Actor Ben Affleck says he recently checked out of a rehabilitation program for alcohol addiction.

The actor most recently known for portraying Batman revealed the news in a Facebook post Tuesday. The actor has a history of alcoholism, having been in rehab in 2001.

“I have completed treatment for alcohol addiction; something I’ve dealt with in the past and will continue to confront,” he wrote on Facebook.

In his post, he said the action was largely motivated by his desire to be a good parent.

“I want to live life to the fullest and be the best father I can be. I want my kids to know there is no shame in getting help when you need it, and to be a source of strength for anyone out there who needs help but is afraid to take the first step,” he wrote. “I’m lucky to have the love of my family and friends, including my co-parent, Jen, who has supported me and cared for our kids as I’ve done the work I set out to do. This was the first of many steps being taken towards a positive recovery.”

Affleck separated from wife, actress Jennifer Garner, in 2015, but there has not been a formal divorce. The couple has three children.

Later this year, Affleck will appear as Batman in the movie “Justice League,” which opens November 17.
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Mitch Seavey won his third Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Tuesday, becoming the fastest and oldest champion at age 57 and helping cement his family’s position as mushing royalty.

The Seward, Alaska, musher brought his dogs off the frozen Bering Sea and onto Front Street in the Gold Rush town of Nome after crossing nearly 1,000 miles of Alaska wilderness.

He outran his son, defending champion Dallas Seavey, and lapped the oldest musher record that he set at age 53 in 2013. He previously won the race in 2013 and 2004.

Seavey also set a time record of 8 days, 3 hours, 40 minutes and 13 seconds, the Iditarod said. That shaved several hours off the record his son set last year: 8 days, 11 hours, 20 minutes and 16 seconds.

“Sweet” was the first thing Mitch Seavey said after getting off the sled at the finish line under the famed burled arch. It was broadcast live statewide.

His wife, Janine, greeted him with a hug. “Oh, my gosh, look at what you’ve just done,” she told him. “You’ve changed the sport.”

After talking to his wife, Seavey greeted each of his dogs and thanked them with a frozen snack. He later posed with his two lead dogs, Pilot and Crisp.

“They get frustrated when they go too slow, so I just let them roll, which was scary because I’ve never gone that fast, that far ever, but that’s what they wanted to do,” he said.

Seavey said the dogs know only one thing — 9 to 10 mph.

“They hit their peak, they hit their speed, and that’s what they do,” Seavey said at the finish line. “They trusted me to stop them when they needed to stop and feed them, and I did that, and they gave me all they could.”

Seavey picked up $75,000 and the keys to a new pickup truck for winning the world’s most famous sled dog race.

The Seaveys have now won the last six races. Dallas Seavey won four, and his father finished second the last two years. The two are close but competitive.

“He and I have such a great relationship,” Mitch Seavey said. “There’s no malice, we just love running sled dogs. No question.”

Dallas Seavey finished in second place, five minutes ahead of France native Nicolas Petit.

The family’s ties to the race go back to the first Iditarod, held in 1973, when Mitch Seavey’s dad, Dan, mushed in the event. The younger Seavey, who is 30, had wins in 2012 and from 2014 to 2016.

The race started March 6 in Fairbanks, with 71 teams. Five mushers scratched.

Fans lined the finish, clapping and cheering on Seavey. As his team finished the last few blocks of the race, Seavey yelled, “Good boys! Hep!”

Just before reaching the chute, he got off his sled and ran with the dogs a bit.

Four dogs associated with the race have died this year, including a 4-year-old male named Flash who collapsed on the trail early Tuesday when his musher, Katherine Keith, was about 10 miles outside the checkpoint in Koyuk.
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Niagara Falls, whose most famous thrill-seekers have gone over the brink in barrels, wants to be the place the rest of us go for outdoor adventure, too.

 

A new marketing effort launched Tuesday rebrands the American shore of the falls as a natural playground to be explored on foot, bike, boat or helicopter.

 

U.S. tourism officials, ever in competition with their counterparts on the heavily developed Canadian side of the binational attraction, say their new focus embraces the American side’s less commercial feel in a way they hope will attract more visitors for longer stays.

 

“What people are wanting to have on a getaway or a vacation is a time of experience and not just to come and witness or see and hear, but actually experience and touch and feel and do,” said John Percy, president and chief executive of Niagara Tourism & Convention Corp., which has been renamed Destination Niagara USA.

 

“Niagara Falls is the embodiment of America’s adventurous spirit,” he said.

 

The refocusing, coming just in time for the busy season, followed interviews, focus groups and visitor surveys that found that those who visit and live in the region most value its scenic, historical and natural attributes and are drawn to outdoor adventure, officials said.

