News

Latin American countries have sprung a World Cup surprise by filling Russia’s 11 host cities with tens of thousands of fans from Mexico and Colombia to Peru and Argentina.

And some of the Europeans who did show up said their friends back home told them they were crazy to go.

The contrasting cast of supporters at the biggest event in sport reflects Russia’s progressive creep away from Europe in the 18 years of President Vladimir Putin’s rule.

Moscow is now embracing new allies that happen to worship football and where damning — and often exaggerated — media stories about Russian hooligans and poisoning cases are rare.

This mix and the added ingredient of a more evenly spread-out global middle-class with the means to travel the world has the streets of Russia dancing to a decidedly Latin beat.

“We didn’t expect it to be this beautiful and the people are amazing,” Mauricio Miranda said as she waved a Colombian flag on the edge of Red Square in Moscow.

“We will definitely come back,” said the 30-year-old.

Belgian public relations consultant Jo De Munter does not necessarily disagree. It is his friends who do.

“I think Europeans are a bit afraid,” the 46-year-old said while staring in the direction of Lenin’s Mausoleum.

“In Belgium, everybody told me I was crazy to go to the football.”

By the numbers

World Cups come in all shapes and sizes and comparing ticket sales rarely tells the whole tale.

Europeans and Latin Americans are naturally more inclined to attend World Cups held in their regions because of the easier travel arrangements and familiarity.

South Africa in 2010 may provide a better example because it was a frontier football country with specific security and logistical risks.

Yet FIFA figures showed almost 50 percent more Britons bought tickets for the African continent’s first World Cup than this maiden one in eastern Europe.

Australians were in third place then but are just ninth in Russia.

Germany and England bought the fourth- and fifth-most number of tickets. France was ninth.

But France dropped out of the top 10 in Russia while Britain slipped down to last place. Germany remained fourth.

The United States has long led purchases among non-hosting countries because of its massive economy and large communities from football-mad Mexico and other Central American communities.

Taking the US out of the equation leaves Latin Americans accounting for two-thirds of the top 10 countries that have bought tickets for Russia.

Safety net

Fans banging Mexican drums and sporting the red-and-white bodypaint of the Peruvian flag encountered on a Moscow summer’s day were almost all big city office workers.

Colombia’s Miranda is an urban planner with a new job in Canada.

Alexandro Grado is a former financial consultant with Mexico’s Citibanamex who now owns a plastics recycling firm.

“Going to Russia is not expensive if you buy everything ahead of time,” Grado said.

Yet not all fans can afford to go bar hopping near the Kremlin and sociologists who study the sport say this is where Latin American football federations come in.

“There are national teams which have very strong organizational support behind them. Argentina in 2010 was one example,” said Ludovic Lestrelin of France’s Universite de Caen in Normandy.

Lestrelin said less well-off fans in Europe get far less travel and accommodation assistance from state agencies and are increasingly more likely to stay home and watch on TV.

This means Europeans attending World Cups tend to be richer than the average football fan. The traveling Latin Americans are more likely to come from all types of backgrounds.

“Those who travel to Russia and other places do not reflect the social makeup of French stadiums,” said Lestrelin.

“Those (in France) are more diverse, with a central core of lower and middle class workers.”

Zbigniew Iwanowski of the Institute of Latin American Studies in Moscow said Russia is further reaping the rewards of a “pink tide” that brought anti-US leaders power across the continent.

“The pendulum has swung back to the right but they still have (Russian state media) like Sputnik and RT,” Iwanowski said.

“Russia’s image is better in Latin America than it is in Europe and US.”

‘Not properly European’

Few would argue that Russia generates a lot of negative headlines in Europe in general and Britain in particular.

But the media’s role in shaping public opinion — and the reverse — is all but impossible to gauge.

What is clear is that at least some of the Europeans who ventured to Moscow and beyond did so with a degree of trepidation the voyagers from Latin America lacked.

De Munter said he often travels to watch Belgium play abroad. Rarely has he seen the national team’s support so small.

“We are expecting 4,000 Belgian people, which is not that much. Especially now because the Red Devils are doing very well.”

Gherardo Drardanelli flew in from Italy to take part in one of the fan tournaments organised alongside the World Cup.

“I think our concept of Russia — we feel that Russia is far away, that it’s not a properly European country,” the 28-year-old said. 
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Donald Hall, a prolific, award-winning poet and man of letters widely admired for his sharp humor and painful candor about nature, mortality, baseball and the distant past, has died at age 89.

Hall’s daughter, Philippa Smith, confirmed Sunday that her father died Saturday at his home in Wilmot, New Hampshire, after being in hospice care for some time. 

