Arts

We’re interacting with the five most popular songs in the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles chart, for the week ending October 28, 2017.

It’s a good week in the Top Five: not only do we get a new song, we also greet a new champion.

Number 5: Portugal. The Man “Feel It Still”

It all starts in fifth place, where Portugal. The Man advances a slot with “Feel It Still.” Why the wacky name?

This alternative rock act first came together in Alaska about 16 years ago, then moved to Portland, Oregon and released its debut album in 2006. The band members say they wanted their group name to have a bigger than life feel, but didn’t want to name it after any members. They decided on a country, and Portugal was the first to come to mind.

Number 4: Taylor Swift “Look What You Made Me Do,”

It’s a bounce-back week for Taylor Swift, as her former champ “Look What You Made Me Do” revives a slot in fourth place.

Taylor drops her “Reputation” album on November 10, and she’s giving us more new music and videos. On October 20, Taylor released a promotional single, “Gorgeous,” reportedly about her boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn. On October 26, Taylor gave us the futuristic video for “…Ready For It?”

Number 3: Logic, Alessia Cara and Khalid “1-800-273-8255”

Are you ready for Logic, Alessia Cara, and Khalid? They’re making a run for the gold, as “1-800-273-8255” jumps a slot to number three.

On October 21, Alessia joined many other top stars at a charity concert in Los Angeles. Held at the Hollywood Bowl, the fifth annual We Can Survive event benefited the Young Survival Coalition, which works to educate young women about breast cancer.

She’s no longer our champ, and that’s just the start of Cardi B’s problems.

Number 2: Cardi B “Bodak Yellow (Money Moves)”

Cardi B ends her three-week run at the top, as “Bodak Yellow (Money Moves)” falls to second place.

On October 22, police removed Cardi from the Hilton Hotel in Albany, New York. The hotel had called them due to complaints about noise and the scent of marijuana near her room.

Cardi took to Instagram to say that neither she nor her team smokes, and that she was sick with a cold. Billboard Magazine has reached out to Cardi B’s representatives for comment.

Number 1: Post Malone Featuring 21 Savage “Rockstar”

Post Malone and 21 Savage have both reached the Hot 100 summit for the first time in their respective careers – meet your new number one single, “Rockstar.”

This is one of 12 champion songs to bear the word “rock” in the 59-year history of the Hot 100 chart. Elton John did it first back in 1973 with “Crocodile Rock,” while LMFAO last reached the top in 2011 with “Party Rock Anthem.”

We’ll resume the party next week, so join us if you can.
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As the best-of-seven 2017 World Series shifts from Los Angeles to Houston at one game apiece, diehard fans of the hurricane-devastated city can sense a first-ever baseball championship within their grasp. Houstonians admit that a series victory — if only a momentary distraction — would lift the city’s spirits. Ramon Taylor reports from Minute Maid Park, home of the Astros.
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Actress Ashley Judd says she escaped Harvey Weinstein’s sexual advances by making a deal.

She says she told him, yes, she would submit to him only after winning an Oscar in one of his movies.

 

Then she says she fled from his hotel room where, two decades ago, she had arrived as a young actress for what she thought would be a business meeting.

 

Appearing on Thursday’s “Good Morning America,” Judd says she remains of two minds about how she handled the confrontation. She says she feels ashamed. She also credits her snap decision as brilliant.

 

Judd was among the first of what has become dozens of women alleging sexual harassment or assault by Weinstein, who is now under criminal investigation for rape in London, New York and Los Angeles.
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Drake’s “More Life” album won’t earn him more Grammy Awards: The rapper didn’t submit the album for consideration at the 2018 Grammys.

 

A person close to the nomination process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not allowed to publicly talk about the topic, said the multi-platinum rapper did not submit “More Life” for album of the year or best rap album. The person also says Drake did not submit any of the songs from the album.

 

Drake has described “More Life” as a mixtape and playlist. Despite that, the album has sold more 2 million units and includes the Top 10 hits “Fake Love,” “Passionfruit” and “Portland.”

