Month: March 2018

Prosecutors have selected the five additional accusers they plan to call to the witness stand at Bill Cosby’s April 2 sexual assault retrial.

The accusers, including model Janice Dickinson, were chosen from a group of eight women whose allegations date as far back as the early 1980s.

Prosecutors listed their selections in a letter to Judge Steven O’Neill that was made public on Wednesday.

O’Neill’s March 15 ruling cleared the way for prosecutors to broaden their case beyond the alleged assault of Andrea Constand in 2004 that led to Cosby’s only criminal charges. They want to show that he had a pattern of misconduct over a five-decade span.

At Cosby’s first trial, which ended in a deadlock, O’Neill allowed only one other accuser to take the stand. But that woman is not one of the five who will testify this time in support of Constand’s case.

In the letter to O’Neill and other filings, prosecutors have listed the women only by witness number. The Associated Press was able to identify them by cross-referencing the details of the allegations described in court filings with statements and other accounts they have made publicly.

The AP does not typically name people who say they are victims of sexual assault, but those named below have consented.

Attorneys for Cosby, who is now 80, have said the women’s memories are tainted at best and tried to get them barred from testifying, but their request was denied.

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The criminal case

Andrea Constand

Ages then: She was 30; he was 66.

Constand told police in 2005 that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her a year earlier at his suburban Philadelphia estate. The Temple University basketball team manager said he gave her three unlabeled blue pills to “relax” as she discussed a career change. She said she was semi-conscious when he digitally penetrated her. Cosby, a Temple alumnus, booster and former trustee, is charged with sexually assaulting a person unable to give consent, a felony that could bring 10 years in prison upon conviction. The defense says her story has evolved and there were other times they were sexually intimate. Cosby has pleaded not guilty.

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The five other accusers

Janice Dickinson

Ages then: She was 27; he was 45.

Dickinson met Cosby in 1982 and saw him as a trusted friend and mentor as she tried to broaden her career from modeling to music and television. Dickinson said Cosby arranged for her to fly to see him perform in Lake Tahoe and knocked her out with a pill he gave her after she had complained of stomach pain. She said she woke up in pain and found fluids between her legs. She never reported the encounter to authorities and has said she was afraid that if she did, her career would be damaged and Cosby would retaliate. Cosby lawyer Martin Singer said in 2014 that Dickinson’s allegations were a lie and a “glaring contradiction” to what she wrote in her book and what she had previously told the media.

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Janice Baker-Kinney

Ages then: She was 24; he was 45.

Baker-Kinney, then a Harrah’s casino bartender in Reno, Nevada, went to a pizza party at a nearby home where Cosby was staying in 1982. He insisted that she take two pills, she said, before the backgammon game they were playing went blurry. She said she recalls seeing her blouse unbuttoned and his pants unzipped before she awoke naked with signs she had been sexually assaulted. The defense says her story is “nothing like Ms. Constand’s” because she only met Cosby once, “voluntarily” took quaaludes and apologized for passing out.

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Heidi Thomas

Ages then: She was 24; he was 46.

Thomas’ agent sent the aspiring actress to meet Cosby for career advice at a Harrah’s hotel in Reno in 1984, but the limousine he sent instead took her to a private house where she said he gave her a drink so she could play the intoxicated person in a script he gave her. During intermittent bouts of consciousness, she said, she was naked and Cosby forced her to perform oral sex. The defense says she has given three versions of her story.

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Chelan Lasha

Ages then: She was 17; he was 48.

The model and aspiring actress met and befriended Cosby in 1986. Lasha said he invited her to his Las Vegas hotel room to introduce her to a modeling agency representative and gave her a pill he described as an antihistamine and a double shot of almond liqueur to help fight a cold. At Cosby’s behest, Lasha said, she changed into a robe, wet her hair and posed for a few modeling shots. She said Cosby then directed her to the bed, where he pinched her nipple and humped her leg as she lay immobilized and unable to speak. She says she woke up naked.

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Lise-Lotte Lublin

Ages then: She was 23; he was about 52.

Lublin was an aspiring actress when she met Cosby in 1989. She and her mother went for a run with Cosby, and he gave them show tickets before he invited her to the Elvis suite of the Las Vegas Hilton to practice acting improvisation. He prodded her to take two drinks to relax, which she ultimately did. She said she recalls seeing Cosby stroking her hair and walking down a hall before she woke up at home two days later. She said she believes she was sexually assaulted. The defense says Lublin assumes she is a victim based on other media accounts but can only remember Cosby stroking her hair.
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There are fewer than 2,000 wild pandas in the world. However, as VOA’s David Byrd reports, a new documentary tells how scientists are working to introduce captive-bred panda cubs into the wild.
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Sean Penn, Oscar-winning actor, has other passions these days.

