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.
…

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.”
…

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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While it’s unclear how much the rest of the country is eagerly awaiting Thursday’s testimony from former FBI Director James Comey, for Washingtonians, the event is must-see TV, prompting some bars to open as early to host viewing parties.

And yes, one bar, Shaw’s Tavern, will be serving a special “covfefe” cocktail, named after President Donald Trump’s mysterious Twitter typo.

Rob Heim, general manager of Shaw’s Tavern, told People magazine that he got the idea after a friend invited him over to watch the testimony. Since he had to work, he thought why not host a viewing party at the bar.

“I remember I was visiting my mom at the time and she said, ‘Who would watch that?’ And I said, ‘In D.C., people would watch it.’ But I was shocked by how much interest we got in just a couple hours.”

The bar will also offer FBI-themed food such as the FBI sandwich (fried chicken, bacon and iceberg lettuce) and the FBI breakfast (French toast, bacon and ice cream).

Another bar, aptly called The Partisan, will open early and offer themed cocktails, including “The Last Word” and “Drop the Bomb.”

Duffy’s Irish Pub will have another version of the “Covfefe cocktail.”

The Capital Lounge, which normally opens at 4 p.m., will open at 9 a.m. so that Comey watchers can get an early start.

Comey’s hearing is set to start at 10 a.m. local time and is expected to cover conversations between Comey and President Trump about Russia’s meddling in the election and what, if any, role was played by former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

If you don’t want to wait, Comey released his prepared remarks Wednesday.

Of course, not everyone is interested in the event, prompting one bar, The Pug, to host a party free of news about the testimony.
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A replica of an Assyrian statue destroyed by Islamic State militants in Iraq in 2014 will soar over tourists in London’s Trafalgar Square beginning in March, courtesy of a vision from American artist Michael Rakowitz.

 

The 15-foot high statue of an lamassu — a human-headed winged bull — reflects the “mass migration that’s happened out of Iraq and Syria in the past few years,” and is a “kind of placeholder for those lives that can’t be reconstructed and for those people who have not yet found refuge,” Rakowitz said in an interview at his Evanston, Illinois, studio.

 

His sculpture is a continuation of “The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist” series, a decade-long recreation of nearly 700 of the over 7,000 archaeological artifacts still missing after being looted, stolen or declared missing from the National Museum of Iraq. It’s a project Rakowitz predicts will outlive him and his studio, as thousands of artifacts are still missing and more are being lost every day in archaeological sites throughout Iraq and Syria.

 

Using databases from the University of Chicago and Interpol to get exact dimensions of missing works, he and his team work with recycled Middle Eastern food packaging and Arabic newspapers to create versions of the original pieces.

 

Rakowitz, one of two winners of the Fourth Plinth competition that grants winning artists the right to exhibit a contemporary art work in Trafalgar Square for about 18 months, says he hopes his lamassu sculpture will draw attention to some of the staggering human and cultural costs of ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Syria.

 

London’s Fourth Plinth was erected in Trafalgar Square 1841 in for a never-completed equestrian statue. Since 1999, it has been occupied by a series of modern artworks.

 

Rakowitz felt fate intervened as he was putting together his submission.

 

“When the City of London sent out its prompt inviting me to propose something, it said that the plinth itself measured 14 feet in length and I was simultaneously doing research on the lamassu that had been destroyed by ISIS in Nineveh and that was exactly 14 feet. So, it seemed as though that is what had to go there,” said Rakowitz, a professor of art at Northwestern University.

 

His latter-day lamassu will be created out of between 3,000 and 4,000 pressed empty Iraqi date syrup cans, highlighting the once-thriving Iraqi date industry that’s been decimated by decades of war.

 

Lost art works, along with the cultures they represent, are a life-long obsession for the 43-year-old grandson of Iraqi Jewish emigres. Generations of Rakowitz’s family embraced their cultural identity even after being forced to flee Baghdad in the 1940s. Being an Iraqi Jew was presented to Rakowitz as “something normal, but [also] something that had tragically disappeared.”

 

Rakowitz felt as if his “entire art history had collapsed,” after hearing that the Taliban destroyed Afghanistan’s Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001. That sense of loss was further compounded two years later when watching video of the looting of Baghdad’s Museum of Iraq.