 

Representatives for Drake and the Grammys did not respond to emails seeking comment.

 

 
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Jessica Alba and husband Cash Warren are expecting their first baby boy.

 

The actress and Honest Company founder announced her pregnancy on Instagram in July and revealed on the platform Wednesday that the baby is a boy.

She chatted about her pregnancy later with Jimmy Fallon on “The Tonight Show.” Alba told Fallon she’s been trying to resist cravings for ice cream.

 

Alba and Warren have two daughters, Honor and Haven.

 

Alba most recently appeared as a judge alongside fellow actress-turned-entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow on the Apple Music summer series “Planet of the Apps.”

 
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It seems unreal in this 21st century, but an astonishing number of people are bought and sold around the world. The U.S. Department of State estimates between 600,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year. Millions more are enslaved within national borders. A grass- roots effort to raise the awareness of the crime of human trafficking is taking place in the Washington area. VOA’s June Soh has more on the arts-based campaign called ArtWorks for Freedom.
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To play a blind woman for her latest film role, Blake Lively took no short cuts into the darkness.

The 30-year-old actress learned to use a walking cane, wore opaque contact lenses off-camera to better understand her character, and learned how to navigate the main set without her vision.

“I wanted to know the experience of filling in the blanks in my head, learning it and then opening my eyes and seeing that, no matter what I had in my head, it was so different than I imagined,” she says.

Lively stars in All I See Is You, a dreamy, beautiful movie about a woman who lost her eyesight as an adolescent in a car accident but regains her vision through surgery in her 20s. She begins a period of self-discovery, which threatens to upend her life and marriage.

“That happens in all relationships, where you’re in an established relationship and then you start to not see things,” says Lively. “This movie speaks to relationships, I think, whether we have the literal blindness or it’s just figurative.”

It’s the brainchild of director and co-writer Marc Forster, whose career includes varied films such as World War Z, Quantum of Solace, Monster’s Ball and The Kite Runner. Inspiration for the new film came in one of the strangest places — the shower.

Forster, who has always admired fine art painters, was searching for a story that could lend itself to being painted onscreen. “I pushed it aside because I said, ‘OK, you’re a filmmaker. You’re not a painter. You’re not a true artist. You’re just a visual storyteller,”‘ he says. But one day in the shower, with soap clouding his eyes, he realized he had a visual template.

All I See Is You is certainly arty, with scenes decorated with a blur of images, bleeding colors and abstract symbols, even giving physical sensations an intense visual representation.

Forster says he was trying to shake the Hollywood cookie-cutter approach and recapture the feel of films from the 1970s, when character studies and open-ended plots ruled. “Movies became more and more close-ended and they also had to tick every box emotionally for an audience,” he says.

Indeed, Forster’s film is hard to categorize — part mystery, part horror, part a woman’s reawakening, part kaleidoscopic journey. He is very happy it cannot be pigeonholed.

“He’s created something that I’ve never seen before with the visuals,” says Lively. “So it was really just about taking a leap of faith with him and trusting him and being excited by that journey. But I think that if you even removed all of those visuals from this movie, it still works and that’s what’s important.”

The film also gave Lively, last seen in a bikini in The Shallows, a meaty and complex role — though a challenging one, too, since it centers on a woman with a disability. She says she was sensitive to making sure it was correct.

“This isn’t representative of any one person’s story. I was trying to take different peoples’ experiences and be as honest as possible,” she says. One person she leaned on to get her performance right was Ryan Knighton, a blind author who taught Lively how the blind walk, move and even argue. (The filmmakers honored him by having Blakely wear his signature red-tinted glasses onscreen.)

Both Lively and Forster realize that the film — featuring a woman learning to be strong and independent — comes at a time when women across the country are talking about their role in male-centered businesses and society.

“I think what’s happened in this past year, since the election, is that women have really stood up for themselves. I think we realized how much further we had to go than we thought we did,” Lively says.

Foster, for his part, hopes the film will remind people to open their eyes, see what’s actually happening and make better choices. 