 

The findings align with support in recent years for the ongoing removal of a highway that was built along the Niagara River, which will increase access to the water’s edge, as well as strong opposition to a proposal to build a lodge on rustic Goat Island inside Niagara Falls State Park. Opponents of the lodge cite renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted’s declaration more than 100 years ago that the area should be off-limits to developers.

 

It’s a marked contrast to Niagara Falls, Ontario, where neon-lit museums, rides and restaurants offer a carnival-like atmosphere at the water’s edge.

 

Niagara Falls State Park sees about 8 million visitors every year from all over the world, a number that has been steadily rising, Percy said, along with hotel visits and dollars spent.
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Orson Welles’ last film finally has a home.

 

Netflix has acquired the global rights to Welles’ “The Other Side of the Wind” and will finance its completion and restoration.

 

Netflix’s announcement Tuesday brings to a close the decades-long mystery surrounding one of cinema’s greatest filmmakers. Welles began shooting the film in 1970 but never completed it.

The “Citizen Kane” director died in 1985.

 

“The Other Side of the Wind” is a Hollywood satire about a filmmaker attempting a comeback. Its stars include John Huston, Dennis Hopper and Peter Bogdanovich, who has helped in its editing.

 

Producer Frank Marshall will oversee the film’s completion.

 

Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos says he grew up worshipping Welles so releasing Welles’ last film “is a point of pride” for him and for Netflix.
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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau plans to be in New York on Wednesday for a Broadway play about Newfoundlanders who opened their doors to thousands of passengers who descended on the town of Gander the day U.S. airspace was shut on 9/11.

More than 200 flights were diverted to Canada. Little-used Gander became the second busiest airport, taking in 38 flights. The 6,600 passengers arrived without warning on the town of 10,000.

Canadians took care of the stranded passengers for days. Americans say they experienced overwhelming kindness.

It’s now a musical called “Come From Away” that has won critical raves. It opened Sunday at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.

Trudeau spokeswoman Andree-Lyne Halle said Tuesday the prime minister and his wife look forward to showing New Yorkers “Canada at its best.”

“We embrace the opportunity to highlight how we are there for each other in times of need,” she said.

Flight crews quickly filled Gander’s hotels, so passengers were taken to schools, fire stations and church halls. The Canadian military flew in 5,000 cots. Stores donated blankets, coffee machines, barbecue grills. Unable to retrieve their luggage, passengers became dependent on the kindness of strangers, and it came in the shape of clothes, showers, toys, banks of phones to call home free of charge, an arena that became a giant walk-in fridge full of donated food.

Once all the planes had landed or turned back to Europe, Gander’s air traffic controllers switched to cooking meals in the building nonstop for three days.

Years later, that huge, comforting hug of Gander still warms the memories of the passengers.

 
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As France wrestles with questions of security and immigration during its presidential election campaign, a Belgian playwright is using his art as a weapon in the fight against radicalization.

Ismael Saidi, 40, has an unexpected hit with his dark comedy “Jihad”, which follows three men on their hapless journey from Brussels’ Schaerbeek district to Homs in Syria.

“I’ve written this play to say ‘That’s enough, it has to stop’,” says Saidi, a Muslim. “It’s now become more than a play, it’s become a real social issue.”

France was traumatized by violence including a truck attack that killed 86 people in Nice last July and coordinated attacks in Paris in November 2015 when 130 people died.

Saidi says writing was a way to “free himself” of the guilt he felt, having dodged the trap some of his acquaintances fell into.

He says militants recruited boys like him to fight in Afghanistan when he was a teenager living in Schaerbeek and years later, in 2014, a former classmate posted a photo on Facebook holding a rifle in Syria.

The departure of about 700 French citizens to fight for Islamic State in Syria and Iraq has also made terrorism and immigration important issues in France’s presidential race.

Centrist Emmanuel Macron, the front-runner, has proposed setting up detention centers to “re-socialize” jihadists returning from Syria and Iraq.

Far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen would expel all foreigners linked to Islamist fundamentalism, while conservative Francois Fillon has repeatedly warned of the risk of French Muslims being radicalized.

The government, which estimates 11,500 people are radicalized in France, plans to spend 15 million euros ($19 million) this year on preventing radicalization, up from around one million euros in 2014. It’s unclear if those funds will remain in place after the presidential election.

The current campaign includes websites to raise awareness of recruitment techniques.

Critics say the government has not delivered a coherent strategy to counter radicalization among France’s five-million Muslims.

But government officials say state-sponsored programs must be supplemented by private projects, such as Saidi’s play, which has drawn large crowds in its two-year tour of France and Belgium.

More than 700 secondary-school students saw it recently in the northern French city of Valenciennes.

“With plays like that, we can really make change happen,” said 16-year-old Sarah Moussaddak.

Muriel Domenach, who leads government efforts to prevent radicalization, supports the initiative.