 

“It didn’t matter if you were for the war or against the war,” he said. “This was something that everyone could agree upon was unacceptable and tragic and it was a problem for all humanity, not just for Iraq.”

 

Claire Davies, the Metropolitan Museum’s assistant curator for modern and contemporary art from the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey, said Rakowitz’s work connects the destruction “to what is happening outside of that space and to the people around that work of art.”

 

Rakowitz’s replica pieces have been acquired by major museums from around the world, including the British Museum, Davies said. The Metropolitan Museum currently has nine pieces from “The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist.” His work has also been widely exhibited in the Middle East.
…

Bill Cosby’s chief accuser on Wednesday denied they had a romantic relationship before he allegedly drugged and assaulted her at his suburban Philadelphia home.

The defense resumed its cross-examination of Andrea Constand one day after she broke her long public silence about Cosby by testifying that the comedian gave her three blue pills and then violated her with his fingers in 2004 as she lay paralyzed, unable to tell him to stop.

Cosby lawyer Angela Agrusa suggested that Constand, a 44-year-old former employee of the basketball program at Temple University, once enjoyed a romantic dinner at Cosby’s home before the alleged assault.

“You were sitting by the fire. The room was dark. There was a nice mood …,”  Agrusa began, paraphrasing Constand’s 2005 statement to police.

“I don’t know what that means,” Constand said.

“The lights were dim and the fire was going,” the lawyer continued.

“I don’t really remember how dim the lights were, but I did have to eat my dinner,” Constand said.

Agrusa also spent a painstaking hour going over Constand’s phone records, hoping to show she changed her mind about the date she says Cosby assaulted her.

High-profile trustee

Cosby arrived at the courthouse Wednesday accompanied by actress Sheila Frazier, who starred with him in the 1978 comedy “California Suite.” Frazier was accompanied by her husband, John Atchison, a celebrity hairstylist whose clients include Cosby and his wife, Camille.

Cosby, 79, is charged with aggravated indecent assault. The comedian once dubbed America’s Dad could get 10 years in prison if convicted.

 

Constand managed the women’s basketball team at Temple, Cosby’s alma mater, while he was a high-profile trustee. She said on Tuesday that she felt her continued friendship with Cosby after the alleged assault was important to the school’s athletic department.

His lawyers have tried to poke holes in Constand’s story, citing differences between her courtroom testimony and the accounts she gave to police and in a lawsuit in 2005. The defense has argued the two had a romantic relationship, that Constand wasn’t incapacitated and that the sexual encounter was consensual.

Phone records

 

The defense has pointed out that phone records show Constand called Cosby 53 times after she says he assaulted her. Constand told the jury the calls mostly involved the women’s basketball team, especially around tournament time.

 

Before Tuesday, Constand had never spoken about Cosby in public, barred from doing so under the terms of a confidential settlement they reached in 2006. Her deposition from that lawsuit remains sealed.

 

Some 60 women have come forward to say Cosby sexually violated them, all but destroying his nice-guy image, but the statute of limitations for prosecution had run out in nearly every case. Constand’s case is the only one in which Cosby has been charged.

 

The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are sexual assault victims unless they grant permission, which Constand has done.

 
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As a child growing up poor in Tupelo, Mississippi, Elvis Presley promised his parents that one day he would earn a lot of money and use it to buy the family a big house.

He made good on that promise in 1957, when he bought Graceland for $102,500 in Memphis, Tennessee. The mansion, originally built in 1939, remains the centerpiece of the 5.6-hectare estate, although it has been considerably refurbished and embellished over the decades.

Elvis, his parents, wife Priscilla Presley, daughter Lisa Marie and a collection of friends and relatives that made up his entourage all lived in Graceland most of the time until Elvis’s sudden death in August 1977 at the age of 42.

The official cause of death was cardiac arrhythmia — a form of heart attack —but overuse of prescription drugs for years is widely believed to have been a major cause of his final illness, when his heartbeat became so erratic that Elvis fell unconscious and died in his private quarters. His father, Vernon Presley, had the autopsy report sealed from public view.

