University of Michigan mechanical engineering students have made one of the most popular puzzle games much larger. And tougher to solve.

Seven former and current students unveiled a 1,500-pound Rubik’s Cube during a ceremony Thursday inside the G.G. Brown engineering building on the Ann Arbor campus. The massive, mostly aluminum structure is meant to be played by students and others on campus.

Four students came up with the idea three years ago and handed down the project to other students.

“It’s the largest solvable mechanical stationary Rubik’s Cube,” said Ryan Kuhn, a 22-year-old senior who helped assemble the giant puzzle this week. “It was kind of an urban myth of North Campus, this giant Rubik’s Cube that’s been going on for a while.”

 

The oversized version of the brain-teasing 3-D puzzle, which has flummoxed players since its heyday in the 1980s, is much harder to decipher than its diminutive counterpart, said Kuhn, who called it an “interactive mechanical art piece.”

The puzzle is solved when the player is able to manipulate the cube until all nine squares on each of its six sides display an individual color.

“It’s very reasonable that it could take at least an hour” to solve, said Martin Harris, who helped conceive the project in 2014 while hanging out in the College of Engineering honors office.
…

Twenty years ago on April 13, 1997, American athlete Tiger Woods made history, winning one of golf’s most prestigious tournaments, the Masters, in Augusta, Georgia. He became the youngest golfer to win – and he did it by 12 strokes, a record that still stands.

​That day, Woods not only shot a 72-hole score of 18-under-par 270, but he also shattered the Masters record of 271 that Jack Nicklaus and Raymond Floyd had shared. 

By June 1997, Woods was ranked No. 1 in the world.

Two years later, he won eight PGA tournaments, earned a record $6 million in prize money and began a winning streak that eventually tied Ben Hogan’s in 1948, the second-longest in PGA history. 

Much of his success is owed to Tiger’s close relationship to his father, Earl, who coached his prodigal son since childhood.

In June 2000, Woods won his first U.S. Open, considered the most challenging golf tournament in the world. Woods shot a record 12-under-par 272 to finish 15 strokes ahead of his nearest competitors. 

It was considered the greatest professional golf performance in history, surpassing even his 1997 Masters’ triumph and the 1862 showing by Old Tom Morris. 

In July 2000, Woods captured the British Open, and in August the PGA championship. At the age of 24, he was the youngest player ever to win all four major golf titles and just the second to win three majors in a year.

His winning streak slowed in the 2000’s around the time he married Elin Nordegren, a Swedish former model with whom he had two children.

The golfer won his 10th major, the British Open, in 2005. 

His performance fluctuated throughout the rest of the decade as he struggled with a torn ACL. His career took a further hit in 2009 in relation to a car accident outside his Florida home.

Later, several women came forward alleging they had affairs with the famous golfer. Nordegren divorced him in August 2010.

Woods’ last win took place in 2013.  

Woods planned to play throughout 2017, but a nagging back injury forced him to announce last month that he was withdrawing from the 2017 Masters. 
…

The International Olympic Committee said Thursday that it still planned to hold its annual meeting in Lima despite the devastating recent floods in Peru.

The 2024 Olympic hosting vote between Los Angeles and Paris is set for September 13, the opening day of the IOC session.

Peru’s suitability for the weeklong Olympic meetings was questioned in ongoing fallout from heavy rains and mudslides last month.

The IOC said the Peruvian government confirmed Thursday that its preparations were “going ahead as planned.”

Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said hosting the Olympic meetings would “send a vital message to the world and to Peru that we are ready to welcome the world after the emergency situation.”

Last week, the IOC and Pan American Sports Organization made a $600,000 donation to flood recovery work.
…

Russia’s lack of progress in cleaning up its doping culture and introducing a satisfactory testing regime continues to impede the country’s reinstatement to athletics, the IAAF said Thursday.

Providing its latest update on Russia’s state-sponsored doping system, the  International Association of Athletics Federations also criticized the country’s decision to make Yelena Isinbayeva the head of the country’s scandalized anti-doping agency.

“It is difficult to see how this helps to achieve the desired change in culture in Russia track and field, or how it helps to promote an open environment for Russian whistle-blowers,” Russia task force chairman Rune Andersen said in his report to the IAAF Council.

