Month: February 2019

Today is Super Bowl Sunday, the day of the national championship for American football. This year the New England Patriots will play the Los Angeles Rams in Atlanta for the National Football League’s (NFL) Vince Lombardi Trophy.

This will be the 11th time the Patriots compete in the Super Bowl, and the third straight year they’ve contended for the title. They lost last year’s game to the Philadelphia Eagles.

It’s the fourth appearance for the Rams, who last played in the Super Bowl in 2002 when they were defeated by the Patriots. At that time the Rams were based in St. Louis, Missouri.

The Super Bowl is one of the most-watched television events each year, as many Americans host or attend parties to watch the game. For many, the commercials shown during breaks in the action on the field are a bigger draw than the game itself. Many companies roll out new television ads created especially for the big game, and they pay big money to get those ads in front of viewers. This year a 30-second advertising spot will cost more than $5 million, according to AdWeek.

The halftime show is also another big draw for many people. This year the NFL had some difficulty finding big-name performers for the show. Several performers, including Jay-Z, Cardi B and Rihanna, spurned the league’s offer to appear at the event as a show of solidarity with Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick is a black player who accused the NFL of conspiring to keep teams from signing him because of his protests of racism and police brutality during the national anthem played before games.

Rappers Travis Scott and Big Boi, as well as the pop group Maroon 5, eventually signed on to perform, but Scott and Maroon 5 agreed to appear only after the league agreed to make contributions to various charities.
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Spending a cold winter day at the beach is not something most people would choose to do … unless it is The Beach Chicago, where visitors can laugh at the weather. The peculiar art installation allows locals and tourists to stay warm during the abnormally cold temperatures. Reporter Yekaterina Yalovetskaya joined the beach-goers, and Anna Rice narrates her story.
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Egyptian archaeologists uncovered a tomb containing 50 mummies dating to the Ptolemaic era, in Minya, south of Cairo, the Ministry of Antiquities said Saturday.

The mummies, 12 of which were of children, were discovered inside four, 9-meter-deep burial chambers in the Tuna el-Gebel archaeological site.

The identities of the mummies aren’t known, said Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

“We have not found names written in hieroglyphics,” he said, adding it was obvious from the mummification method that the individuals whose remains were found had to some extent held important or prestigious positions. 

Visitors, including ambassadors from several countries, gathered at the discovery site, where 40 of the mummies were exhibited during the announcement ceremony.

Some of the mummies were found wrapped in linen while others had been placed in stone coffins or wooden sarcophagi.

The archaeological finding was the first of 2019 and was unearthed through a joint mission with the Research Center for Archaeological Studies of Minya University. 
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It may be hard to believe as a large swath of the U.S. thaws out from a bitter polar vortex, but spring is coming early, according to handlers for some of the country’s most famous prognosticating groundhogs.

Just before 7:30 a.m. Saturday, Punxsutawney Phil emerged from his burrow in Pennsylvania at sunrise and didn’t see his shadow. Nearly the same series of events unfolded about 300 miles (483 kilometers) to the east, where Staten Island Chuck’s handlers also revealed the same prediction.

The festivities have their origin in a German legend that says if a furry rodent casts a shadow on Feb. 2, winter continues. If not, spring comes early.

In reality, Phil’s prediction is decided ahead of time by the group on Gobbler’s Knob, a tiny hill just outside Punxsutawney. That’s about 65 miles (105 kilometers) northeast of Pittsburgh.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio stopped attending Staten Island’s Groundhog Day ceremony in 2015, a year after he accidentally dropped the furry critter that died a week later.

And he wasn’t the only New York City mayor who struggled with the holiday. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg was bitten at a Groundhog Day ceremony in 2009.

 
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One of the book world’s greatest mysteries is finally ending: J.D. Salinger’s son says previously unpublished work by his late father will be coming out. 

In comments that appeared Friday in The Guardian, Matt Salinger confirmed long-standing reports that the author of The Catcher in the Rye continued to write decades after he stopped publishing books. He said that he and Salinger’s widow, Colleen, were “going as fast as we freaking can” to prepare the material for release. 