“Making Daesh [Islamic State] uncool is very important,” she said.

Some experts argue former jihadists are the only ones who can reach people at risk.

“They have lived it from the inside, they know the invisible threads of jihadi utopia,” says French anthropologist Dounia Bouzar, who until last year helped the government train local authorities to fight radicalization.

David Vallat, who appears in one government online counter-radicalization campaign, was jailed for five years in the 1990s for joining networks linked to Algeria’s Armed Islamic Group.

He had previously traveled to Bosnia and Afghanistan. Now, the 45-year-old project manager from Lyon wants to spend all his time telling his story. But Vallat says that without public funding, he cannot make his voice heard.

French authorities are reluctant to work closely with former jihadists, wary about whether their reform is sincere.

Last year, Bouzar tried to persuade the government to work with Farid Benyettou, the infamous ex-mentor of the Kouachi brothers, who attacked satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, killing 12 people. Her proposal was rejected.

“The government is too timid,” says Bouzar. “Even the best imam, the best psychologist or the best teacher cannot instill doubts about something he hasn’t lived.”
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 Dave Franco and former “Mad Men” star Alison Brie have gotten married.

Franco’s publicist has confirmed a People magazine report that the pair wed. No details were released on where or when the ceremony took place.

 

Franco and Brie announced their engagement in August 2015, after three years of dating.

 

The 31-year-old Franco is best known for his roles in the “Neighbors” and “21 Jump Street” films.

 

Brie is 34 and starred as Trudy Campbell on “Mad Men.” She also played Annie Edison on “Community.”

 

Franco and Brie appear together in “The Disaster Artist,” which stars and is directed by Franco’s older brother, James. It premiered over the weekend at the South by Southwest (SXSW) film festival in Texas.
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Walt Disney has shelved the release of its new movie “Beauty and the Beast” in mainly Muslim Malaysia, even though film censors said Tuesday it had been approved with a minor cut involving a “gay moment.”

The country’s two main cinema chains said the movie, due for to begin screening Thursday, has been postponed indefinitely. No reason was given.  

Film Censorship Board chairman Abdul Halim Abdul Hamid said he did not know why the film was postponed as was been approved by the board after a minor gay scene was axed. He said scenes promoting homosexuality were forbidden and that the film was given a P13 rating, which requires parental guidance for children under 13 years of age.

“We have approved it but there is a minor cut involving a gay moment. It is only one short scene but it is inappropriate because many children will be watching this movie,” Abdul Halim told The Associated Press.   

He said there was no appeal from Disney about the decision to cut the gay scene.

Disney officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Star English-language newspaper cited the Disney company as saying the movie was postponed for an “internal review.”

The film’s characters include manservant LeFou, who plays the sidekick to the story’s villain Gaston, and, according to director Bill Condon, “is confused about his sexuality.” Condon has described a brief scene as a “gay moment.”

Russia last week approved the movie but banned children under 16 from watching it.

Malaysia’s censors in 2010 loosened decades of restrictions on sexual and religious content in movies, but still kept a tight leash on tiny bikinis, kisses and passionate hugs. The new rules allowed depiction of gay characters, but only if they show repentance or are portrayed in a negative light. Sodomy, even if consensual, is punishable by up to 20 years in prison and whipping in Malaysia.
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Ed Sheeran will guest star in the upcoming season of “Game of Thrones.”

The show’s producers made the announcement Sunday night during a panel discussion at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Texas.

 

Producer David Benioff told the audience that they’ve been trying to get the 26-year-old British singer a spot on the show for years to surprise Sheeran fan Maisie Williams, who plays Arya Stark on the HBO fantasy drama.

 

The seventh season of “Game of Thrones” premieres on HBO July 16.
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Kim Kardashian West is opening up about being held at gunpoint during a jewelry heist in Paris last year.

 

In a preview of next week’s “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” Kardashian West recalls seeing the gun “as clear as day.” Kardashian West emotionally describes the episode to her sisters in the clip. She says she thought there was “no way out” of the situation.

Kardashian West wasn’t physically harmed during the October incident. Ten suspects have been charged in connection with the case.

 

The 13th season of the Kardashians’ E! reality show premiered Sunday night.

 
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The trendsetting South by Southwest music festival is all about the next big thing, but the heated politics of the moment is stealing the show.

Tensions over immigration have put a heavy air over the typically breezy weeklong music bash that begins Monday and includes headliners The Avett Brothers, Weezer and the Wu-Tang Clang dropping into Austin, along with roughly 2,000 other acts from around the world.

It’s more than just promises of bands using SXSW as a stage for politically-charged performances in the wake of President Donald Trump’s executive orders on immigration: The festival has come under fire itself for warning international artists that bad behavior could result in it making a call to U.S. immigration agents.