Isinbayeva repeatedly criticized the World Anti-Doping Agency, framed doping investigations as an anti-Russian plot and called for a leading whistle-blower to be banned for life.

The two-time gold medalist and world-record holder missed the Rio de Janeiro Olympics because of a ban on Russia’s athletics team that is unlikely to be lifted soon, based on the IAAF’s fresh concerns.

Tough stance stays

“There is no reason why better progress has not been made,” IAAF President Sebastian Coe said, adding that the IAAF would not soften its tough stance.

“There is testing but it is still far too limited,” Coe said. He said the Russian investigative committee was “still refusing to hand over athlete biological passport samples for independent testing from labs”; some athletes remained in “closed cities that are difficult or impossible to get to”; coaches from a tainted system were still employed; and “we have got the head coach of RUSAF [Russia’s athletics federation] effectively refusing to sign their own pledge” to clean up its culture.

The IAAF is allowing some Russians to compete internationally as neutrals while their country remained banned, with 12 athletes proving they have been adequately tested for drugs over a lengthy period by non-Russian agencies.

The athletes are still “subject to acceptance of their entries by individual meeting organizers,” such as the Diamond League series, the IAAF has said. The 14-meet circuit opens on May 5 in Doha, Qatar.
…

Every night, the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, Maryland glistens with an array of lights from the waterside restaurants and shops, creating lovely water reflections. But during the Light City festival, illuminated sculptures and colorful interactive light displays add to the beauty along the waterfront.
…

British actor Jude Law has been cast to play a young version of Hogwarts’ venerable headmaster Albus Dumbledore, a key character in the second film of J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts movie spinoff, Warner Bros. said Wednesday.

Law, 44, best known for his role as Dr. John Watson in the Sherlock Holmes action movies, will play Dumbledore decades before he became the beloved headmaster of Hogwarts, the school where Harry Potter and his friends learned to become wizards and fight dark forces in society.

Rowling, who created Dumbledore for her best-selling Harry Potter books, has said she thinks of him as a gay man who fell in love, when he was younger, with Gellert Grindelwald, who later turned out to be evil and violent.

She told reporters in New York last year that the second Fantastic Beasts movie would show Dumbledore “as a younger man and quite a troubled man — he wasn’t always the sage. … We’ll see him at that formative period of his life.”

Johnny Depp will play Grindelwald in the second movie, for which Rowling has written the screenplay, Warner Bros. said in a statement. Filming will start this summer.

The five-movie spinoff is set some 70 years before Harry Potter goes to Hogwarts and features some new and some familiar Potter characters. The story centers around Newt Scamander, a “magizoologist” with a suitcase full of strange creatures.

Several British actors were considered for the role of young Dumbledore, including Christian Bale, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jared Harris, according to Hollywood publication Variety.

“We are thrilled to have Jude Law joining the Fantastic Beasts cast, playing a character so universally adored,” said Toby Emmerich, president and chief content officer of Warner Bros. Pictures.

The first Fantastic Beasts film, released in November, made some $813 million at the global box office. The second of the movies, which is yet to be titled, is due for release in November 2018.

The eight Harry Potter movies made $7 billion at the global box office.
…

American artist Ryan Mendoza, who has moved the former house of the late civil rights icon Rosa Parks from Detroit to Berlin, says he would like to return it to the United States one day.

Parks’ refusal in 1955 to give up her bus seat in Alabama for a white passenger became a symbol of the U.S. civil rights movement. She later moved to Detroit, where the house she lived in faced demolition until her niece, Rhea McCauley, bought it.

McCauley paid $500 for the two-story dwelling and in turn handed it over to Mendoza, who painstakingly stripped it into 2,000 pieces and paid $13,000 to move it to Berlin, where he has put it back together outside his studio.

Now he wants to move the house back to the United States.

“This house really belongs in the United States,” he told Reuters. “It doesn’t belong here, but since it is here, it encourages more people to think about why it was on the demolition list.”

Mendoza would also like to involve former U.S. first lady Michelle Obama in the project.

“It would be the perfect solution if Michelle Obama became the ambassador of this project,” he said. “She has the courage and she totally convinced me when she said what was so obvious: that the White House was built by slaves.”

Former U.S. President Barack Obama is due to join German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin in May as part of celebrations to mark 500 years of Protestantism in Europe.
…

The sculptor of Wall Street’s “Charging Bull” says New York City is violating his legal rights by forcing his bronze beast to face off against the “Fearless Girl.”