“We, as humanity, ultimately have to really wake up and become conscious and start seeing things,” he says. “Otherwise, we’re going to go down a path that will be unreturnable.”
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France’s famed film institute La Cinematheque Francaise says it will go ahead with a retrospective of works by director Roman Polanski despite opposition by feminist groups.

 

La Cinematheque said Wednesday that calls to cancel the Polanski screenings – attended by the director – only began “in the last few days” as the sexual harassment accusations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein gained force. The statement said it would not change the program that begins Monday.

 

Weinstein denies the allegations.

 

The institute said its role was not to moralize – in regard to the Polish-born director who in the 1970s pleaded guilty to having sex in the U.S. with a 13-year-old girl whom he plied with champagne and Quaaludes.

 

Since Polanski fled the U.S., he mostly has lived in Paris.

 
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An aspiring actress has sued The Weinstein Co. alleging it was aware of sexual misconduct by its co-founder, Harvey Weinstein.

 

Dominique Huett claims in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles that Weinstein performed oral sex on her against her wishes at a Beverly Hills hotel in 2010.

 

A representative for The Weinstein Co. and Weinstein himself did not immediately respond Wednesday to emails seeking comment.

 

Huett’s negligence lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.

 

Her attorney, Jeff Herman, says Huett is suing Weinstein’s former company because she only recently discovered claims that it knew of sex harassment allegations against its co-founder dating back to the 1990s.

 

Herman says the recent discovery argument is key to Huett overcoming the statute of limitations barring a lawsuit based on the alleged conduct.

 
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Fats Domino, the amiable rock `n’ roll pioneer whose steady, pounding piano and easy baritone helped change popular music while honoring the traditions of the Crescent City, died Tuesday. He was 89.
 
Mark Bone, chief investigator with the Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, coroner’s office, said Domino died of natural causes at 3:30 a.m. Tuesday.
 
In appearance, he was no Elvis Presley. He stood 5-feet-5 and weighed more than 200 pounds, with a wide, boyish smile and a haircut as flat as an album cover. But Domino sold more than 110 million records, with hits including “Blueberry Hill,” “Ain’t It a Shame” and other standards of rock ‘n’ roll.
 
He was one of the first 10 honorees named to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Rolling Stone Record Guide likened him to Benjamin Franklin, the beloved old man of a revolutionary movement.
 
His dynamic performance style and warm vocals drew crowds for five decades. One of his show-stopping stunts was playing the piano while standing, throwing his body against it with the beat of the music and bumping the grand piano across the stage.
 
Domino’s 1956 version of “Blueberry Hill” was selected for the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry of historic sound recordings worthy of preservation. The preservation board noted that Domino insisted on performing the song despite his producer’s doubts, adding that Domino’s “New Orleans roots are evident in the Creole inflected cadences that add richness and depth to the performance.”
 
Domino became a global star but stayed true to his hometown, where his fate was initially unknown after Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005. It turned out that he and his family were rescued by boat from his home, where he lost three pianos and dozens of gold and platinum records, along with other memorabilia.
 
Many wondered if he would ever return to the stage. Scheduled to perform at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 2006, he simply tipped his hat to thousands of cheering fans.
 
But in May 2007, he was back, performing at Tipitina’s music club in New Orleans. Fans cheered – and some cried – as Domino played “I’m Walkin’,” “Ain’t It a Shame,” “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” “Blueberry Hill” and a host of other hits.
 
That performance was a highlight during several rough years. After losing their home and almost all their belongings to the floods, his wife of more than 50 years, Rosemary, died in April 2008.
 
Domino moved to the New Orleans suburb of Harvey after the storm but would often visit his publishing house, an extension of his old home in the Lower 9th Ward, inspiring many with his determination to stay in the city he loved.
 
“Fats embodies everything good about New Orleans,” his friend David Lind said in a 2008 interview. “He’s warm, fun-loving, spiritual, creative and humble. You don’t get more New Orleans than that.”
 