Unrelated, but still stoking concerns, was the Italian band Soviet Soviet posting on Facebook on Friday that it was denied entry into the U.S. Soviet Soviet claimed U.S. customs officials in Seattle said the band members needed work visas, but the band says it didn’t believe work visas were required for a promotional and unpaid tour.

Trump’s revised travel ban blocks new visas for people from six predominantly Muslim countries including Somalia, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya and Yemen. It also temporarily shuts down the U.S. refugee program. Unlike the original order, the new one says current visa holders won’t be affected, and it removes language that would give priority to religious minorities.

Matthew Covey, a New York-based immigration attorney who helps international performers obtain visas to enter the U.S., said the travel ban has unsettled artists who are not even from the impacted countries.

“Everybody is worried now,” Covey said “We’re getting calls from Danish jazz musicians saying, `Am I going to be OK?’ Yeah, probably. You’re a Danish jazz musician. But everybody is on edge.”

Covey is helping put on a SXSW showcase of artists exclusively from the list of banned countries in response to Trump’s order, although none of the performers currently live in those nations.

SXSW organizers had quickly come out against Trump’s travel ban, but later found themselves on the defensive over a contract provision warning that “SXSW will notify the appropriate U.S. immigration authorities” if a performer acts in ways that “adversely affect the viability of their official SXSW showcase.”

The language set off a storm of criticism and at least one performer announced plans to cancel. Organizers said the clause was a safeguard in the event of an artist doing something egregious — such as flouting rules about pyrotechnics or starting a brawl — but pledged to remove it from future contracts.

Zane Lowe, who runs Apple’s Beats 1 Radio and will be a keynote speaker at the festival, said he has taken more notice lately of music reflecting the times. 

“I don’t believe that we’re in an era of a movement,” Lowe said. “But I believe that we’re in an era where, more than it has been in recent times, what’s going on in and around the music is going to have a very direct impact on what’s made.”
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Joni Sledge, who with her sisters recorded the enduring dance anthem We Are Family, has died, the band’s representative said Saturday.

She was 60.

 

Sledge was found dead in her home by a friend in Phoenix, Arizona, Friday, the band’s publicist, Biff Warren, said. A cause of death has not been determined. He said she had not been ill.

 

“On yesterday, numbness fell upon our family. We welcome your prayers as we weep the loss of our sister, mother, aunt, niece and cousin,” read a family statement.

Sister Sledge

 

Sledge and her sisters Debbie, Kim and Kathy formed the Sister Sledge in 1971 in Philadelphia, their hometown, but struggled for years before success came.

 

“The four of us had been in the music business for eight years and we were frustrated. We were saying: ‘Well, maybe we should go to college and just become lawyers or something other than music, because it really is tough,”’ Joni told The Guardian in an interview last year.

 

But then they met Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers of the hit group Chic, and their breakout soon came.The pair wrote and produced their album We Are Family, and soon the women had their first major hit with disco jam The Greatest Dancer, which became a top 10 hit in May 1979. It would sampled years later for Will Smith’s hit Getting Jiggy Wit It.

Biggest hit

 

But their biggest hit would come a month later with the title track, an infectious dance anthem that celebrated their familial connection with the refrain, “We are family, I got all my sisters with me.” While it celebrated their sisterhood, the 1979 hit so also became an anthem for female empowerment and unity. It would become their signature hit, and was nominated for a Grammy. Both the song and album sold more than 1 million copies.

 

The women also had a hit with a cover of the Mary Wells song My Guy in 1982, but would never duplicate the success they had in the 1970s. Still, Sister Sledge continued; while sister Kathy left the group for a solo career, the trio of sisters continued to perform and record, including a performance for Pope Francis in 2015.

 

Warren said they last performed together in concert in October.

 

Joni Sledge is survived by an adult son, her sisters and other relatives.
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You’ve heard of Hollywood, Bollywood and Nollywood, but have you heard of Eastleighwood? Eastleigh is a primarily Somali district of Nairobi known to some as little Mogadishu. A group of young people there has been making films to counter stereotypes and radicalization. Rael Ombuor has the story for VOA from Nairobi.
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A new visitors’ center on the Eastern Shore explores the history of one of Maryland’s most famous figures, the Underground Railroad conductor, abolitionist and Civil War spy Harriet Tubman.

 

The $21 million Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center is in Church Creek, about a two-hour drive from Baltimore. It opens Saturday to the public, four years after its groundbreaking.

Free events scheduled for the grand opening weekend include children’s activities, presentations by a Tubman re-enactor, tours of a legacy garden that will discuss escape methods used by Tubman, and talks by rangers and others.

 

A ribbon-cutting was held at the site on Friday, designated by the U.S. Congress in 1990 as Harriet Tubman Day. Tubman died on March 10, 1913, at a home for the elderly she founded in Auburn, New York.