“I’m not in love with the job of acting anymore,” says Penn, whose films include “Milk,” “Mystic River,” “Dead Man Walking” and many others. “In fact, what I want to do is write books.”

Penn fears the world is so overwhelmed with “content” that even great movies are quickly forgotten. But he still believes in words. This week, Penn joins such literary heroes as Norman Mailer and Jack Kerouac, not to mention such acting peers as Ethan Hawke and James Franco, as an author of fiction.

Penn’s novel is called “Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff,” a title not out of place for someone whose off-screen adventures have led to encounters with everyone from Mikhail Gorbachev to El Chapo. “Bob Honey,” its volatile and alienated protagonist like/unlike the writer himself, is a hot tour of the United States and beyond as a Trump-like figure known as “The Landlord” rises to power and Bob Honey longs to be “Unbranded, unbridled and free.”

“Bob Honey” has an improvisational style and a trail of alliterations (“Quite intentionally, to a fault,” Penn acknowledges). The plot involves septic tanks, lethal mallets and fireworks for dictators. The book’s back story also follows a scattered path. Last year, Penn released a brief audiobook under the pseudonym Pappy Pariah. He expanded on it and published a hardcover under his own name, although he says that opinions contained within, including a poem that chastises the #MeToo movement, are not necessarily his own.

“A character’s thought pattern,” he says of such lines as “A platform for accusation impunity?/Due process has lost its sheen?”

During a recent interview with The Associated Press, the 57-year-old Penn talked about writing, movies, #MeToo and his changing tastes in books. He has more trouble in mind for Bob Honey, depending on whether he thinks the public will care. Some reviews have been rough (“Sean Penn The Novelist Must Be Stopped” reads a Huffington Post headline), but the novel has made the top 100 on Amazon.com and hit No. 1 in a category Penn should appreciate: absurdist fiction.

On why he wrote the novel:

“I needed to step away from the news cycle some time during 2015-2016. It was occurring to me more and more that the debates I had found even myself part of in the public arena had become that which were dividing us as a country more and more, that we entered the conversations now as 3-year-olds and to be in the conversation was to be a 3-year-old. The only way I felt I could respond to it was a kind of satire — to choose to laugh, instead of vent, or instead of rage.”

On some favorite authors from Mailer to Cormac McCarthy and what they have in common:

“I realized after I wrote this book that my reading of fiction has been, and I hadn’t thought about it before, almost entirely mono-cultural. It’s almost been entirely American men, the authors I have read. I’m anxious to change that. … My real history of going to bookstores and buying a book has been the rugged men tale tellers and I find that my interests do go beyond that.”

 “I was early on a reader of Louise Erdrich, but I haven’t read any of her writing in a long time. I’d like to go back and see what she’s been doing. I’m a big fan of Sharon Olds as a poet. Whenever she has a book out, I grab it.”

 

On #Metoo:

“One of the interesting things that I note has not come up in the discussion of sexual abuse, be it by a partner or a parent or a legal system, and it’s sort of surprising that there isn’t within any of these movements any express concern or dialogue when it comes to the age consent in this country.”

“Here we are talking about sexual abuse and you’re still seeing in this country teenagers being married. I think for a movement about protecting young people, about protecting women, that if we are to add to our empathy those who were exploited for their ambition, among the other things, which is not my business to say that that’s a fair thing to be protected from or not. The expectation for me in my adulthood was that I was responsible for that. We are all different and people have different strengths and weaknesses at different times in their lives. But when we’re talking about kids, it’s just clear.”

On a possible movie of `Bob Honey’:

“A couple of people have talked to me about that. I think that if one of these talented directors really wants to do it, then it would be a lot of fun to see them go do it. But I don’t want anything to do with it other than pay whatever it is to buy a ticket and see it.”
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Prosecutors in the Minnesota county where Prince died have agreed to share investigative files with attorneys for the musician’s family under strict guidelines.

Carver County Attorney Mark Metz says Prince’s death investigation remains active, so the data is confidential. But family attorneys may view it to determine whether to file a lawsuit in Illinois before a two-year statute of limitations expires.

 

Prince’s plane stopped in Moline, Illinois, when he became ill from a suspected drug overdose days before his death. He died April 21, 2016.

 

A judge’s order says attorneys must view the data at the sheriff’s office only. It must not be copied, shared or openly discussed.

 

Investigative data becomes public in Minnesota after a case is resolved, or if no charges are filed. Metz said he plans to make a charging decision in the near future.