Funeral rites for Presley at Graceland commanded worldwide attention, with 80,000 mourners in attendance. His gravesite on the mansion grounds became a magnet for visitors.

Less than five years after Elvis’s death, Graceland was opened to the public on June 7, 1982.

“600,000 people visit Graceland annually,” said Libby Perry, a Graceland spokesman.

All these years later, do visitors report feeling Elvis’s presence at Graceland?

“Of course,” Perry said. “Just ask anyone who has visited.”
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Every year, hundreds of thousands of tourists walk through Presley’s mansion, bought for $102,500.00 in 1957
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Chuck Berry did things his own way, right up to his final album, a 10-song set nearly four decades in the making.

 

The St. Louis native widely hailed as the father of rock ‘n’ roll announced plans for the album “CHUCK” in October on his 90th birthday. The music took on added poignancy when Berry died in March. The album will be released Friday.

 

It’s a fitting finale from the guitar master who melded blues, R&B and Country music into a sound that took over the 1950s, forever changing the cultural landscape. Some of the new songs, like “Wonderful Woman” and “Big Boys,” feature the same driving rhythm of his earliest hits like “Maybellene” and “Roll Over Beethoven.” In fact, one of the new songs, “Lady B. Goode,” offers the perspective of the woman left behind by his legendary “Johnny B. Goode.”

 

But Berry’s son, Charles Berry Jr., said his father did not set out to make a legacy album.

 

“I think this was just his next body of work, and it just took a lot longer than the other albums to get released,” Charles Berry Jr., 55, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

That’s an understatement. Jim Marsala, who played bass guitar in Berry’s band for 41 years, said Berry began working on new material soon after the release of his previous album, “Rock It,” in 1979.

 

Always marching to his own beat, Berry was in no particular hurry. For 10 years, he recorded songs, or riffs for songs, or whatever came to mind. All of the tracks were destroyed in a 1989 fire at a studio near his home in Wentzville, Missouri, a St. Louis suburb.

 

At that point, “he has nothing,” Charles Berry Jr. said. “So, he builds another studio and goes back to work, re-creating and creating new music.”

 

In the meantime, Berry continued to perform, including monthly shows for nearly two decades at Blueberry Hill, a venue in another St. Louis suburb, University City, until age 88. Marsala directed the band, Charles Berry Jr. played guitar, and the always unpredictable frontman commanded the stage, taking his bandmates on a nightly trip they could never anticipate.

 

“The show was completely ad-libbed,” Marsala said. “You never knew what was coming next. We usually started out with ‘Roll Over Beethoven,’ ‘School Days,’ and then ‘Sweet Little Sixteen,’ and then from there it was whatever he felt like playing.”

 

Marsala made sure he stood to Berry’s left, better to see where Berry’s hands were on the neck of his guitar “so I knew what key he was in. So when he would do his four-bar intro I had hand signals. I would flash to the keyboard player so he would know what key we were in. And we’d come in on the fifth bar. It worked great.”

 

Charles Berry Jr. smiled as he recalled those shows.

 

“He’d be up onstage and just start doing stuff,” he said. “And it’d be, ‘OK, let’s just follow him wherever he’s going.”’

 

“CHUCK” was a family affair. Charles Berry Jr. plays guitar, as does his own son, Charles Edward Berry III, who turns 23 this week. Ingrid Berry-Clay, one of Chuck’s three daughters, sings and plays harmonica.

 

She sings along with her dad on “Darlin’,” a Country-tinged ballad that resonates as a final message to his children.

 

“Darlin’, your father’s growing older each year,” Berry sings. “Strands of gray are showing bolder/Come here and lay your head upon my shoulder/My dear, the time is passing fast away.”

 

Typical of Berry, the lyrics of “CHUCK” are at times poetic, at other times playful. “Big Boys” harkens to his earlier odes to teenage cravings. “The girls wanna stay and the boys wanna play/So let’s rock ‘n’ roll `til the break of day,” he sings.

 

But in the closing song, “Eyes of Man,” Berry warns philosophically of worshipping false idols.

 

“So be the temples men have cherished/Crumble in ruins to rot and rust/Low lies each pillar and arch to perish/Doomed to decay and rot to dust.”

