Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, along with first daughter Ivanka Trump as a guest, welcomed a new musical that celebrates Canadian compassion and openness following the September 11 attacks.

Trudeau and Trump and some 120 ambassadors from around the world attended the show “Come From Away” Wednesday night at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, in one of the cities where the bulk of the 3,000 people on 9/11 died.

The musical is set in the small Newfoundland town of Gander, which opened its arms and homes to about 7,000 airline passengers diverted there when the U.S. government shut down its airspace. In a matter of a few hours, the town was overwhelmed by travelers from 38 planeloads and dozens of countries and religions, yet locals went to work in their kitchens and cleaned up spare rooms.

‘Lean on each other’

In remarks before the show, Trudeau got on the stage and said he was pleased that, “the world gets to see what it is to lean on each other and be there for each other through the darkest times.”

The show got a standing ovation, including from Trump, who sat beside Trudeau and U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley. Also in attendance was Jean Chretien, a former Canadian prime minister. Trump was seen clapping along happily as the band played at the curtain call.

The actors did not acknowledge the special audience, but one afterward was still buzzing.

“When do we have the opportunity to share a story about kindness, gratitude and love that takes place in a country that is known for opening their hearts to people,” said actor Rodney Hicks. “It just meant the world to all of us.”

‘There for those tough times’

Trudeau, who champions global free trade and has welcomed 40,000 Syrian refugees, was celebrating Canada’s 150th anniversary of its Confederation to reaffirm the special friendship between Canadians and Americans.

“Our friends are there for those tough times, when you lose a parent or a loved one, when you get knocked off your path at a difficult moment in your life. Where you go through difficult times, that’s when you turn and you lean on your friends,” he said. “That ultimately is what this story is all about — being there for each other.”

In the show, a cast of a dozen play both residents and marooned passengers, telling true stories of generosity, compassion and acceptance, while fear and suspicion reigned in America. The show arrives just as a debate over immigration and open borders reignited following the Trump administration’s push for a ban on travelers from six predominantly Muslim nations.

Canadian husband-and-wife writing team Irene Sankoff and David Hein wrote the book, music and lyrics, and it was directed by Christopher Ashley, the artistic director of the La Jolla Playhouse. The musical veers its focus from weighty matters, a mother anxious about her missing firefighter son in New York, to more silly events, like a rowdy evening at a local bar where visitors are urged to kiss a cod.

Trudeau’s warm reception was in contrast to the ones that greeted two other world leaders who recently attended the Broadway smash “Hamilton,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Vice President-elect Mike Pence. Both received more than a smattering of boos.

 
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McDonald’s has started testing mobile order-and-pay after acknowledging the ordering process in its restaurants can be “stressful.”

The company says it will gather feedback from the test before launching the option nationally toward the end of the year. It says mobile order-and-pay is now available at 29 stores in Monterey and Salinas, California, and will expand to 51 more locations in Spokane, Washington, next week.

The rollout comes as customers increasingly seek out convenience through options like online ordering or delivery. McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook has noted the initial stages of visiting can be “stressful,” and the chain is making changes to improve the overall customer experience. That includes introducing ordering kiosks, which McDonald’s says can help ease lines at the counter and improve the accuracy of orders – another frustration for customers. Easterbrook has also talked about the potential of delivery.

With its mobile order-and-pay option, McDonald’s says customers place an order on its app then go to a restaurant and “check in” to select how they want to get their food. That could be at the counter, in the drive-thru, or with curbside delivery, where an employee brings out orders to a designated space. Orders are prepared once customers check in at the restaurant.

Starbucks has already found success using its mobile app and loyalty program to encourage people to visit more often and spend more when they do. The chain has also said its mobile order-and-pay option was so popular that it caused congestion at pick-up counters last year, leading some customers who walked into stores to leave without buying anything. Starbucks said it is working on fixing those issues.

It’s not clear whether McDonald’s will be able to get the same level of usage for its mobile app and order-and-pay option. Since coffee tends to be more of a daily habit, for instance, people may be more willing to download an app for it on their phones.

 
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Angelina Jolie is set to teach a master’s course at the prestigious London School of Economics this fall as a visiting professor.

The London Evening Standard reports the 41-year-old actress and filmmaker gave a preview of her class Tuesday with a lecture at the school’s Centre for Women, Peace and Security. She told the newspaper before the lecture that she was “a little nervous,” but she hoped to do well because the talk was “very important” to her.

 

The Standard reports that Jolie will be lecturing in an unpaid post in September as part of a master’s program on women, peace and security.

 

Jolie’s humanitarian work is well-known. She serves as a special envoy of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

 
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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.
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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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