“He’s really quite amazingly versatile,” said Hall’s long-time friend Mike Pride, the editor emeritus of the Concord Monitor newspaper and a retired administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes. He said Hall would occasionally speak to reporters at the Monitor about the importance of words. 

Hall was the nation’s 2006-2007 poet laureate.

Starting in the 1950s, Hall published more than 50 books, from poetry and drama to biography and memoirs, and edited a pair of influential anthologies. He was an avid baseball fan who wrote odes to his beloved Boston Red Sox, completed a book on pitcher Dock Ellis and contributed to Sports Illustrated. He wrote a prize-winning children’s book, “Ox-Cart Man,” and even attempted a biography of Charles Laughton, only to have his actor’s widow, Elsa Lanchester, kill the project. 

But the greatest acclaim came for his poetry, for which his honors included a National Book Critics Circle prize, membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a National Medal of Arts. Although his style varied from haikus to blank verse, he returned repeatedly to a handful of themes: his childhood, the death of his parents and grandparents and the loss of his second wife and fellow poet, Jane Kenyon. 

“Much of my poetry has been elegiac, even morbid, beginning with laments over New Hampshire farms and extending to the death of my wife,” he wrote in the memoir “Packing the Boxes,” published in 2008. 

In person, he at times resembled a 19th century rustic with his untrimmed beard and ragged hair. And his work reached back to timeless images of his beloved, ancestral New Hampshire home, Eagle Pond Farm, built in 1803 and belonging to his family since the 1860s. He kept country hours for much of his working life, rising at 6 and writing for two hours. 

For Hall, the industrialized, commercialized world often seemed an intrusion, like a neon sign along a dirt road. In the tradition of T.S. Eliot and other modernists, he juxtaposed classical and historical references with contemporary slang and brand names. In “Building a House,” he begins with the drafters of the U.S. Constitution leaving Philadelphia, then shifts the setting to the 20th century. 

___ 

Some delegates hitched rides chatting with teamsters 

some flew standby and wandered stoned in O’Hare 

or borrowed from King Alexander’s National Bank. 

____ 

An opponent of the Vietnam War whose taxes were audited year after year, he was also ruthlessly self-critical. Nakedly, even abjectly, he recorded his failures and shortcomings and disappointments, whether his infidelities or his struggles with alcoholism. 

The joy and tragedy of his life were his years with Kenyon, his second wife. They met in 1969, when she was his student at the University of Michigan. By the mid-70s, they were married and living together at Eagle Creek, fellow poets enjoying a fantasy of mind and body – of sex, work and homemaking. 

“We sleep, we make love, we plant a tree, we walk up and down/eating lunch,” he wrote. 

But Kenyon was diagnosed with leukemia and died 18 months later, in 1995, when she was only 47. Even as he found new lovers – and sought them compulsively – Hall never stopped mourning her and arranged to be buried next to her, beneath a headstone inscribed with lines from one of her poems: “I BELIEVE IN THE MIRACLES OF ART, BUT WHAT PRODIGY WILL KEEP YOU BESIDE ME?” 

In the 1998 collection “Without,” and in many poems after, he reflected on her dying days, on the shock of outliving a woman so many years younger, and the lasting bewilderment of their dog Gus, who years later was still looking for her. In “Rain,” he bitterly summarized his efforts to help her. 

___ 

I never belittled her sorrows or joshed at her dreads and miseries 

How admirable I found myself. 

____ 

Hall was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1928, but soon favored Eagle Pond to the “blocks of six-room houses” back home. By age 14, he had decided to become a poet, inspired after a conversation with a fellow teen versifier who declared, “It is my profession.” 

“I had never heard anyone speak so thrilling a sentence,” Hall remembered. 

He published poetry while a struggling student at Phillips Exeter Academy and formed many lasting literary friendships at Harvard University, including with fellow poets Robert Bly and Adrienne Rich and with George Plimpton, for whom he later served as the first poetry editor at The Paris Review. He also met Daniel Ellsberg and would suspect well before others that the anonymous leaker of the Vietnam War documents known as the Pentagon Papers was his old college friend. 

After graduating from Harvard, Hall studied at the University of Oxford and became one of the few Americans to win the Newdigate Prize, a poetry honor founded at Oxford and previously given to Oscar Wilde, John Ruskin and other British writers. He returned to the states in the mid-1950s and taught at several schools, including Stanford University at Bennington College. He was married to Kirby Thompson from 1952-69, and they had two children. 

Hall’s first literary hero was Edgar Allan Poe and death was an early subject. He completed his debut collection, “Exiles and Marriages,” between visits to his ailing father, who died at the end of 1955. In the poem “Snow,” Hall confesses, “Like an old man/whatever I touch I turn/to the story of death.” 