“He wanted me to pull it together, and because of the scope of the job, he knew it would take a long time,” Salinger said of his father, who died in 2010 and had not published work since the mid-1960s.  

“This was somebody who was writing for 50 years without publishing, so that’s a lot of material. So there’s not a reluctance or a protectiveness — when it’s ready, we’re going to share it,” he said.  

Might take years

Salinger, who helps oversee his father’s literary estate, says any new work might be years away and did not cite any specific titles or plots. He did indicate that the Glass family made famous in such fiction as Franny and Zooey would be seen again. 

“I feel the pressure to get this done, more than he did,” he said, adding that the unseen work “will definitely disappoint people that he wouldn’t care about, but for real readers, I think it will be tremendously well-received by those people and they will be affected in the way every reader hopes to be affected when they open a book. Not changed, necessarily, but something rubs off that can lead to change.” 

Longtime Salinger publisher Little, Brown and Co. had no comment Friday.  

J.D. Salinger published just four books in his lifetime: Nine Stories, The Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey and a volume with the two novellas Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction. The last work to come out in his lifetime was the story Hapworth 16, 1924, which appeared in The New Yorker in 1965. 

Salinger rarely spoke to the media and not only stopped releasing new work but rejected any reissues or e-book editions of his published material. This year marks the centennial of his birth and signs of a new openness emerged in 2018 when his estate permitted new covers and a boxed edition of his old fiction to come out for the 100th anniversary. A Salinger exhibit is planned later this year at the New York Public Library, and other promotional events are in the works. 

Over the past half-century, rumors and speculation intensified about whether any new books existed and whether they were of publishable quality. A former lover, Joyce Maynard, and Salinger’s daughter, Margaret, have both contended that the author continued to write books, allegedly stored in a vault in the author’s home in Cornish, N.H. 

5 works predicted

A 2013 documentary and book by Shane Salerno and David Shields cited two “independent and separate sources” in predicting five new works. One of the Salinger books would center on Catcher protagonist Holden Caulfield and his family. Others would draw on Salinger’s World War II years and his immersion in Eastern religion.

Matt Salinger has dismissed the contents of the Salerno-Shields project, but never definitively said that no new work would appear. 

Salerno wrote in an email Friday to The Associated Press that “it was always his [J.D. Salinger’s] intention — and specific direction — to have his work published after his death.” 

“I’m thrilled that Salinger fans around the world will finally get to see this important work from one of America’s finest writers,” Salerno added. “As the stories roll out over the years, I think you will find that all of our reporting was correct.” 
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It’s always in the back of Brolin Mawejje’s mind, whether he’s soaring over the snow or fine-tuning his rail technique: What more can he do to become an Olympic contender in snowboarding?

The 26-year-old hopes to enter the record books as the first African competing in his sport at the highest echelon  – on behalf of his native Uganda. He was close to qualifying for the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea when a medical condition threw him off course.

“It’s a life circumstance,” he said matter of factly.

The setback arose last February at the Winter University Games in Kazakhstan, where he fell ill during practice. Medical tests revealed arrhythmia, an irregular heartbeat that can be fatal.

Mawejje packed up his gear and headed back to Utah. After consulting with his coaches and doctors, Mawejje shifted his focus to the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing.

“My goal has not changed or wavered. My goal is to still represent my home nation of Uganda at the world games,” the young man said during an interview last year at Westminster College here (Utah).

WATCH: Brolin Mawejje Talks About Snowboarding

Snowboarding video courtesy of Brolin Mawejje’s Instagram account.

Mountains provide a spectacular backdrop for the liberal arts college, where Mawejje is completing a master’s degree in public health, emphasizing epidemiology.

Mawejje has been back on the slopes since shortly after his diagnosis; the Mayo Clinic lists regular exercise among protective factors for his condition. He trains in Park City, Utah, and Jackson, Wyo., near the home of the American family that took him in. He also runs, lifts weights and bounces on a trampoline to improve his balance for the jumps, flips and twists of freestyle snowboarding.