 

 
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Rapper Fetty Wap handed out gift cards to families at a New Jersey supermarket just in time for Easter.

The Record reports the Paterson native visited his hometown Tuesday for a giveaway at ShopRite in Center City Mall. Marie Sweeney-Tevis, ShopRite’s director of public relations, says the organization was excited for the opportunity.

Fetty Wap, whose real name is Willie Maxwell II, says he’s fortunate to be able to help people now considering his upbringing. The rapper posed for pictures with eager fans and joked that he might land a couple of Easter dinner invitations.

Fetty Wap is no stranger to giving back. He’s donated turkeys for Thanksgiving each year in Paterson since 2015.

The rap star says he’ll always support his hometown.
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In Ernest Cline’s novel “Ready Player One,” the main character drives a DeLorean because of “Back to the Future,” and uses a grail diary because of “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” The films of Steven Spielberg loom large in the story littered with pop culture references. That the legendary filmmaker then ended up being the one to take Cline’s futuristic-nostalgic vision to the big screen is a small Spielbergian miracle.

“I hadn’t read anything that had triggered my own imagination so vividly where I couldn’t really shut it off,” said Spielberg, who, with “Ready Player One,” out Thursday, returns to the wide-eyed grand-scale blockbuster filmmaking that he made his name with.

The sci-fi spectacle with a reported $175 million production budget presents a near-future vision of a dystopian society that has all but abandoned the real world for an escapist virtual reality existence. In 2045, most people, including the teenage hero Wade (Tye Sheridan), spend their lives as avatars (Wade’s is a cooler version of himself named “Parzival”) in the virtual world of the OASIS – a VR game created by an eccentric genius, James Halliday (Mark Rylance), who has promised his wealth to whomever wins and finds the “Easter egg.”

It’s because of Halliday, who, like its author, came of age in the 1980s, that the OASIS is chalk full of 80s nostalgia from Atari to Buckaroo Banzai. It’s also why Cline assumed that “Ready Player One” would be impossible to adapt. How would anyone be able to secure all the rights? 

That it ended up being Spielberg doing the asking helped a little, but producer Kristie Macosko Krieger is the one he credits for getting everything from Chucky to the Iron Giant in the film. She spent three years working with Warner Bros. to obtain all the necessary clearances from various studios. Some they didn’t use, like the main “Star Wars” icons (although you may spot an X-Wing or R2-D2 in a few frames), and some Spielberg just nixed himself, like the mothership from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” He didn’t want too many of his old movies in his new movie.

“There comes a point when I would have just had to defer to someone else who likes my movies and not make a movie about my movies,” Spielberg said. 

It meant co-screenwriter Zak Penn would have to lose a few of his Spielberg-inspired jokes and ideas that he’d written into the script before Spielberg signed on to direct, but he didn’t mind. 

“It would have taken you out of the narrative. He’s too iconic a director,” Penn said. “You’d be sitting there thinking, ‘Oh, this is from a Spielberg film.”’

But everything was on the table, from the song Cline walked down the aisle to (the Hall & Oats song “You Make My Dreams,” which plays during the credits) to a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to “Last Action Hero,” Penn’s first movie which he had wanted Spielberg to direct. Penn, for his part, had said “no” to a proposed reference and was surprised when he saw one in the final cut. Cline had gone behind his back to persuade the folks at ILM to do it.

Most of the references amount to set-dressing, packing every frame in the OASIS with eggs that would take even the most eagle-eyed viewer multiple viewings to catch.

“My philosophy from the very beginning was, the story is out the front windshield and the pop culture references are out the side mirror,” Spielberg said. “And it’s your choice what you would like to look at.”

The production used cutting-edge technology to simulate the OASIS for the cast and crew with VR headsets that would give everyone a 360-degree view of what the virtual world looked like. And the film itself is a mash-up of past and present technologies, including motion capture, computer animation and even film stock, which Spielberg used to shoot the live-action sequences. 

“It was just a small little touch because I’m trying to keep, you know film, meaning the chemical, the chemistry of film, relevant and I’m just trying, until they close the last lab and stop making raw stock, to shoot everything I can on film,” Spielberg said. “It also gave the real world a more gritty flavor because when you shoot digitally, it’s much more like acrylic. And film is more like oil. You get that blend between that world of oil and the texture that an oil painting has with the film and you get the very smooth, almost antiseptic clarity of what the digital world looks like.”

Lena Waithe, who plays the tech-savvy Aech, said, “I love that he did that. The movie really represents where cinema is going and where it all began, which is really beautiful.”

Cline’s novel has already proved prophetic in the digital space. He says companies like Oculus and Google have copies on hand and, he’s been told, give them to people who come through the offices. And he thinks the movie, which will play globally, will have a more significant impact.