The son of a violin player, Antoine Domino Jr. was born on Feb. 26, 1928, to a family that grew to include nine children. As a youth, he taught himself popular piano styles – ragtime, blues and boogie-woogie – after his cousin left an old upright in the house. Fats Waller and Albert Ammons were early influences.
 
He quit school at age 14, and worked days in a factory while playing and singing in local juke joints at night. In 1949, Domino was playing at the Hideaway Club for $3 a week when he was signed by Imperial record company.
 
He recorded his first song, “The Fat Man,” in the back of a tiny French Quarter recording studio.
 
“They call me the Fat Man, because I weigh 200 pounds,” he sang. “All the girls, they love me, ’cause I know my way around.”
 
In 1955, he broke into the white pop charts with “Ain’t it a Shame” – but actually sang the lyrics as “ain’t that a shame.” The song was covered blandly by Pat Boone as “Ain’t That a Shame” and rocked out years later by Cheap Trick. Domino enjoyed a parade of successes through the early 1960s, including “Be My Guest” and “I’m Ready.” Another hit, “I’m Walkin,’ ” became the debut single for Ricky Nelson.
 
Domino appeared in the rock ‘n’ roll film “The Girl Can’t Help It” and was among the first black performers to be featured in popular music shows, starring with Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers. He also helped bridge rock ‘n’ roll and other styles – even country/western, recording Hank Williams’ “Jambalaya” and Bobby Charles’ “Walkin’ to New Orleans.”
 
Like many of his peers, Domino’s popularity tapered off in the 1960s as British and psychedelic rock held sway.
 
Domino told Ebony magazine that he stopped recording because companies wanted him to update his style.
 
“I refused to change,” he said. “I had to stick to my own style that I’ve always used or it just wouldn’t be me.”
 
Antoine and Rosemary Domino raised eight children in the same ramshackle neighborhood where he grew up, but they did it in style- in a white mansion, trimmed in pink, yellow and lavender. The front double doors opened into an atrium with chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and ivory dominos set in a white marble floor.
 
In 1988, all of New Orleans seemed to be talking about him after he reportedly paid in cash for two Cadillacs and a $130,000 Rolls-Royce. When the salesman asked if he wanted to call his bank about financing, Domino smiled and said, “I am the bank.”
 
In 1998, he became the first purely rock ‘n’ roll musician to be awarded the National Medal for the Arts. But he cited his age and didn’t make the trip to the White House to get the medal from President Clinton.

That was typical. Aside from rare appearances in New Orleans, he dodged the spotlight in his later years, refusing to appear in public or even to give interviews.
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Qatari soccer and television executive Nasser al-Khelaifi was scheduled to be questioned by Swiss investigators who allege he bribed a top FIFA official in World Cup broadcasting rights deal.

 

Al-Khelaifi, the Paris Saint-Germain president, was set to meet with Switzerland’s federal prosecutors on Wednesday, two weeks after they revealed criminal proceedings against him.

 

He denies wrongdoing and has not been charged.

 

As CEO of BeIN Media Group — formerly Al Jazeera Sports — Al-Khelaifi secured Middle East TV rights for four World Cups, including the 2022 tournament in Qatar.

 

Al-Khelaifi and former FIFA secretary-general Jerome Valcke are suspected of bribery, fraud, criminal mismanagement and document forgery linked to a 2026-2030 rights deal.

 

A luxury villa on Sardinia was seized two weeks ago, and Italian financial police alleged al-Khelaifi allowed Valcke to use it.

 

 
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Pumpkins are everywhere across the United States each fall – flavoring lattes and ice cream, baked into pies and cookies, cut into jack-o-lanterns … and, in one New York City back yard, smashed into pieces. Faith Lapidus explains.
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Two-time Emmy Award-winning actor Robert Guillaume, who became one of the most prominent black actors on U.S. television playing the cantankerous title character in the hit 1980s series Benson, died of complications from prostate cancer on Tuesday, his wife said. He was 89.

The gravelly voiced Guillaume, who thrived in Broadway musicals before starring on the TV series Soap and its spinoff Benson, died at his Los Angeles home, his wife Donna Brown Guillaume said in a statement. It is not known how long he had been battling cancer.