Artist Arturo Di Modica said Wednesday that the new neighboring statue changes his bull into something negative.

He says the bull’s message is supposed to be “freedom in the world, peace, strength, power and love.”

His lawyers say “Fearless Girl” exploits the bull for commercial purposes. They want it moved and are hoping for an amicable solution.

Artist Kristen Visbal’s statue of a girl with her hands on her hips was placed on the traffic island on March 7.

Mayor Bill de Blasio says men who don’t like women taking up space “are exactly why we need ‘Fearless Girl.'”

 
…

Bill O’Reilly is taking a vacation from his Fox News Channel show amid sponsor defections triggered by sexual harassment allegations.

Announcing the break at the end of Tuesday’s show, O’Reilly made a point of saying it was planned and long in the works. He said he will return April 24.

Around this time of year, “I grab some vacation, because it’s spring and Easter time. Last fall, I booked a trip that should be terrific,” he said.

His vacation announcement comes as about 60 companies said they won’t advertise on his show. The exodus followed a recent report in The New York Times that five women were paid a total of $13 million to keep quiet about harassment allegations.

The amount of advertising time by paying customers on “The O’Reilly Factor” has been cut by more than half since the Times report, according to an analysis issued Tuesday by Kantar Media.

But O’Reilly, cable TV news’ most popular personality, hasn’t been abandoned by his audience. His show averaged 3.7 million viewers over five nights last week, up 12 percent from the 3.3 million he averaged the week before and up 28 percent compared to the same week in 2016.

“O’Reilly Factor” drew an average of just under 4 million viewers for the first three months of 2017, his biggest quarter ever in the show’s 20-year history.

On Tuesday, the host offered his audience some general advice.

“If you can possibly take two good trips a year, it will refresh your life. We all need R&R. Put it to good use,” O’Reilly said.
…

Musician J. Geils, founder of the J. Geils Band, known for such peppy early ’80s pop hits as “Love Stinks,” “Freeze Frame” and “Centerfold,” has died in his Massachusetts home at age 71.

Groton police said officers responded to Geils’ home about 4 p.m. Tuesday for a well-being check and found him unresponsive. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

“A preliminary investigation indicates that Geils died of natural causes,” police said in a statement.

The J. Geils Band was founded in 1967 in Worcester, Massachusetts, while Geils, whose full name was John Warren Geils Jr., was studying at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The band, whose music bridged the gap between disco and new wave, released 11 studio albums before breaking up in 1985. They reunited off and on over the years.

The band had several Top 40 singles in the early 1970s, including a cover song “Lookin’ for a Love” by the family group the Valentinos and “Give It to Me.”

Their biggest hits included “Must of Got Lost,” which reached No. 12 on Billboard’s Top 100 in 1975, and “Love Stinks,” a rant against unrequited love, the title song on their 1980 album. Their song “Centerfold,” from the album “Freeze Frame” was released in 1981 and eventually charted at No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in February 1982. It stayed there for six weeks and was featured on MTV.

When news of Geils’ death broke, fans turned to social media to offer condolences and to reminisce about the band’s songs and concerts.
…

It’s been years since Isabell Meggett Lucas has been inside the tiny house she was born in, a former slave cabin where her ancestors sought refuge from the hot South Carolina sun.

 

But the 86-year-old woman never envisioned that when she finally returned, the wooden two-room house would be viewed by millions of people inside the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture as an example of what home life was like for slaves in the South.

 

Visiting the new museum, open for a little over six months now — gave Lucas and her family, a chance to share with museum curators a first-hand glimpse of how descendants of African slaves lived in the post-Civil War and Jim Crow South, their joys and pains and how they survived a hardscrabble life without electricity or other modern comforts.

 

“It’s my home. We all lived there together and we were happy,” said Lucas, speaking softly as she stood outside the weatherboard cabin used during slavery at Point of Pines Plantation on Edisto Island, South Carolina.

 

Smithsonian officials scoured the countryside looking for representations of slave cabins for years before choosing the Meggett family cabin on the coast of South Carolina, curator Nancy Bercaw said.