 

Berry’s impact on music was evident, said Joe Edwards, the owner of Blueberry Hill and a close friend of Berry’s.

 

“But the fact that he changed culture around the world by bringing black kids and white kids together through music was an even greater accomplishment, perhaps,” Edwards said. “It was just unbelievable the influence he had.”
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A rusted fragment of the battleship USS Arizona sunk at Pearl Harbor, a woman’s munitions plant uniform and ration books all tell the complex story of life on the homefront in a new exhibit at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

“Salute to the Home Front,” which opens Saturday, explores the bitter fight about entering the war, racial and gender prejudice, and the development of the atomic bomb.

Museum President and CEO Nick Mueller said most of the museum’s 6-acre campus shows how the war was won on the battlefield but the new permanent exhibit explains “why it was fought and how it was won on the homefront.”

The 10,000-square-foot exhibit begins with the years after World War I. The peace treaty that ended the war in 1918 was “punitive and did not really solve the social and cultural ills” that led to the war, according Owen Glendening, the museum’s associate vice president for education and access.

“With democracy and capitalism under question, the rise of authoritarian regimes really shook the world,” he said.

Gas masks for children

Among the artifacts are British gas masks for children — one that might fit a 5-year-old and a much bigger one designed to hold an infant from head to waist. Gas had been a major weapon of World War I, and people feared that gas bombs might be dropped in civilian areas.

“Fortunately, it never happened, but the population was scared stiff,” Glendenning said.

Headlines and newsreels show the strident debate between U.S. isolationists and internationalists, which ended when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

Survivors’ accounts of that attack are among more than 50 videotaped oral histories interspersed throughout the exhibit.

“The signature of this museum is to engage people in personal stories. … We hear from survivors of Pearl Harbor, people on Main Street USA. … We hear first-hand stories about people who went into factories or into the service to fight,” Mueller said.

‘Victory Begins at Home’

The exhibit’s Main Street USA has a newsstand, a theater marquee and a store window filled with propagandistic wares such as Victory bobby pins and a charm bracelet of military service insignia.

Within the picket fence outside two rooms representing a 1940s-style home, one wall is covered with a photo of a victory garden. Nearby are a real hubcap and other metal items for a scrap drive.

Inside the kitchen, the shelves display pamphlets with titles such as “Victory Begins at Home!: Recipes to Match Your Sugar Ration” and “Health for Victory Club Meal-Planning Guide.” Pull open kitchen drawers and you see items including ration books, matchbooks and an icebag.

Map of the war

A living-room wall displays a framed map: “Esso War Map II: Invasion Edition.” It’s designed, an introductory statement says, so people can “follow the strategy of the Allies as it develops from day to day.” An open closet in the same room displays children’s military dolls, toy guns and dress-up uniforms.

Glendenning said the gallery on the rush to turn from a peacetime economy to a wartime one holds two of his favorite artifacts: a cutaway ship model from the Higgins boat-building plant in New Orleans, built as a reference to show workers how everything fit together, and the overalls and cap worn by a female munitions factory worker.

“It has such a ’40s sense of style,” he said. “I love the big red buttons at the hip.”

Toni Kiser, assistant director for collections management, said one of her favorite pieces is at the bottom right corner of the living room’s display cabinet: a statuette of Hitler bending over, with a pincushion as his rear end.

 
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U.S. pop star Ariana Grande, hardly a household name in Britain before a suicide bomber killed 22 people at her Manchester concert in May, has emerged as a national heroine there following an emotional televised benefit performance.

In the days following Grande’s sold-out show on Sunday, which raised some $3 million for a victims fund and became the U.K.’s most-watched TV broadcast of the year, Britons have embraced the 23-year-old singer. They have called for her to be formally honored by Queen Elizabeth and the city of Manchester.

At the One Love Manchester concert, Grande hugged a weeping schoolgirl as they performed her hit “My Everything” before a crowd of 55,000 people.

The tiny performer ended the show alone on stage, singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” in tears.

Her team is working to release that emotional final number as a single to raise even more money for victims, the U.K.’s Independent newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The concert served as a catharsis for many in Manchester and all of Britain, moving British tabloid journalist Piers Morgan to write Grande a lengthy public apology for doubting her courage.