Robert Guillaume first played sarcastic and irascible butler Benson DuBois on the over-the-top soap opera parody series Soap, which debuted in 1977 and also starred Katherine Helmond, Richard Mulligan and Billy Crystal.

His work on that show won Guillaume won the Emmy for outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series in 1979.

His character became so popular that the ABC network created Benson for him and that series ran for seven seasons from 1979 to 1986. Guillaume’s character had been a butler on Soap but on Benson he served as a state governor’s director of household affairs, then state budget director, lieutenant governor and candidate for governor.

Guillaume won the Emmy for outstanding lead actor in a comedy series in 1985 for Benson, the last of six times that he was nominated for an Emmy playing the character. He became the first black actor to win that award.

In accepting the Emmy, he joked, “I’d like to thank Bill Cosby for not being here,” referring to the fact that the star of The Cosby Show and the leading contender for the award had earlier taken himself out of the running for it.

Guillaume said he was sensitive about not playing his character as a racial stereotype and was pleased that Benson evolved from being a butler to a political power player — albeit one that retained the same crotchety attitude.

‘Upward mobility’

“In all honesty and candor and modesty, I always wanted the character to have that kind of upward mobility because it mirrored the American dream,” Guillaume told the Washington Post in 1985.

“When I took a role like Benson, which was in that time-honored sense ‘another black person in a servant’s role,’ I only took the part because it was a good part, it was a part in which I thought, with my own set of ideas about things, I could say something. And, indeed, that has been the case. We saw Benson was in no way anyone’s inferior.”

After the end of Benson, he starred in the short-lived sitcom The Robert Guillaume Show in 1989, as well as the series Pacific Station (1991-1992) and Sports Night (1998-2000). He suffered a stroke in 1999 on the set of Sports Night, but was able to return to his role within weeks.

On film, Guillaume provided the voice for the mandrill Rafiki in Disney’s animated 1994 hit The Lion King and appeared with Morgan Freeman in the 1989 drama Lean on Me.

In 1977, he earned a Tony Award nomination for his role in the Broadway musical Guys and Dolls. He also had leading roles on stage in Purlie and Golden Boy.

Born Robert Peter Williams on Nov. 30, 1927, he changed his name to Robert Guillaume to make it more distinctive (Guillaume is French for William). He was raised by his strong-willed grandmother in a St. Louis slum after his alcoholic mother gave up her children and his father abandoned the family.

After a brief military stint, he worked a series of jobs including as a trolley driver to save money for college.

He studied music at Washington University in St. Louis, where he was noticed by a Hungarian opera singer who helped him get a scholarship to the 1957 Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado. That was followed by an apprenticeship at a theater in Cleveland where he made his professional debut.
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The world’s most famous sled dog race has become engulfed in a doping scandal involving a four-time champion’s team of huskies, giving animal rights activists new ammunition in their campaign to end the grueling, 1,000-mile Iditarod.

The governing board of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race disclosed Monday that four dogs belonging to Dallas Seavey tested positive for a banned substance, the opioid painkiller Tramadol, after his second-place finish last March.

It was the first time since the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog race instituted drug testing in 1994 that a test came back positive.

Seavey strongly denied administering any banned substances to his dogs, suggesting instead that someone may have sabotaged their food, and race officials said he would not be punished because they were unable to prove he acted intentionally. That means he will keep his titles and his $59,000 in winnings this year.

But the finding was just the latest blow to the Iditarod, which has seen the loss of major sponsors, numerous dog deaths, attacks on competitors and pressure from animal rights activists, who say the huskies are often run to death or left bleeding and desperately ill.

“If a member of the Iditarod’s ‘royalty’ dopes dogs, how many other mushers are turning to opioids in order to force dogs to push through the pain?” People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said in a statement Tuesday.

It added: “This doping scandal is further proof that this race needs to end.”

“The race is all about winning and getting to the finish line despite the inhumane treatment towards the dogs,” said Fern Levitt, director of the documentary Sled Dogs.