 

Lucas, her sister-in-law Emily Meggett and their family viewed the cabin Monday and Tuesday, where it was rebuilt as part of the “Slavery and Freedom” exhibition in the museum almost exactly as it was when the last occupant lived there in 1981. It is believed to be one of the oldest preserved slave cabins in the United States, and although the exact age of the cabin is not known, it sat on the Point of Pines Plantation from 1851 until it was moved plank by plank to the museum.

 

But Lucas, who lived there from birth until age 19, remembered something about the cabin that isn’t in the exhibit.

 

“It had a big long porch on the outside,” she said. “My momma would sit on that porch. The cool wind would be getting ready to blow off the rivers and such. The wind would blow and we’d sit on the porch … when we would get tired, everyone would lay on that porch under blankets and quilts and go to sleep.”

 

That’s the importance of having access to the people who lived in the house, because the porch was gone by the time the Smithsonian officials first saw the cabin, Bercaw said. People often think of history to be just about objects and things, when there’s so much more they can learn, she said.

 

“They can give us such insight to what life was like on Edisto Island,” Bercaw said. “Objects hold meaning within them, and as far as we’re concerned, that meaning comes from the family” that lived there.

 

The museum is still collecting information about the cabin, including the oral history of the Meggett family, recorded during their trip to Washington.

 

For example, the 84-year-old Meggett said she remembered coming over before she married Lucas’s brother, and remembered Sunday afternoon games of hopscotch, jump rope and baseball in the nearby grass, where a base would be an old brick, and the children could run free through the grass and fields.

 

But slowly, she said, people moved away and the cabin eventually was abandoned. Meggett said she would occasionally visit, however, and her last visit was only a month or two before they moved the cabin out of South Carolina.

“There were five deer standing up there in the cabin,” she said. “When they saw us, they jumped and ran. We stopped and watched them, and then we went on down to the landing and came back. Then I heard all of a sudden they were going to move the cabin, and when I got back, it was already gone.”

 

People should know how they had to live in the past, Lucas said. “We had to work so hard,” she said. “I hated it. I hated all farmwork, but I didn’t have a choice.”

 

But there were good times as well, and wonderful food, she said.

“We ate grits and rice and cornbread, biscuits. When I got big enough I had to cook … one thing I learned was how to fix biscuits. We had a fireplace. You see the fireplace here, they would build a fire in the fireplace and they would cook biscuits,” Lucas said.

 

The matriarch said she tries to tell her younger relatives about what life was like back then, to share their family’s history. Having the cabin in the museum will help people learn about what life was like in the past, she said.

“People can look at that house and the pictures around it and know that everything didn’t come easy back then,” she said.
…

Last year, Sheryl Crow started a petition on Change.org to shorten the U.S. presidential election cycle. The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter said she was exhausted by the mudslinging and divisive language that had dominated the discussion about the candidates.

 

“I felt like it was becoming so hateful that I had to watch to make sure my kids didn’t pick up the remote and turn the TV on,” she said during a recent interview at her home in Nashville.

 

Crow said what upset her was how technology and social media had changed the conversation.

 

“Now we have this forum for haters to come out and say the worst thing you could possibly say to someone without having the experience of the reaction,” she said. “We’ve learned to be a society without empathy and without compassion.”

 

The ways people connect, or fail to connect, became a central theme on her upcoming album, “Be Myself,” to be released on April 21, which brings Crow back to her early roots as a rocker after brief stints exploring Country music and soul music on her last two records.

 

“The whole album is very informed by the atmosphere, which is very chaotic, very vitriolic, a lot of fear that was really in the ether while we were making this record,” she said.

 

Crow listened to her early records, including her debut, “Tuesday Night Music Club,” and “The Globe Sessions,” and teamed up with Jeffrey Trott, her longtime songwriting partner and a multi-instrumentalist. She brought in Tchad Blake, a Grammy-winning engineer who worked with her in the late ’90s.

 

“We wanted to make a really catchy record, but one that had some edge, some grit, in the same way that some of those early recordings had,” Trott said.

 

Crow, who has often peppered her lyrics with political references, said the album helped her after Donald Trump won the presidential election.

 

“I started losing faith and not only for our country, but for the people that voted for him,” Crow said.

 

As she sings on her first single, “Halfway There,” Crow asks for cooperation and compromise as a solution to the discord.

 

“You may not be an environmentalist and I might be, but at the end of the day, don’t we all want the same thing for our kids?” she said. “We want a healthy future that is secure. And we have to figure out a way to communicate with reason and a modicum of decorum at least.”