“By coming back to Manchester so soon, shrugging off the latest attack in London, standing on that stage and performing with such raw emotion and power, you showed more guts, resilience, strength of character and “Blitz spirit” than every sniveling, pathetic ISIS coward put together,” Morgan wrote in the Daily Mail.

Grande was herself a survivor of the May 22 bombing, still inside Manchester Arena when an explosion ripped through the lobby area following her encore. Morgan had criticized the apparently shaken singer for quickly returning home to Florida instead of staying to console victims.

But within days Grande and her team began organizing the benefit, which overcame considerable logistical and security obstacles to take place less than two weeks later. Days before the show, she turned up unannounced at a Manchester-area hospital to visit young girls wounded in the attack.

Grande carried on with Sunday’s show despite the attack in London the night before in which seven people were killed. She enlisted fellow entertainers such as Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Coldplay and Oasis frontman and Manchester native Liam Gallagher.

Daily Telegraph columnist Victoria Lambert similarly apologized for dismissing Grande, who first gained fame on the Nickelodeon teen comedy “Victorious,” as a lightweight pop star not fit to be a role model for her daughter.

“Because far from being a cliched child star, Grande has shown herself to be a perfect role model for our daughters after all,” Lambert wrote.
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The woman who accused comedian Bill Cosby of sexually assaulting her in 2004 told her story for the first time publicly Tuesday at the entertainer’s trial.

Andrea Constand, a former Temple University basketball official, told the suburban Philadelphia courtroom Tuesday that she visited the comic’s Philadelphia home for career advice. She told how Cosby allegedly gave her three blue pills, telling her they were to reduce stress.

“They’re your friends. They’ll take the edge off,” she said Cosby told her.

Constand said the pills instead left her paralyzed and unable to fend off Cosby’s sexual advances.

“In my head, I was trying to get my hands to move or my legs to move, but I was frozen. I wasn’t able to fight in any way. I wanted it to stop,” she said.

She alleged that Cosby put his hands under her shirt and on her genitals.

Cosby whispered to his lawyers and shook his head during her testimony.

His defense lawyers asked Constand why she continued to telephone Cosby after the alleged assault and attended one of his comedy shows.

Constand said it was just business concerning the university basketball team. But the defense emphasized inconsistencies between Constand’s testimony and in accounts she gave to police a decade ago, including how she first met the actor.

The cross-examination will continue Wednesday.

The court also heard from the mother of another one of Cosby’s alleged victims, who corroborated her daughter’s testimony of being assaulted by the comedian in 1996.

More than 50 women allege that Cosby sexually assaulted them in incidents dating back to the 1960s, when he emerged as a major comedy star. Most would have happened too long ago to prosecute.

Constand’s complaint is the only one that has come to trial. Cosby has denied all the charges and is not expected to take the stand.

Cosby is known for his 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 television series for several years, but is scarcely rebroadcast anymore.
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Amal Clooney on Tuesday gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, the first children for the international human rights lawyer and her movie star spouse.

“This morning Amal and George welcomed Ella and Alexander Clooney into their lives. Ella, Alexander and Amal are all healthy, happy and doing fine,” George Clooney’s publicist Stan Rosenfield said in an email.

He added cheekily, “George is sedated and should recover in a few days.”

Amal Clooney, 39, and the 56-year-old Oscar-winning star of films like “Ocean’s Eleven” and “Three Kings” married in Italy in 2014, making them one of the world’s biggest celebrity couples.

Rosenfield did not say where the twins were born but the couple appear to have been spending much of their time recently in England, where they have one of several homes.

The couple adopted a low profile during the pregnancy, keeping the news private for months before it was confirmed in February by the actor’s close friend, Matt Damon.

Amal Clooney largely continued her work as a human rights lawyer, addressing the United Nations in March and urging the international community to investigate crimes committed by Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

Nevertheless, celebrity news media speculated for months about the sex of the twins, where they would be born and in which country they will be raised.

On Tuesday, social media lit up with congratulatory messages and “Ella and Alexander” was among the top trending topics on Twitter in the United States.