Earlier this year, the Anchorage-to-Nome trek lost a major corporate backer, Wells Fargo, and race officials accused animal rights organizations of pressuring the bank and other sponsors with “manipulative information” about the treatment of the dogs.

Five dogs connected to this year’s race died, bringing total deaths to more than 150 in the Iditarod’s 44-year history, according to PETA’s count. And last year, two mushers were attacked by a drunken man on a snowmobile in separate assaults near a remote village. One dog was killed and others were injured. The attacker was given a six-month sentence.

Seavey won the Iditarod in 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016. He finished second this year to his father, Mitch, and has had nine straight top-10 finishes.

Dogs are subject to random testing before and during the race, and the first 20 teams to cross the finish line in Nome are all automatically tested.

Latest controversy

“I have never given any banned substance to my dogs,” the 30-year-old Seavey said in a video posted on his Facebook page. He said that security is lax along the route and that someone might have tampered with his dogs’ food.

He added that he wouldn’t be “thrown under the bus” by the race’s governing board and that he has withdrawn from the 2018 race in protest.

Seavey said he expects the Iditarod Trail Committee to ban him from the race for speaking out. Mushers are prohibited from criticizing the race or sponsors.

Iditarod spokesman Chas St. George said that decision would be up to the committee’s board of directors.

The committee decided to release the name of the offending musher on Monday after scores of competitors demanded it do so. Race officials initially refused to do so because, they said, it was unlikely they could prove the competitor acted intentionally and because a lawyer advised them not to make the name public.

At the time of this year’s race, the rule essentially said that to punish a musher, race officials had to provide proof of intent. That rule has since been changed to hold mushers liable for any positive drug test unless they can show something happened beyond their control.

Wade Marrs, president of the Iditarod Official Finishers Club, said he doesn’t believe Seavey intentionally administered the drugs to his animals. Marrs said he believes the musher has too much integrity and brains to do such a thing.

“I don’t really know what to think at the moment,” Marrs said. “It’s a very touchy situation.”
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“Sex and the City” star Kim Cattrall says she didn’t have kids in-part because of the demanding production schedule of the long-running HBO series.

 

The 61-year-old actress told Piers Morgan for an interview on Britain’s ITV that she decided against undergoing fertility treatments when she was starring on the show in her early 40s because she questioned how she could keep up with 19-hour days while raising a child.

 

Cattrall also opened up about her relationship with her co-stars on the franchise, telling Morgan she has “never been friends” with Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis or Cynthia Nixon.

 

Cattrall says she turned down the chance to appear in a third “Sex and the City” film and will never play her character Samantha Jones again.

 

 
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A US government bunker, originally built in case of nuclear war, is now offering protection for a happier purpose. VOA’s Karina Bafradzhian shows us how America’s entertainment history is preserved in an underground space near Washington.
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The New York attorney general has opened an investigation into sexual harassment and possible violations of civil rights laws at the Weinstein Company, the movie studio co-founded by Harvey Weinstein, and sent the company a subpoena Monday, a source familiar with the investigation said.

The subpoena, which has not been made public, requests information regarding how each complaint related to sexual harassment or other discrimination was handled by the Weinstein Company, the person familiar with the probe said.

It also asks for management’s criteria for hiring, promoting, casting, rejecting or terminating applicants or employees, the person said. The source added that the New York subpoena is part of an investigation into whether executives at the company violated state civil rights or New York City human rights laws.

Harvey Weinstein was fired from the company earlier this month in the wake of media reports that he sexually harassed or assaulted women in incidents dating back to the 1980s.

Weinstein has denied having nonconsensual sex with anyone. Reuters has been unable to independently confirm any of the allegations.

Representatives for the Weinstein Company did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In response to a request for comment on the investigation, the attorney general’s office emailed a statement from New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman that said, “No New Yorker should be forced to walk into a workplace ruled by sexual intimidation, harassment, or fear.

“If sexual harassment or discrimination is pervasive at a company, we want to know.”  