 

As a mother of two children, ages 6 and 9, she favors an unplugged life as reflected in “Roller Skate,” a nostalgic, toe-tapping song about ditching the phone for a good time.

 

“At the end of the day, you’re missing out on life experiences if you’re constantly checking in with anybody that’s not in the room,” Crow said.
…

China, Japan and South Korea may have their differences, but they mostly see eye-to-eye on cherry blossoms.

In all three north Asian countries, people flock to parks, gardens and temples to enjoy the beauty of the pinkish-white petals, often in the lingering chill of early spring.

The shared natural heritage has been a minor source of conflict: Japan is the most well-known for cherry blossoms, but researchers in South Korea and China have argued that their country is the birthplace of the cherry tree.

The horticultural disagreement seems far removed from the “oohs” and “ahs” of the admiring crowds, busy taking selfies and photographs.

In a series of triptychs, Associated Press photographers in Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo capture the ways people in each country interact with the blossoms. Each set of images focuses on a theme: architecture, children, couples, picnics and others. The combined photos are notable as much for their similarities as their differences.

PHOTOS: Cherry Blossoms from North Asia
…

Silence and stillness settled over the deep, sunbaked gorge as a pair of photographers sat on a cliff, waiting. 

Then the rumbling started. As it grew louder, they scrambled into position.

Within seconds, a thunderous roar reverberated from the steep, narrow canyon as an F-18 fighter jet streaked through it, passing beneath their feet. It came so close they could see the pilots’ expressions.

This deafening show that was over in a flash is a fairly common sight at Death Valley National Park, 260 miles (415 kilometers) east of Los Angeles, where U.S. and foreign militaries train pilots and test jets in the gorge nicknamed Star Wars Canyon.

Photographers — some capturing images for work, others for fun —  along with aviation enthusiasts and others have been traipsing to the remote 4,688-square-mile (12,142-square-kilometer) park in growing numbers to see the jets soaring below the rim of what’s officially called Rainbow Canyon, near the park’s western entrance.

It earned its nickname because its mineral-rich soil and rocky walls in shades of red, gray and pink draw to mind a landscape in a galaxy far, far away — Tatooine, the home planet of Star Wars character Luke Skywalker.

The unusually close-up view of military planes zooming through the craggy gorge has become so popular the National Park Service is considering making it an attraction, with informational signs about the training that dates back to World War II.

Park Service officials recently discussed erecting signs and possibly paving a spot for cars, park spokeswoman Abby Wines said.

Wines understands the rush people get from seeing the jets up close. Once she was doing technical canyoneering, hanging from a rope on a 180-foot vertical, when a jet roared over her head but below the canyon rim.

“It’s the loudest thing I have ever heard in my life,” she said. “It was a scary experience since I was holding onto the rope and not anything else.” She also felt a sense of awe.

But on days when one jet passes after another, the noise gets to her.

Elsewhere in the park, the jets also have made it tough when performing the living history show at Scotty’s Castle, a Spanish mission-style villa reflecting early California architecture. The villa recently closed until further notice because of flood damage. But when it was open, it was “disruptive to act like it is 1939 while two military jets are circling, pretending to be in a dogfight above your head,” Wines said.

On a February day, planes careened through Star Wars Canyon 18 times. One pilot performed barrel rolls over the pass.

Jets zip through the gorge at 200 to 300 mph (322 to 483 kph) and can fly as low as 200 feet from the canyon floor. But the canyon’s walls are so steep, the aircraft are still several hundred feet below the rim.

Training at the canyon doesn’t happen every day, so the photographers who make the trek to see them sometimes sit in folding chairs, waiting in the heat, and spy no jets at all.

Jason Watson, who works in information technology at Stanford University’s law school and does freelance photography, recently made his seventh trip to the gorge.

He’s seen as many as 30 photographers spread out across the mile-long rim at different vantage points.

“You can meet anyone from anywhere in the world there,” Watson said.

The photographers develop a comraderie as they share in the thrill of standing above the speedy jets.

The aviators interact with them too, giving a thumbs-up or even flashing a “Hi Mom” sign as they whiz by.

“They know the photographers are there,” Watson said. “They’re aware of the following.”
…

“At the actual breakup of the Beatles, it was painful,” Paul McCartney said during a 1990 television interview. “We likened it to a divorce.”