 

Tubman’s great-great-niece, Valerie Manokey, attended the ribbon-cutting and said she feels “pride, honor, love and resolution,” now that the center is opening.

 

“We made it,” said Manokey, who is 81 and lives in nearby Cambridge, Maryland. “And I am truly proud to say: ‘Yes, I am the niece of Harriet Tubman.”

 

History

 

Visitors will see a short video introduction to Tubman’s life and her formative years in Maryland. A permanent exhibit focuses on Tubman and the Underground Railroad resistance movement in Maryland, including Tubman’s brutal treatment at the hands of slave owners, her escape to freedom, and her later rescues of hundreds of slaves.

The center consists of four connected buildings depicting Tubman in sculpture during different stages of life, from her youth to her work on the Underground Railroad. Videos and panel illustrations on the walls tell of her strong sense of family, community and religious faith. Her roles in the Civil War as a nurse, scout and spy are represented. The center also has a shop and a research library.

 

Looking at Tubman

 

The center includes a new bronze bust of a youthful Tubman, who was born as a slave named Araminta Ross in 1822 in Madison, about 10 miles away. The bust is displayed on a pedestal so that the top of the head reaches her height – just 5 feet tall. The base includes wood from a former Maryland landmark – the 460-year-old Wye Oak – and a cedar tree.

The bust was made by Eastern Shore artist Brendan Thorpe O’Neill, who studied photos of Tubman in her 60s, then sought to show how she would have appeared when younger. Thorpe sculpted another bust of Tubman in 2014 for display at Government House, the governor’s mansion in Annapolis.

 

What She Saw

The visitor center is on a 17-acre site next to the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge . It includes sweeping views of the marshy refuge, and paths through a landscape that has changed little since Tubman’s time in the early to mid-1800s. It preserves routes she likely would have navigated as an adult leading other slaves to freedom.

 

Journeys, Old and New

 

The visitor center is a gateway to the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway, a self-guided driving tour. The route includes 125 miles of countryside and shoreline in Maryland’s Dorchester and Caroline counties. It offers 36 points of interest, including places where Tubman lived and historically significant sites related to the Underground Railroad.

 

Visiting

 

The center is managed in a partnership of the Maryland Park Service and the National Park Service, and is a sister park to the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn.

This new center includes environmentally friendly elements, such as rain barrels, vegetative roofs and bio-retention ponds. A 2,600-square-foot pavilion outside has a stone fireplace and picnic tables. It’s open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., except on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day. There is no entry fee. A park website says there are no food or drink options at the site, but visitors are welcome to pack lunch or snacks and use the water fountains.
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The sequel to all-time box office champion “Avatar” has been delayed again and will not be arriving in movie theaters as expected in 2018, director James Cameron has said.

Cameron told the Toronto Star that he was working on all four planned movie sequels simultaneously and had no firm release date for “Avatar 2.”

“Well 2018 is not happening. We haven’t announced a firm release date,” the Oscar-winning director told the newspaper in an interview published on Thursday, when asked about progress on “Avatar 2.” “What people have to understand is that this is a cadence of releases. So we’re not making ‘Avatar 2.’ We’re making ‘Avatar 2,’ 3, 4 and 5. It’s an epic undertaking.

“It took us four-and-a-half years to make one movie and now we’re making four. We’re full tilt boogie right now,” Cameron added.

The 2009 release of Twentieth Century Fox movie “Avatar,” a fantasy adventure set in the distant magical world of Pandora, smashed box office records, taking in an as yet unrivaled $2.8 billion worldwide.

The sequel was first set for a 2014 release and has been delayed at least three times since then.

Fox did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Cameron’s remarks.

Meanwhile, Disney this week gave fans a first glimpse of its Pandora theme park attraction that is due to open at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida in May.

The Pandora attraction features a Na’vi River Journey, floating mountains, luminescent plants, and an Avatar Flight of Passage ride – all inspired by the movie and its upcoming sequels, according to features on Disney-owned TV shows “Good Morning America” and “The View.”

Pandora, the World of Avatar is due to open within the park’s Animal Kingdom on May 27.
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Robert James Waller, whose best-selling, bittersweet 1992 romance novel “The Bridges of Madison County” was turned into a movie starring Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood and later into a soaring Broadway musical, has died in Texas, according to a longtime friend. He was 77.

 

Scott Cawelti, of Cedar Falls, Iowa, told The Associated Press that Waller died early Friday at his home in Fredericksburg, Texas. He had been fighting multiple myeloma, a form of cancer.

 

In “Bridges,” a literary phenomenon which Waller famously wrote in 11 days, the roving National Geographic photographer Robert Kincaid spends four days taking pictures of bridges and also romancing Francesca Johnson, a war bride from Italy married to a no-nonsense Iowa farmer. One famous line from the book reads: “The old dreams were good dreams; they didn’t work out but I’m glad I had them.”