The New York Times reported earlier this month that Weinstein, 65, had reached eight previously undisclosed settlements with women who accused him of sexual harassment and unwanted physical contact. The New Yorker magazine reported that 13 women had claimed that Weinstein sexually harassed or assaulted them.    

The New York City Police Department has said it is investigating an allegation of sexual assault by Weinstein in 2004.  The Los Angeles Police Department also said earlier this month that it is investigating a 2013 sexual assault allegation against movie producer Harvey Weinstein.
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Looking down from a small, five-seater airplane, Mikah Meyer felt lucky to be getting such a spectacular — and unique — perspective of some of America’s most beautiful and historic land and waterscapes.

Desert beauty

The national parks traveler was flying over and around Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, a unit of the National Park Service that stretches for hundreds of kilometers from the southwestern state of Arizona to southern Utah.

 

Mikah described the flight, courtesy of the tour company American Aviation, as “an amazing flyover where we got this bird’s-eye view of everything I was about to experience over the next few days.”

The park borders Navajo Indian territory. After the Cherokee, Navajos are the second-largest federally recognized Native American tribe in the United States, with more than 300,000 enrolled tribal members. And, Mikah noted, “as far as land square mileage goes, the Navajo Nation reservation is the largest.”

The “intimate Grand Canyon”

The area Mikah explored includes many sites that are sacred to the Navajos.

One of them – Horseshoe Bend, on the Colorado River –  is about eight kilometers from Grand Canyon National Park. It is named for the horseshoe-shaped area of the river, which winds around ancient sandstone canyons.

“It’s an incredible image,” Mikah said, where visitors can “stand right on the edge and see the entire horseshoe shape.”

Man-made wonders

Flying over Glen Canyon Dam, Mikah had a great view of both the Colorado River and behind it, Lake Powell, the largest man-made lake in North America.

Then it was on to an almost three-hour boat ride around the lake, where the gleaming water appeared against a backdrop of eroded red rock canyons and mesas as he and his tour group wound their way through the narrow waterways leading to the lake.

“You go into these super thin canyons where our large boat barely fit through,” he explained.

“What makes it so incredible is that there really aren’t any trees or anything around it. It was desert rock that was filled with water,” Mikah said. “And so you have this amazing stark contrast between this pure blue, and then these white, orange and red rocks right up against the water, for thousands of miles of shoreline…so the juxtaposition of colors is really incredible.”

Stone rainbow

The boat also gave him access to another important Native American site… Rainbow Bridge National Monument, which is administered by the National Park Service.

Known as one of the world’s largest known natural bridges — its thinnest point at the top is still 13 meters thick — the park service describes it as “a rainbow turned into stone.”

The span has undoubtedly inspired people throughout time — from the neighboring American Indian tribes who consider Rainbow Bridge sacred, to the 85,000 people from around the world who visit it each year.

“Native Americans believe it’s a portal to another world,” Mikah explained. So much so that no one is supposed to walk under or near the ancient structure.

Mikah related a story he read in the park’s brochure that described how former President Theodore Roosevelt, during an expedition with Navajo guides in 1913, “went under the bridge and the guides went around, and he realized he shouldn’t have gone underneath it.”

Maintaining a safe distance during his own visit to the site, Mikah said he felt honored to have had the chance to see it in person.

“We often forget that America is a country of rich, diverse religious traditions and so getting to hear the stories of these numerous Native American tribes that I encounter across the country is really fascinating,” he said.

Airborne attraction

After his Rainbow Bridge experience, Mikah took to the air again, this time in a helicopter. Thanks to Grand Canyon Helicopters, he was able to enjoy a close-up view of Tower Butte – an ancient structure which rises more than 300 meters above Lake Powell — another grand structure sacred to the Navajos.

“Tower Butte is named because it’s a very tall piece of rock that sticks out of kind of nothing,” Mikah explained. “It was something I’d seen from the water earlier in the day, you can see it from the airport, you can see it from the town; it’s a very striking feature from the city.”