Twenty years earlier on April 10, McCartney signaled the end of the Fab Four during his unveiling of his solo album “McCartney.”

On April 9, McCartney released a Q&A package to the British press in which he explained his reasons for making his solo album. Compiled with the help of Apple executives, the self-interview also contained questions McCartney imagined he would be asked regarding the possibility of the Beatles splitting up.

While stopping short of saying that the band was finished, McCartney stated that he did not know whether his “break with the Beatles” would be temporary or permanent.

It didn’t quite feel real, in part, because of the way McCartney phrased it — and also, the Beatles’ final album “Let It Be” was yet to be released.

From the group’s first studio contract in 1962, it was clear that John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr were something special.

The Ed Sullivan Show

In February 1964, the group made their first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” during their first American tour. It took no time at all for “Beatlemania” to overtake America.

As Billboard Magazine put it in its 2016 year end issue, under the section called “Greatest of All Time:”  

“It’s hard to convey the scope of The Beatles’ achievements in a mere paragraph or two.

They synthesized all that was good about early rock n’ roll, and changed it into something original and even more exciting. They established the prototype for the self-contained rock group that wrote and performed its own material.

As composers, their craft and melodic inventiveness were second to none, and key to the evolution of rock from its blues/R&B-based forms into a style that was far more eclectic, but equally visceral.”

During a 1971 interview on The Dick Cavett Show, John Lennon addressed the non-stop controversy that Yoko Ono, John’s partner and wife, was responsible for the group’s demise.

“She didn’t split the Beatles because how could…one woman? The Beatles were drifting apart on their own.”

Business disagreements had much to do with the split, which led to an awkward legal suit filed by Paul dissolving the group’s business partnership.

And McCartney himself has said there were ill feelings on all sides.

In the May 14, 1970 issue of Rolling Stone, John Lennon lashed out.

“He ((McCartney)) can’t have his own way, so he’s causing chaos,” John said. “I put out four albums last year, and I didn’t say a f***ing word about quitting.”

All of the Beatles had begun working on their solo careers before the official split.

McCartney went on to form the wildly successful band “Wings;” Lennon moved to New York City with Yoko, had a son, and recorded his one collaboration with his wife, “Double Fantasy;” Harrison also made recordings as did Beatles drummer Ringo Starr.

In December 1980, Lennon was shot and killed outside his New York City apartment. He was 40 years old.

Lung cancer killed 58-year-old Harrison in 2001.
…

The biggest U.S. news story of 2016 — the tumultuous presidential campaign — yielded a Pulitzer Prize on Monday for the Washington Post reporter who not only raised doubts about Donald Trump’s charitable giving but also revealed that the candidate had been recorded crudely bragging about grabbing women.

 

David A. Fahrenthold won the prize for national reporting, with the judges citing stories that examined Trump’s charitable foundation and called into question whether the real estate magnate was as generous as he claimed.

 

Fahrenthold’s submission also included his story about Trump’s raunchy behind-the-scenes comments during a 2005 taping of “Access Hollywood.” His talk about groping women’s genitals rocked the White House race and prompted a rare apology from the then-candidate.

 

In another election-related prize, Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal won the Pulitzer for commentary for columns that “connected readers to the shared virtues of Americans during one of the nation’s most divisive political campaigns.”

 

The judges said Fahrenthold’s reporting “created a model for transparent — journalism,” a model he built partly by using Twitter to publicize his efforts and let Trump see what he was doing. The president “can expect to see more of me on Twitter,” said Fahrenthold, now part of a team looking at Trump businesses.

 

American journalism’s most distinguished prizes also recognized work that shed light on international financial intrigue and held local officials accountable.

 

The New York Daily News and ProPublica won the Pulitzer in public service for uncovering how authorities used an obscure law, originally enacted to crack down on prostitution in Times Square in the 1970s, to evict hundreds of people, mostly poor minorities, from their homes.

 

“Thanks to this investigation, New York now sees how an extremely muscular law, combined with aggressive policing, combined with a lack of counsel, combined with lax judges produced damaging miscarriages of justice,” Daily News Editor in Chief Arthur Browne said. The Daily News reporter credited with most of the work was Sarah Ryley.