“The best thing that could ever happen to a science fiction writer is to write something that helps inspire the people who make it into a reality,” Cline said. “This movie could be a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

The OASIS, essentially, is not that distant of a reality. It’s also something of a cautionary tale about the perils of VR, or as, Spielberg said how, “too much of a good thing is too much.”

Whether or not audiences will flock to theaters to soak up the nostalgia and the visionary tech is a big question. Waithe said the film is a feel-good escape, and Sheridan stresses that it’s a, “great metaphor for the world that we live in in 2018 and the balancing act from your digital profile to your real world self.” Early tracking pegs the film, which has received strong reviews, for a $45 million opening. Spielberg might not have lost his touch, but mass audiences might also be too distracted to notice.

As for Cline, he still can’t believe his luck. 

“I tell people I’m just prepared for it to all be downhill from here. What could ever top this? I’m so lucky, I got to work with one of my heroes on a story that he helped inspire,” Cline said. “I’m just ready for the slow fade after this.”
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Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney is to put golfer Tiger Woods under the microscope in an upcoming documentary series based on a new biography of the 14-time winner of the sport’s major tournaments, Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions said Tuesday.

Gibney will use Tiger Woods, written by journalists Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian, as a foundation for the series. The book was released Tuesday.

Jigsaw did not say when production of the series would begin, and it has yet to be picked up by a distributor.

Woods, 42, the greatest golfer of his generation who closely guards his personal life and highly crafted image, is in the midst of his latest comeback from injury.

Woods did not speak with the biography’s authors but did allow his chiropractor to speak on the record.

The book, which is published by CBS Corp.’s Simon & Schuster, sits in the top 40 on Amazon’s best-seller list and has so far received favorable reviews.

It examines Woods’ life as a closely managed introverted child prodigy to a global marketing phenomenon, and his midcareer fall from grace as a string of affairs and injuries took a toll on his image and performance.

Gibney’s projects include the scripted Hulu miniseries The Looming Tower and the 2015 HBO Scientology documentary Going Clear. He won an Oscar in 2008 for his Afghan war documentary Taxi to the Dark Side.
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He’s one of French art’s most famous — but least understood — masters.

Now the Louvre in Paris is seeking to reinterpret the work of Eugene Delacroix in a retrospective that goes beyond the brief years in which he painted his most recognizable masterpieces, such as Liberty Leading the People, which has graced postage stamps and bank notes in France as well as a Coldplay album cover.

Alongside the Mona Lisa, Delacroix’s famed image of a bare-chested revolutionary woman brandishing a flag and bayonet, from 1830, is the Louvre’s most visited painting.

Visitors who know little about the artist’s extensive career will be enlightened by Delacroix 1798-1863, which opens Thursday.

“Delacroix is the world’s greatest Romantic painter. His painting is one of the two most iconic works here. Yet, he remains a mystery,” said Sebastien Allard, painting director at the Louvre.

“There was so much, so much more after the 10 years when he produced his most famous paintings. And we are showing his near-complete works for the first time since 1963,” he added.

​Widespread influence

Allard said 200 works, including watercolors, lithographs and religious art, as well as intimate journals, show the profound influence Delacroix had on world painting.

A painter obsessed with light and color, he was one of the first artists to paint mixed-race models to capture the unique luminosity of the skin. Instead of painting green, Delacroix would paint two dots — one blue, one yellow — next to each other and let the spectator’s eye do the rest.

The exhibit demonstrates how he was an avid experimentalist, inspiring many after him. Pablo Picasso reproduced Delacroix’s Women of Algiers, and his pioneering techniques were also seized upon by Impressionists such as Claude Monet and Paul Cezanne.

Delacroix has, over the decades, found international fame — including in the United States, from where around 40 of the works were loaned for this show.

However, the sheer size of many of the dramatic oils — up to and over 260 centimeters by 325 centimeters  (102 inches by 128 inches) — has prevented the movement of the work around the world.

“Delacroix loved the Louvre, and here really is the only place you can see one of the greatest artists of all time,” Allard said.

The Delacroix retrospective runs until July 28, and will be shown in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in the fall, minus the larger works.
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The new head of Venezuela’s famed youth orchestra network says he will strive to uphold the program’s legacy of musical excellence and social service as it faces one of the toughest periods in its history following the death of its charismatic founder. 

In an interview at the network’s Caracas headquarters, incoming director Eduardo Mendez said the program must overcome a crippling economic crisis that has forced hundreds of musicians to leave the country along with the passing of Jose Antonio Abreu, who created the orchestra network known as El Sistema.

