces slung in Alex Kurtzman’s The Mummy (and, believe me, there are a lot), none can compete with the spectacle of Tom Cruise, at 54.

 

He and his abs are almost creepily ageless. So it’s almost fitting that in one of the typically bonkers scenes in The Mummy, Cruise awakes naked and unscathed alongside cadavers in a morgue, where he bewilderedly removes the tag attached to his toe. Indefatigable and un-killable, Cruise really is the undead. He’s like the anti-Steve Buscemi.

Yet Cruise and The Mummy — the opening salvo in Universal’s bid to birth its Dark Universe monster movie franchise — are a poor fit, and not the good kind, like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

There’s plenty of standard, cocky Tom Cruise leading-man stuff here: running, swimming, daredevil airplane acrobatics, more running. But his relentless forward momentum is sapped by the convoluted monster mishmash that engulfs The Mummy, a movie conceived and plotted like the monster version of Marvel. Increasingly, Cruise — like big-budget movies, themselves — is running in circles.

Tomb unearthed

 

He plays Nick Morton, a roguish Army sergeant who plunders antiquities from Iraq with his partner Chris Vail (Jake Johnson). In a remote village they, along with archaeologist Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis), unearth a giant Egyptian tomb bathed in mercury.

In it lies the Egyptian princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), who was mummified alive (imagine that wrapping job) after trying to unleash the evil Egyptian god of Set while killing her Pharaoh father, his second wife and the newborn baby that would deny her the throne. Naturally, she’s going to get loose.

Hers and other backstories are shown as The Mummy stumbles out of its grave, vainly trying to organize the story around two burial sites (the other is in London), the strange visions that begin plaguing Morton, and a quixotic (or merely capitalistic) gambit to stitch together a unifying principle for the Dark Universe. Mysterious apocalyptic happenings (a swarm of crows, a horde of rats, occasional ghouls) prompt a series of helter-skelter chase scenes that eventually lead Morton and Halsey to Prodigium, a stealth organization led by the dapper Dr. Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe) that controls monstrous outbreaks, including those of its schizophrenic leader.

Prodigium would seem to be the connecting tissue for Universal’s shared universe, with plans for Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Creature From the Black Lagoon and more in the works. Much of The Mummy hinges on Boutella’s vengeful and vaguely misogynistic monster (she for some reason needs a man — Morton, it turns out — to really do damage). But much of the film endeavors to set up the characters — maybe even famous phantoms — to come.

Why the universe?

 

Where these films could be fun is in seeing a talented star play a big, theatrical character that would honor the ghosts of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Javier Bardem and Johnny Depp are already lined up, so who knows? But the desperate need to graft them into a larger comic-book-like “world” — and a thinly conceived one, at that — suggests there won’t be much room for any actor to breathe.

 

For now we’re cursed with The Mummy, a messy and muddled product lacking even the carefree spirit of the Brendan Fraser Mummy trilogy. There are moments of humor in the script by David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie, and Dylan Kussman, but Cruise isn’t the one (maybe Chris Pratt?) to pull off aloofly referring to the mummy as “the chick in the box.”

 

Almost to the degree that he was in The Edge of Tomorrow, Cruise is put through the ringer. A spiraling cargo plane spins him like laundry. He careens through a double-decker bus. His rib cage is yanked. Cruise remains, as ever, eminently game. But he, like us moviegoers, might have to start wondering: What god have we angered?

The Mummy, a Universal Pictures release, is rated PG-13.
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The remains of a major Aztec temple and a ceremonial ball court have been discovered in downtown Mexico City, shedding new light on the sacred spaces of the metropolis that Spanish conquerors overran five centuries ago, archaeologists said on Wednesday.

The discoveries were made on a nondescript side street just behind the city’s colonial-era Roman Catholic cathedral off the main Zocalo plaza on the grounds of a 1950s-era hotel.

The underground excavations reveal a section of what was the foundation of a massive, circular-shaped temple dedicated to the Aztec wind god Ehecatl and a smaller part of a ritual ball court, confirming accounts of the first Spanish chroniclers to visit the Aztec imperial capital, Tenochtitlan.

“Due to finds like these, we can show actual locations, the positioning and dimensions of each one of the structures first described in the chronicles,” said Diego Prieto, head of Mexico’s main anthropology and history institute.

Archaeologists also detailed a grisly offering of 32 severed male neck vertebrae discovered in a pile just off the court.

“It was an offering associated with the ball game, just off the stairway,” said archaeologist Raul Barrera. “The vertebrae, or necks, surely came from victims who were sacrificed or decapitated.”

Some of the original white stucco remains visible on parts of the temple, built during the 1486-1502 reign of Aztec Emperor Ahuizotl, predecessor of Moctezuma, who conquistador Hernan Cortes toppled during the Spanish conquest of Mexico.

Early Spanish accounts relate how a young Moctezuma played against an elderly allied king on the court and lost, which was taken as sign that the Aztec Empire’s days were numbered.

The building would have stood out because of its round shape among the several dozen other square temples that dominated the Aztecs’ most sacred ceremonial space before the 1521 conquest.

Aztec archaeologist Eduardo Matos said the top of the temple was likely built to resemble a coiled snake, with priests entering though a doorway made to look like a serpent’s nose.

Once excavations finish, a museum will be built on the site, rubbing shoulders with modern buildings in the capital.

Mexico City, including its many colonial-era structures with their own protections, was built above the razed ruins of the Aztec capital, and more discoveries are likely, Matos said.

“We’ve been working this area for nearly 40 years, and there’s always construction of some kind … and so we take advantage of that and get involved,” he said.
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