 

ProPublica’s managing editor, Robin Fields, said the project was “the type of collaboration that ProPublica had in mind” when the independent, nonprofit organization was launched nine years ago.

 

The New York Times’ staff received the international reporting award for its work on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to project Moscow’s power abroad. The award in feature writing went to the Times’ C.J. Chivers for a story about a Marine’s descent into violence after returning home from war.

 

Winners ranged from partnerships spanning hundreds of reporters to newspapers as small as The Storm Lake Times, a twice-weekly, 3,000-circulation family-owned paper in Iowa. Co-owner Art Cullen won the editorial writing award for challenging powerful corporate agricultural interests in the state.

 

Cullen said he was stunned by the win. “Nobody’s ever heard of us before,” he said with a laugh.

 

The prize for explanatory reporting went to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, McClatchy and the Miami Herald, which amassed a group of over 400 journalists to examine the leaked “Panama Papers” and expose the way that politicians, criminals and rich people stashed money in offshore accounts.

 

Meanwhile, the Herald’s Jim Morin won the award for editorial cartooning. He also won in 1996.

 

Eric Eyre of The Charleston Gazette-Mail received the investigative reporting prize for articles showing that drug wholesalers had shipped 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to West Virginia in six years, as 1,728 people fatally overdosed on the painkillers. Eyre obtained Drug Enforcement Administration records that leading drug wholesalers had fought in court to keep secret.

 

The staff of the East Bay Times in Oakland, California, received the breaking news reporting award for its coverage of a fire that killed 36 people at a warehouse party and for its follow-up reporting on how local officials hadn’t taken action that might have prevented it.

 

Executive Editor Neil Chase said the award was “tremendously humbling,” but “you have to pause and realize that 36 people died in the fire, and this story should have never happened.”

 

The staff of The Salt Lake Tribune received the local reporting award for its work on how Brigham Young University treated sexual assault victims. The series prompted the Mormon school to stop conducting honor code investigations into students who reported being sexually assaulted.

 

Hilton Als, a theater critic for The New Yorker, won in the criticism category. The judges praised how he strove to connect theater to the real-world, “shifting landscape of gender, sexuality and race.”

 

Freelancer Daniel Berehulak received the breaking news photography award for his images, published in The New York Times, documenting Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s crackdown on drug dealers and users. Berehulak won the feature photography Pulitzer in 2015 for his work on the Ebola outbreak in Africa.

 

This year’s feature photography winner was E. Jason Wambsgans of the Chicago Tribune, for his portrayal of a 10-year-old boy who had been shot.

 

Amid concern about fake news and the role of the media, “it’s just a very important time to try to help people see the importance of great journalism in their lives and in the democracy,” prize administrator Mike Pride said as the awards were announced at Columbia University .

 

Arts prizes are awarded in seven categories, including fiction, drama and music. Among the arts winners, Colson Whitehead took the fiction prize for “The Underground Railroad,” a novel that combined flights of imagination with the grimmest and most realistic detail of 19th-century slavery. Playwright Lynn Nottage won her second drama Pulitzer, for “Sweat.”

 

This is the 101st year of the contest, established by newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer. Public service award winners receive a gold medal; the other awards carry a prize of $15,000 each.
…

Herbie Hancock has twice before visited Havana to perform intimate solo-duet concerts with his Cuban counterpart Chucho Valdes, but at the end of April the two renowned jazz pianists will be collaborating on a grander scale.

 

Hancock and Valdes will be serving as artistic directors for the 6th International Jazz Day.

On Monday, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization announced that Havana will be the global host city for the event, culminating with an all-star concert on April 30 at the recently renovated 19th-century Gran Teatro de La Habana.

The concert will be broadcast live on Cuban television and live streamed by UNESCO.

 

Last year, Washington was the host city with President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama hosting the global concert at the White House.
…

Rapper Drake and EDM duo The Chainsmokers are the top contenders at the Billboard Music Awards with 22 nominations each.

 

Dick clark productions announced Monday that the performers set a record for most nominations in a year. The 2017 awards show will air live May 21 from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

 

Other big contenders include twenty one pilots (17 nominations) and Rihanna (14).

 

Nominees for the biggest award, top artist, include Adele, Beyonce, Justin Bieber, the Chainsmokers, Drake, Ariana Grande, Shawn Mendes, Rihanna, twenty one pilots and the Weeknd.