But the “coolest” experience, he said, was landing on Tower Butte. “I felt much like a bird or Superman must feel because we were flying just a few hundred feet above things.”

“Apparently there had been two expeditions to try to climb it,” Mikah recounted, “and I think one was unsuccessful and one of them was successful but it was very tedious — so basically helicopter is the way.”

Spiritual cathedral

Not to be missed during his time in Arizona was another natural gem on the Navajo Reservation — Upper Antelope Canyon… which Mikah got to by foot.

Named for the herds of prong-horn antelope that once roamed the area, the ancient sandstone cavern isn’t a National Park Service site, but hundreds of thousands come to marvel at its sheer beauty each year.

Waterfalls of sand

“Upper Antelope Canyon was one of the most stunning canyons I’ve seen on this entire journey,” Mikah said. “The waves of water that must have worked their way through here to make these intricate shapes really is like nothing I’ve seen anywhere else in the country… so the fact that I got to experience it and see this raw, incredible beauty up close with my own eyes was a stunning experience.”

Indeed, Mikah, who’s on a mission to visit all 417 national parks in the U.S., shared that walking in the footsteps of Native Americans in so many areas of the desert landscape, was powerful.

“It was a privilege to be able to experience these sacred Native American sites and I’m thankful that the National Park Service preserves them in a way that allows myself and so many people to experience them.”

Mikah invites you to follow him on his epic journey by visiting him on his website MikahMeyer.com, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

 

 
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The U.S. National Park Service helps preserve and protect some of America’s most beautiful and historic land and waterscapes for all to enjoy and learn from, including many sacred Native American spaces. National parks traveler Mikah Meyer got a chance to explore some of those sites — from a variety of perspectives – during a trip to Utah and Arizona. He shared highlights with VOA’s Julie Taboh.
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A play parodying the lengths some Cubans will go to in order to earn a few tourist dollars set against the backdrop of socially critical graffiti is adding punch to Havana’s annual theater festival.

The first-time collaboration between veteran theater director Nelda Castillo, 64, and street artist Yulier Rodriguez, 27, underscores unease among some Cubans with the recent influx of tourists on the cash-strapped, Communist-run island.

The interdisciplinary spectacle, “¡Guan melÃn!, ¡tu melÃn!,” is also an example of the innovative ways Cubans are pushing the boundaries of critical expression.

Rodriguez’s eerie murals of creatures that look malnourished and malformed had become ubiquitous throughout Havana over the last three years, reflecting his view of the dark path upon which society was.

But the artist said authorities detained him for two days in August and ordered him to stop painting in public spaces.

Graffiti is seen as vandalism in many countries, although Rodriguez suspects authorities stopped him more because they did not like the content of his work.

“Now I am limited in what I can do in the streets, any space where I can exhibit my work becomes a space of resistance for me,” said Rodriguez.

Castillo, who often collaborates with visual artists, said she invited Rodriguez to paint the walls of the renowned El Ciervo Encantado theater because she knew his graffiti would enrich her play.

“The piece is about the Cubans’ struggle in the street in the context of the new relations with the United States and the influx of American visitors,” she said. “His work is also about that struggle in the street.”

In the play that was first staged last year, a skinny and squat comic duo attempt frantically to entertain tourists arriving on cruise ships with Cuban tunes and to sell them outsized cigars and paper cones of peanuts.

A student with a manic fake smile, rudimentary English and a hypersexualized walk sells chocolate and offers salsa lessons, city tours and cabaret acts “as way to make ends meet.”

In a beleaguered economy which shrank last year and where the average state salary is $30 a month, the tourist sector is a relative gold mine.

Castillo said Rodriguez’s graffiti – eerie, scared and hungry-looking creatures with four eyes, two gaping mouths or a crown of skulls – was like another protagonist in the play.

“Dialogue is always enriching as long as it is coherent,” said Castillo.

The two kept quiet about their collaboration until the day it opened to the public, at the start of the theater festival that runs from Oct. 20-29.

“Fingers crossed no one from up top orders the graffiti to be erased,” said Rodriguez.
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