 

Waller’s novel reached No. 1 on The New York Times best-seller list and stayed on it for over three years, longer than any work of fiction since “The Robe,” a novel about Jesus’ crucifixion published in the early 1950s. The Eastwood-directed 1995 movie grossed $182 million worldwide.

 

Many critics made fun of “Bridges,” calling it sappy and cliche-ridden. The Independent newspaper said of the central romantic pair “it is hard to believe in, or to like, either of them.” (Publishers Weekly was more charitable, calling the book, “quietly powerful and thoroughly credible.”)

 

The New York Times was dismissive: “Waller depicts their mating dance in plodding detail, but he fails to develop them as believable characters,” reviewer Eils Lotozo wrote. “Instead, we get a lot of quasi-mystical business about the shaman-like photographer who overwhelms the shy, bookish Francesca with ‘his sheer emotional and physical power.'”

 

Readers, however, bought more than 12 million copies in 40 languages. “Bridges” turned the unknown writer into a multimillionaire and made Madison County, Iowa, an international tourist attraction.

 

“I really do have a small ego,” Waller told The New York Times in 2002. “I am open to rational discussion. If you don’t like the book and can say why, I am willing to listen. But the criticism turned to nastiness. … I was stunned.”

 

The novel prompted couples across the world to marry on Madison County’s covered bridges. Around the town of Winterset, population 4,200, tourists arrived by the busloads, buying “Bridges” T-shirts, perfume and postcards. Thousands signed in at the Chamber of Commerce office, where they could use restrooms marked “Roberts” and “Francescas.”

 

Waller told The Des Moines Register in 1992 that “Bridges” was “written” in his mind as he drove from Des Moines to Cedar Falls after photographing the covered bridges in Madison County.

 

“It’s something that’s difficult to explain,” he recounted. “As I drove home, it just came to me. I had some sort of Zen feeling, a high. When I got home, I threw my stuff on the floor and immediately started writing.”

 

The film version was greeted warmly by audiences and critics. The New York Times said that Eastwood had made “a moving, elegiac love story.” The New York Daily News said, “On that short shelf of classic movie romances ‘Seventh Heaven,’ ‘Brief Encounter,’ ‘An Affair to Remember’ you can now place ‘The Bridges of Madison County.'”

 

After the novel’s success, Waller left Iowa, where he had grown up, and moved to a ranch in Alpine, Texas, 50 miles from the nearest town. He also divorced his wife of 36 years, Georgia, with whom he had a daughter, and found a new partner in Linda Bow, who worked as a landscaper.

 

Waller grew up in Rockford, Iowa, and he was educated at the University of Northern Iowa and Indiana University, where he received his doctorate. He taught management, economics, and applied mathematics at the University of Northern Iowa from 1968 to 1991. Waller’s seven books include “Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend,” which unseated “Bridges” on the best-seller list, “Border Music,” “Puerto Vallarta Squeeze” and “A Thousand County Roads: An Epilogue to The Bridges of Madison County.”

 

The last, a sequel to his monster hit, was prompted by thousands of letters from people who wanted to know more about the characters. “Finally, I got curious and decided I’d find out – I wrote the book,” he told the AP in 2002.

 

A musical was made of “The Bridges of Madison County” in 2014 starring Kelli O’Hara and Steven Pasquale with a score by Jason Robert Brown, but it closed after just 137 performances on Broadway. A national tour kicked off in 2015.
…

Archaeologists from Egypt and Germany have found a massive eight-meter statue submerged in ground water in a Cairo slum that they say probably depicts revered Pharaoh Ramses II, who ruled Egypt more than 3,000 years ago.

The discovery, hailed by the Antiquities Ministry as one of the most important ever, was made near the ruins of Ramses II’s temple in the ancient city of Heliopolis, located in the eastern part of modern-day Cairo.

“Last Tuesday they called me to announce the big discovery of a colossus of a king, most probably Ramses II, made out of quartzite,” Antiquities Minister Khaled al-Anani told Reuters on Thursday at the site of the statue’s unveiling.

The most powerful and celebrated ruler of ancient Egypt, the pharaoh also known as Ramses the Great was the third of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt and ruled from 1279 to 1213 BCE. He led several military expeditions and expanded the Egyptian Empire to stretch from Syria in the east to Nubia in the south. His successors called him the “Great Ancestor.”

“We found the bust of the statue and the lower part of the head and now we removed the head and we found the crown and the right ear and a fragment of the right eye,” Anani said.

On Thursday, archaeologists, officials, local residents, and members of the news media looked on as a massive forklift pulled the statue’s head out of the water

The joint Egyptian-German expedition also found the upper part of a life-sized limestone statue of Pharaoh Seti II, Ramses II’s grandson, that is 80 centimeters long.