 

Albums from Beyonce, Drake, Rihanna, twenty one pilots and the Weeknd are up for top Billboard 200 album.

 

The Billboard Awards have 52 categories. The show will air live on ABC.

 

 
…

Veteran Spanish golfer Sergio Garcia finally captured his first major title, winning Sunday’s Masters championship in Augusta, Georgia, in a sudden death playoff over Britain’s Justin Rose.

The two players are long-time friends and they both finished regulation at 9-under-par. On the first extra hole, where they again played the par-4 18th, Rose hit his shot off the tee into the rough and was unable to reach the green in two shots. He made a bogie 5.

Needing only to two-putt the hole to win, Garcia finished in style by sinking his 12-foot (4m) putt for a birdie 3. He had missed a putt from about the same distance on the same hole that would have given him the win in regulation.

After he hugged his caddie, the crowd loudly chanted “Sergio, Sergio, Sergio!” Garcia pumped his arms and pounded his fist into the grass in elation, and then his fiancee joined him on the green for a tight hug and kisses.

“It’s been such a long time coming,” said the 37-year-old Garcia, after a two decade wait in which he played 73 majors. “I thought I had it on 18 (in regulation). I felt today the calmness I have never felt in a major on a Sunday. Even after making a couple bogies, I felt very positive.”

Sunday’s win has added meaning

“Disappointed,” said Rose, last year’s Rio Olympics gold medalist and 2013 U.S. Open champion. “I lost a wonderful battle with Sergio. But he deserves it. He’s had his fair share of heartbreak. I played well, but he rallied.”

It was a fairy tale-like story, because Garcia’s first major golf championship came on what would have been the 60th birthday of his idol Seve Ballesteros, his fellow Spaniard and former world No. 1 who won five major championships, including Masters victories in 1980 and 1983. Ballesteros died six years ago from brain cancer.

“It’s amazing,” said Garcia. “To do it on his 60th birthday and join him and José María Olazábal, my two idols.”

Like Ballesteros, the Spaniard Olazábal won two Masters championships, in 1994 and 1999. Garcia said Olazábal sent him a text message before the Masters began, telling him what he needed to do and that he believed in him.

Tight battle

The 36-year-old Rose and Garcia were co-leaders to start the fourth and final round Sunday at six-under-par, and both played the first nine holes at two-under-par. Garcia fell two shots behind after bogies at the 10th and 11th holes, but got one back with a birdie on the 14th. He tied Rose with an eagle 3 on the 15th while Rose had a birdie 4.

Rose went back ahead with a birdie on the 16th, but fell back into a tie with a bogie on the 17th, setting up the dramatic finish.

Throughout the final day, the two golfers acknowledged one another’s well-played shots.

“I think at the end of the day we’re both trying to win, but we’re both people and we both have to represent the game the way we should,” said Garcia. “We’re good friends so we were respectful of one another and cheering each other on. We wanted to win, but we didn’t want the other to make mistakes.”

“I think it will be a tournament I will win one day,” said Rose. “It’s my favorite tournament of the year. I have a bunch of years left in my tank, and I think this is one I will knock off.”

 
…

Chuck Berry fans are getting their chance to pay their respects to the rock ’n’ roll visionary, roughly three weeks after his death at age 90 near his hometown of St. Louis.

 

Fans of the legend behind such classics as Johnny B. Goode, Sweet Little Sixteen and Roll Over Beethoven can file past his casket Sunday at The Pageant, a St. Louis club where he frequently performed. The public viewing will be followed by a private service for family and friends, including those in the music industry.

 

Charles Edward Anderson Berry, who died March 18, was the first artist in the inaugural 1986 class to go into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and he closed out its concert in 1995 to celebrate that Cleveland building’s opening. The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards said at Berry’s induction ceremony that Berry was the one who started it all.

 

Berry, whose core repertoire included about three dozen songs, had a profound influence on rock ’n’ roll, from garage bands all the way up to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

 

Well before the rise of Bob Dylan, Berry wedded social commentary to the beat and rush of popular music.

 

“He was singing good lyrics, and intelligent lyrics, in the ’50s when people were singing, ‘Oh, baby, I love you so,’” John Lennon once observed.

 

“Everything I wrote about wasn’t about me, but about the people listening,” Berry once said.
…