“I have not won any major trophies this year,” Mawejje acknowledged in an email. But he’ll have a home advantage for his next competition: The FIS World Championships open this weekend in Park City. Athletes earn points at events sanctioned by the FIS, short for International Ski Federation, which countries consider when they pick athletes to represent them at the Olympics.

Unusual path

Mawejje took an unlikely trail to snowboarding. He never saw snow until he was 12, when he moved from his family home outside Uganda’s capital, Kampala, to a suburb of Boston, Mass. His mother had relocated there when he was a toddler.

“I came to the U.S. for more opportunities and better education,” he said.

At 14, an after-school program introduced him to skiing and snowboarding. “I wanted to have friends, so I joined in,” Mawejje said.

Through close pal Philip Hessler, he got a second family, moving with them to Jackson Hole, Wyo., in 2009. Both boys later enrolled at Westminster.

Hessler traced Mawejje’s development as a snowboarder and young man growing up in a foreign land in the 2014 documentary Far From Home, shot while both were students. Hessler went on to co-found the video production agency WZRD Media and works as a filmmaker.

Hessler regards Mawejje “as my brother and one of my best friends,” he told VOA, lauding Mawejje’s perseverance and ability “to thrive in new circumstances. … He is able to straddle being a part of many worlds.”

That includes Uganda. Mawejje says his mother gave him the opportunity and “understanding that I need to go back home and give back to my people and to my community.” He’s concentrating now on the Olympics, but aims to later attend medical school to become a doctor.

“To have a career that impacts a lot of people … is greater than sports,” he said.

Kaye Stackpole, a Westminster official who’s among Mawejje’s mentors, expands on his point.

“He has personally experienced great medical care and average-to-low medical care,” she said. “He wants to elevate education and medical care, especially in his country of Uganda. … I think that every step he takes is toward his goal of helping others.”

Charity work

Meanwhile, Mawejje works with charities such as the Kampala-based advocacy group Joy for Children on “initiatives that empower the youth and future of Uganda,” he said.

The athlete travels to Uganda and to snowboarding events around the world as a goodwill ambassador for Visa financial services. On Instagram, he tags that company and other corporate sponsors. He also has worked since he was in high school, as a lab analyst at Massachusetts General Hospital and as an instructor at snowboarding camps, among other jobs.

While in Kampala recently, Mawejje participated in a charity event and met with Uganda’s Olympic Committee president to “discuss the path to the Olympics with their support,” he said.

The committee has provided verbal encouragement but, to date, no “tangible support,” Mawejje said. Economic growth slowed in the East African country in the last few years, the World Bank has reported, noting that roughly a fifth of its 40 million residents live in poverty.

Mawejje hopes to get support from Uganda, the African continent and the diaspora. He says his Olympic quest is not just for himself.

“I am just the face going through the journey. … A lot of people in Africa go, ‘Why help him?’ … You are not helping me, you are helping the idea of all of us. It’s really the Olympic goal.”

He cites the three Nigerian women who last February made up the first African bobsled team at the Olympics. Though they placed last, “I am proud just to hear of the ladies of Nigeria,” Mawejje said. “And I just want East Africa to have the same representation.”
…

It’s always in the back of Brolin Mawejje’s mind, whether he’s soaring over the snow or fine-tuning his rail technique: What more can he do to become an Olympic contender in snowboarding?

The 26-year-old hopes to enter the record books as the first African competing in his sport at the highest echelon  – on behalf of his native Uganda. He was close to qualifying for the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea when a medical condition threw him off course.

“It’s a life circumstance,” he said matter of factly.

The setback arose last February at the Winter University Games in Kazakhstan, where he fell ill during practice. Medical tests revealed arrhythmia, an irregular heartbeat that can be fatal.

Mawejje packed up his gear and headed back to Utah. After consulting with his coaches and doctors, Mawejje shifted his focus to the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing.