Many contributors praised the choice of names as a refreshingly normal departure from a trend that has seen celebrity babies given names like Apple, Audio, Bronx, North West and Rocket.

“Good lord, the Clooneys have given their twins lovely ordinary names. Shocking. And they call themselves celebrities…,” wrote British journalist Nicola Jane Swinney on Twitter.

Comedian Ellen DeGeneres posted a Twitter message saying, “Congratulations, George and Amal, or as I’m now calling you, Ocean’s Four.”

Congratulations also came from actress Mia Farrow and U.S. journalist Katie Couric.

People magazine reported on Tuesday that former U.S. President Barack Obama paid a long, private visit with the Clooneys at their home in the countryside west of London on May 27.

George Clooney canceled a visit to Armenia for a humanitarian event this past weekend, saying in a message to organizers that “if I came there and my wife had twins while I was there, I could never come home.”
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Lined up against shopkeepers hawking everything from fresh parsley to colorful socks, Marrakech’s historic booksellers face an uncertain future as authorities plan an urban makeover in one of Morocco’s tourist hubs.

In the shadow of the 12th century Al Koutoubia mosque — also known as the Mosque of Booksellers — the bustling shops once specialized in handwritten manuscripts and religious texts. It is a business that has been passed down from generation to generation.

Only 26 booksellers remain in Bab Doukkala on the edge of the old city. Their stocks include Arabic translations of Karl Marx and modern Moroccan cookbooks, as well as centuries-old manuscripts of Islamic law, some of which sell for thousands of dollars.

Now they face eviction by authorities who plan to move them for the sixth time in 40 years as part of a city planning project for Marrakech, a former imperial capital and home to some of Morocco’s finest mosques, palaces and gardens.

Many of the vendors believe they belong in Jamaa El Fna square inside the old historic medina. They had plied their trade in the popular tourist district for years before being kicked out to make way for food stalls decades ago.

“The authorities want to maintain an image of Marrakech that … attracts tourists, like snake charmers and belly dancers,” said Bassam Aqdad, who inherited his shop from his father.

“Jamaa El Fna has worldwide recognition as a UNESCO world heritage site. … We are just as much a part of the square as everything else that remains there.”

The uprooted booksellers were forced to settle in Bab Doukkala square on the outskirts of the old town about 10 years ago. The line of shops resembles a shantytown, with books packed among the dusty plastic sheeting and rusty metal frames.

Authorities are planning to tear down the Bab Doukkala souk and replace it with a public garden, according to locals.

“This is ‘hogra’,” said Fettah Belkharchi, 66, using a colloquial term to describe the abuse of power and injustices.

The word is commonly used in anti-government protests.

Interior ministry officials and local Marrakech authorities did not respond to calls seeking comment.

Trying to form a united front, Omar Zouita, who was among the traders uprooted from Jamaa El Fna, established the “Association of Awareness.” But after two more similar bodies were established, some believe attempts are being made to split their ranks.

“They don’t want anyone defending booksellers here,” Aqdad said.

Their trade has also suffered because of global trends. The popularity of the internet and digital versions of books have led to a steady decline in demand for printed materials.

The industry has also had to contend with the low literacy rate that has been prevalent in the country for decades. It is only recently that literacy levels have started to improve, reaching 67.1 percent, according to UNICEF.

“At the end of the day, all we have are our books,” said 36-year-old Mohammed Khayi. “When things get rough, we can pick up a book and forget everything else.”
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Sony Pictures is firing back at Dan Aykroyd after the actor criticized the director of last year’s Ghostbusters remake for spending too much money on the film.

Aykroyd said on the British chat show Sunday Brunch that director Paul Feig spent an extra $30 million to $40 million on reshoots for the film, making it “economically not feasible” for a sequel.

Sony Pictures spokeswoman Jean Guerin said the company had “a strong relationship” with Feig and “incredible respect for his work.” She said the cost of reshoots was $3 million to $4 million. Sony Pictures hasn’t said whether there will be a sequel. The company does say Ghostbusters television and family projects are in the works.

Aykroyd co-wrote and starred in the original Ghostbusters film and its 1989 sequel.
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