The sun temple in Heliopolis was founded by Ramses II, lending weight to the likelihood the statue is of him, archaeologists say.

It was one of the largest temples in Egypt, almost double the size of Luxor’s Karnak, but was destroyed in Greco-Roman times. Many of its obelisks were moved to Alexandria or to Europe and stones from the site were looted and used for building as Cairo developed.

Experts will now attempt to extract the remaining pieces of both statues before restoring them. If they are successful and the colossus is proven to depict Ramses II, it will be moved to the entrance of the Grand Egyptian Museum, set to open in 2018.

The discovery was made in the working class area of Matariya, among unfinished buildings and mud roads.

Dietrich Raue, head of the expedition’s German team, told Reuters that ancient Egyptians believed Heliopolis was the place where the sun god lives, meaning it was off-limits for any royal residences.

“The sun god created the world in Heliopolis, in Matariya. That’s what I always tell the people here when they say is there anything important. According to the pharaonic belief, the world was created in Matariya,” Raue said.

“That means everything had to be built here. Statues, temples, obelisks, everything. But … the king never lived in Matariya, because it was the sun god living here.”

The find could be a boon for Egypt’s tourism industry, which has suffered many setbacks since the uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011 but remains a vital source of foreign currency. The number of tourists visiting Egypt slumped to 9.8 million in 2011 from more than 14.7 million in 2010.

A bomb attack that brought down a Russian plane carrying 224 people from a Red Sea resort in October 2015 further hit arrivals, which dropped to 1.2 million in the first quarter of 2016 from 2.2 million a year earlier.
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Since January of this year, thousands of school children in India’s northeastern state of Assam have pored over an illustrated story of how two young girls from a relief camp were lured by a man who told them of the good life they could lead in a big city, home to swanky buildings and flashy cars. It sounded attractive to the poor youngsters who could only visualize a bleak life ahead.

Fortunately spotted by a policeman as they waited for the man at a railway station to head to the city, the story goes on to relate what their future could have been like when they were sold to work as poorly paid domestic employees, sex workers or laborers.

The comic in the Assamese language aims to raise awareness among children about trafficking rings that lure young girls and boys from villages into India’s booming cities with the promise of good jobs.

The most vulnerable to human traffickers are states such as Assam, where a violent ethnic conflict has displaced many families, and the country’s poorer, underdeveloped states such as West Bengal, Telengana, and Andhra Pradesh.

As child rights campaigners stress prevention as key to addressing the problem, comic books have emerged as an effective tool to empower children to protect themselves in these areas. Children being sold accounted for nearly half of the human trafficking cases in India in 2015.

“There are more colors, more expressions, its an effective means of communication, especially for children,” says Miguel Queah at Assam-based non-profit Utsah, who wrote the story and helps organize reading sessions in vulnerable and displaced communities such as relief camps, children’s homes and government schools in Assam. “Children love reading the stories, discussing among their friends, we could see that response taking place” he says.

Orders to print more comics have gone out with the initial stock of 800 copies having run out and there is a proposal to incorporate it in school curriculums.

The non-profit My Choices Foundation began reaching out to rural communities a little over a year ago with its comic book, The Light of Safe Villages to educate children about threats such as trafficking and other social problems such as child marriage.

Hannah Norling who heads communications at the My Choices Foundation is confident that the colorful books and simple stories in local languages are effectively spreading the message of how traffickers trap young children. “We are in the right place,” she said.

It is distributed to students across more than 500 Indian villages.

She points out that while it is sometimes difficult to reach out to parents, who are busy working, children are more of a captive audience and the idea was to give them an illustrated book that could serve as a complete educational tool which they could share with their parents.

“We had to leave something behind that would be a long term reminder. If something happens a year from now, a physical frame of reference for them to revert back to ‘OK now what do I do?” said Norling.

One of the stories in the comic is of a guardian girl on a mission to save others and another of a vigilant boy.

Growing awareness among children has made them more alert to threats from traffickers and some have reported to village council or others if they noticed a friend missing, according to Norling. She said that helped in the rescue of three girls in the past year who had left their village.

The comic book initiative is among several efforts to prevent trafficking in rural areas. One of them by Save the Children spreads the message in local communities through children who have been rescued.

India honored a woman on Wednesday when 21-year-old Anoyara Khatun, who was trafficked from West Bengal state, received the “Women Power” award from the president for stopping hundreds of other children from being forced into labor or married off.

Khatun was brought to Delhi when she was 12 years old and forced to work as a house maid, but managed to escape after six months. With the help of child rights advocates, she returned home and is part of a network of children’s groups in 80 villages where young people are taught about their rights.