“We will have to multiply into thousands of Abreus,” Mendez said.

Abreu, who died Saturday at age 78, was a consummate musician and astute politician who secured government support for El Sistema and turned it into one of Venezuela’s showpiece programs. The network now runs around 300 community schools that have given children in poor neighborhoods an opportunity to study classical music. It has also produced a crop of world-renowned musicians, including Los Angeles Philharmonic Director Gustavo Dudamel.

Mendez acknowledged that steering the orchestra network through Venezuela’s social and economic crisis will not be an easy task.

According to El Sistema’s new director, 8 percent of the program’s teachers have recently left the country to seek a better life abroad. The network’s marquee Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra has lost 42 percent of its musicians over the past six months, though most of the vacancies have been filled with younger musicians.

“It hasn’t been easy to convince people to stay,” Mendez said. “Many of these people are leaving in search of economic stability.”

Mendez, who worked alongside Abreu for 15 years, said his priority will be to strengthen musical initiation programs and explore new genres in the network’s academies.

According to El Sistema’s own figures, 980,000 children and young musicians are currently participating in its programs throughout Venezuela.

Political tensions

But Mendez will also have to avoid conflicts between musicians and Venezuela’s government, which has been accused by critics of using the music program as a propaganda tool.

Tensions between El Sistema and Venezuelan officials surfaced last year when the network’s star pupil, Gustavo Dudamel, criticized efforts by President Nicolas Maduro to install a constituent assembly dominated by government supporters that is seen by critics as another step toward dictatorship.

Maduro asked Dudamel to “not attack those of us who have been crucial to the expansion of the [musical] movement.”

Shortly after the heated exchange, Venezuelan officials suspended two El Sistema tours through the United States and Asia, which were going to be conducted by Dudamel. No official explanation was given as to why the tours were canceled.

Mendez said Dudamel will continue to be El Sistema’s creative director. Dudamel is expected to lead several concerts in Venezuela in August and September, and might also participate in an exhibition on El Sistema at a United Nations summit in Vienna in May.

When asked if he will allow his musicians to voice their political views, Mendez said he would not censure anyone.

“Everyone is responsible for his actions, and is responsible for saying or doing what they think is right,” Mendez said.
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Vietnamese singer and activist Do Nguyen Mai Khoi, an outspoken campaigner for free speech, was briefly detained at an airport in the capital Hanoi on Tuesday after flying home from Europe, her husband told Reuters.

Often dubbed a Vietnamese version of “Pussy Riot” or Lady Gaga because of her activism and provocative style, Mai Khoi was among dozens of dissidents on the watch-list of Communist-ruled Vietnam for her strong words against the system.

“When Mai Khoi landed at Noi Bai airport, at 9:15 am this morning, she texted me to say: ‘Love, I just landed’,” Mai Khoi’s Australian husband, Benjamin Swanton, posted on her Facebook page, which has some 46,000 followers.

“At 9:39 am, she texted another message: ‘Detained’.” Swanton wrote.

Mai Khoi updated her Facebook page later in the day to say that she has been released after eight hours.

“Thank you everyone for your care. I’m now on a public bus back to Hanoi,” Khoi said alongside a photo of herself she posted to the page.

Calls to authorities at Noi Bai International airport and Mai Khoi’s mobile phone went unanswered. Her husband confirmed she had been released.

“We have been evicted from our house three times now,” Swanton said.

At least 129 people are currently detained in Vietnam for criticizing or protesting against the government, according to a February report by Human Rights Watch.

A crackdown on dissent last year caused scores of activists to flee the country, according to Amnesty International.

Mai Khoi, who last year protested beside U.S. President Donald Trump’s motorcade during his visit to Vietnam by holding up a poster which said “[Expletive] on you Trump”, had not yet been subjected to a travel ban by the Vietnamese authorities.

The 34-year-old has courted controversy under a government which, despite overseeing sweeping economic reforms and growing openness to social change, does not tolerate criticism.

In 2016, she was one of a handful of activists who tried and failed to obtain a seat in the Communist party-dominated National Assembly. She met former U.S. president Barack Obama during his visit in Vietnam in 2015.

The title of her new album “Bat Dong”, which she had been in Europe to promote, translates to “Disagreement”. Her song “Please, sir” pleads with the leader of the Communist Party to allow ordinary Vietnamese people to sing, publish, share and travel freely.
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Extremely rare Chinese musical instruments and works of art dating from 9,000 years ago are on display for the first time in the U.S. The archaeological treasures, mostly found in tombs in central China, give viewers a glimpse of the musical life of the ancient societies. VOA’s June Soh takes us to the exhibit at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona.
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