“My goal has not changed or wavered. My goal is to still represent my home nation of Uganda at the world games,” the young man said during an interview last year at Westminster College here (Utah).

WATCH: Brolin Mawejje Talks About Snowboarding

Snowboarding video courtesy of Brolin Mawejje’s Instagram account.

Mountains provide a spectacular backdrop for the liberal arts college, where Mawejje is completing a master’s degree in public health, emphasizing epidemiology.

Mawejje has been back on the slopes since shortly after his diagnosis; the Mayo Clinic lists regular exercise among protective factors for his condition. He trains in Park City, Utah, and Jackson, Wyo., near the home of the American family that took him in. He also runs, lifts weights and bounces on a trampoline to improve his balance for the jumps, flips and twists of freestyle snowboarding.

“I have not won any major trophies this year,” Mawejje acknowledged in an email. But he’ll have a home advantage for his next competition: The FIS World Championships open this weekend in Park City. Athletes earn points at events sanctioned by the FIS, short for International Ski Federation, which countries consider when they pick athletes to represent them at the Olympics.

Unusual path

Mawejje took an unlikely trail to snowboarding. He never saw snow until he was 12, when he moved from his family home outside Uganda’s capital, Kampala, to a suburb of Boston, Mass. His mother had relocated there when he was a toddler.

“I came to the U.S. for more opportunities and better education,” he said.

At 14, an after-school program introduced him to skiing and snowboarding. “I wanted to have friends, so I joined in,” Mawejje said.

Through close pal Philip Hessler, he got a second family, moving with them to Jackson Hole, Wyo., in 2009. Both boys later enrolled at Westminster.

Hessler traced Mawejje’s development as a snowboarder and young man growing up in a foreign land in the 2014 documentary Far From Home, shot while both were students. Hessler went on to co-found the video production agency WZRD Media and works as a filmmaker.

Hessler regards Mawejje “as my brother and one of my best friends,” he told VOA, lauding Mawejje’s perseverance and ability “to thrive in new circumstances. … He is able to straddle being a part of many worlds.”

That includes Uganda. Mawejje says his mother gave him the opportunity and “understanding that I need to go back home and give back to my people and to my community.” He’s concentrating now on the Olympics, but aims to later attend medical school to become a doctor.

“To have a career that impacts a lot of people … is greater than sports,” he said.

Kaye Stackpole, a Westminster official who’s among Mawejje’s mentors, expands on his point.

“He has personally experienced great medical care and average-to-low medical care,” she said. “He wants to elevate education and medical care, especially in his country of Uganda. … I think that every step he takes is toward his goal of helping others.”

Charity work

Meanwhile, Mawejje works with charities such as the Kampala-based advocacy group Joy for Children on “initiatives that empower the youth and future of Uganda,” he said.

The athlete travels to Uganda and to snowboarding events around the world as a goodwill ambassador for Visa financial services. On Instagram, he tags that company and other corporate sponsors. He also has worked since he was in high school, as a lab analyst at Massachusetts General Hospital and as an instructor at snowboarding camps, among other jobs.

While in Kampala recently, Mawejje participated in a charity event and met with Uganda’s Olympic Committee president to “discuss the path to the Olympics with their support,” he said.

The committee has provided verbal encouragement but, to date, no “tangible support,” Mawejje said. Economic growth slowed in the East African country in the last few years, the World Bank has reported, noting that roughly a fifth of its 40 million residents live in poverty.

Mawejje hopes to get support from Uganda, the African continent and the diaspora. He says his Olympic quest is not just for himself.

“I am just the face going through the journey. … A lot of people in Africa go, ‘Why help him?’ … You are not helping me, you are helping the idea of all of us. It’s really the Olympic goal.”

He cites the three Nigerian women who last February made up the first African bobsled team at the Olympics. Though they placed last, “I am proud just to hear of the ladies of Nigeria,” Mawejje said. “And I just want East Africa to have the same representation.”
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