Manab Ray at Save the Children in New Delhi points out that once trafficking has happened, there is little that can be done to help the victims, so the key is to stop it in villages. And at the heart of the effort to engage local communities are the children themselves. “Children we found are the best informers, in terms of knowing the issues, because they face it themselves, they can have the natural ability of identifying the traffickers and all,” said Ray.
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Driving through the ancient swamplands of the Big Cypress National Preserve in southern Florida made national parks traveler Mikah Meyer feel like he was in another world.

Ghostly landscape

“Because it was so early, it was super foggy,” he said. “We couldn’t see more than 20- 30 feet in front of us and it was just this ethereal, misty experience.”

“At one point we came up against a controlled burn site, so you have these tall trees that were green at the top but then underneath, everything was charred and… it was straight out of a Star Wars movie…I was just waiting for the Ewoks to appear!”

 

Mikah – who’s on a mission to visit all of the more than 400 National Park sites – had just been to Florida’s famous Everglades National Park, so it was natural for him to want to visit the neighboring preserve. “It was on the same road as I took to go to the Everglades — Highway 41. The Everglades was on the south side; the Big Cypress National Preserve on the right side.”

Western Everglades

“A far less popular park than the Everglades, Big Cypress is a lot more wild,” Mikah noted. The huge cypress swamp, most of which is in Big Cypress National Preserve, is dominated by bald cypress trees that grow in water, which create surreal scenes that are enhanced by fog and smoke.

His guide, Ozzie Gonzalez from Everglades Nature Tours, drove Mikah and his travel companion, Andy Waldron, through the ghostly environment on a swamp buggy, a vehicle that’s specially designed to navigate the area’s rough and muddy terrain. “It had these monster truck wheels that were only four-pounds pressure, and that’s basically because you’re going over so many rocks and so many holes that it’s needed to be light pressure so that the vehicle doesn’t break,” Mikah explained.

Big Cypress was actually the first national preserve in the National Park Service, established in 1974. It owes that distinction to a massive community effort. “It was both industry and conservationists, along with hunters and Native people who use this land for their own recreational purposes,” Mikah noted, “so it was a real group effort to make sure that it remained in ways that helped everybody.”

Freshwater to the sea

The primary reason the preserve was created was to protect its freshwater’s natural flow into the neighboring Everglades and Ten Thousand Islands, and help support the rich marine estuaries along Florida’s southwest coast.

“It helps protect the watershed,” Mikah said. “So the water that comes down from Lake Okeechobee, today only 25% of it flows to the Everglades as it did historically. So by having the preserve north of the Everglades, it helps protect the water that comes down into the Everglades…and is the drinking water for half of the people that live in Florida – so over 10 million people — so that’s important.”

Plentiful pythons

Protecting nearly 300,000 hectares of this vast swamp, Big Cypress National Preserve comprises a combination of tropical and temperate plant communities that are home to a diversity of wildlife. That includes the elusive Florida panther, and in more recent years, Burmese pythons, one of the largest snake species on Earth.

The invasive snakes have been turning up in and around Big Cypress National Preserve and are now known to be breeding in the preserve and spreading throughout south Florida.

Mikah said that back in the ‘70s, having exotic pets was a trend. “People would purchase pythons as little, one-foot long baby snakes, which would eventually grow to over 10 feet and you’d have to feed them a pig a week…so all these people were just taking them to the Everglades and Big Cypress and dumping them in nature.”

Now they’ve reproduced, “and have basically taken over the place to the point that some naturalists think there will come a point when they will have eaten all of the other species and at that point they’ll start to cannibalize each other,” he said.

Big Cypress National Preserve is working with other government agencies to control the growing Burmese python population and address other invasive species. On its website, the National Park Service notes that the reptiles “serve as a painful reminder of just how dangerous invasive species can be.”

Stepping back in time

About 130 kilometers west of Miami, far from the bright lights and bustle of city life, the national parks and preserved spaces in south Florida — and the wildlife they support — are also a reminder of what protection can offer… a chance for visitors from around the world to explore a special and fragile place that remains untouched by civilization.

“It was so interesting to be in south Florida because I think when we hear south Florida, we just think of nightclubs on Miami Beach,” Mikah said. “But in reality, the vast majority of the land is made up of Everglades National Park and the Big Cypress National Preserve and so it’s important to remember that these two National Park Service sites represent what Florida looked like before human interaction.

“So if you want to step back in time, this is a place you can do it.”

Mikah invites you to learn more about his travels in Florida and all across America by visiting his website, Facebook and Instagram.
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Senior citizens who move to Charlestown Retirement Community in Catonsville, Maryland, have a chance to start new careers in television. No matter what they did before retiring, they’re encouraged to participate in creating a range of programs broadcast on channel 972, a closed circuit 24-hour TV station. Faiza Elmasry has the story. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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