In recent years, as Hall entered the “planet of antiquity,” many of his elegies were for himself. He worried that “anthologies dropped him out/Poetry festivals never invited him.” He pictured himself awaking “mournful,” dressed in black pajamas. He warned that a story with a happy ending had not really ended, but advised that we leave behind a story to tell. 

“Work, love, build a house, and die,” he wrote. “But build a house.”
…

Donald Hall, a prolific, award-winning poet and man of letters widely admired for his sharp humor and painful candor about nature, mortality, baseball and the distant past, has died at age 89.

Hall’s daughter, Philippa Smith, confirmed Sunday that her father died Saturday at his home in Wilmot, New Hampshire, after being in hospice care for some time. 

“He’s really quite amazingly versatile,” said Hall’s long-time friend Mike Pride, the editor emeritus of the Concord Monitor newspaper and a retired administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes. He said Hall would occasionally speak to reporters at the Monitor about the importance of words. 

Hall was the nation’s 2006-2007 poet laureate.

Starting in the 1950s, Hall published more than 50 books, from poetry and drama to biography and memoirs, and edited a pair of influential anthologies. He was an avid baseball fan who wrote odes to his beloved Boston Red Sox, completed a book on pitcher Dock Ellis and contributed to Sports Illustrated. He wrote a prize-winning children’s book, “Ox-Cart Man,” and even attempted a biography of Charles Laughton, only to have his actor’s widow, Elsa Lanchester, kill the project. 

But the greatest acclaim came for his poetry, for which his honors included a National Book Critics Circle prize, membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a National Medal of Arts. Although his style varied from haikus to blank verse, he returned repeatedly to a handful of themes: his childhood, the death of his parents and grandparents and the loss of his second wife and fellow poet, Jane Kenyon. 

“Much of my poetry has been elegiac, even morbid, beginning with laments over New Hampshire farms and extending to the death of my wife,” he wrote in the memoir “Packing the Boxes,” published in 2008. 

In person, he at times resembled a 19th century rustic with his untrimmed beard and ragged hair. And his work reached back to timeless images of his beloved, ancestral New Hampshire home, Eagle Pond Farm, built in 1803 and belonging to his family since the 1860s. He kept country hours for much of his working life, rising at 6 and writing for two hours. 

For Hall, the industrialized, commercialized world often seemed an intrusion, like a neon sign along a dirt road. In the tradition of T.S. Eliot and other modernists, he juxtaposed classical and historical references with contemporary slang and brand names. In “Building a House,” he begins with the drafters of the U.S. Constitution leaving Philadelphia, then shifts the setting to the 20th century. 

___ 

Some delegates hitched rides chatting with teamsters 

some flew standby and wandered stoned in O’Hare 

or borrowed from King Alexander’s National Bank. 

____ 

An opponent of the Vietnam War whose taxes were audited year after year, he was also ruthlessly self-critical. Nakedly, even abjectly, he recorded his failures and shortcomings and disappointments, whether his infidelities or his struggles with alcoholism. 

The joy and tragedy of his life were his years with Kenyon, his second wife. They met in 1969, when she was his student at the University of Michigan. By the mid-70s, they were married and living together at Eagle Creek, fellow poets enjoying a fantasy of mind and body – of sex, work and homemaking. 

“We sleep, we make love, we plant a tree, we walk up and down/eating lunch,” he wrote. 

But Kenyon was diagnosed with leukemia and died 18 months later, in 1995, when she was only 47. Even as he found new lovers – and sought them compulsively – Hall never stopped mourning her and arranged to be buried next to her, beneath a headstone inscribed with lines from one of her poems: “I BELIEVE IN THE MIRACLES OF ART, BUT WHAT PRODIGY WILL KEEP YOU BESIDE ME?” 

In the 1998 collection “Without,” and in many poems after, he reflected on her dying days, on the shock of outliving a woman so many years younger, and the lasting bewilderment of their dog Gus, who years later was still looking for her. In “Rain,” he bitterly summarized his efforts to help her. 

___ 

I never belittled her sorrows or joshed at her dreads and miseries 

How admirable I found myself. 

____ 

Hall was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1928, but soon favored Eagle Pond to the “blocks of six-room houses” back home. By age 14, he had decided to become a poet, inspired after a conversation with a fellow teen versifier who declared, “It is my profession.” 

“I had never heard anyone speak so thrilling a sentence,” Hall remembered. 

He published poetry while a struggling student at Phillips Exeter Academy and formed many lasting literary friendships at Harvard University, including with fellow poets Robert Bly and Adrienne Rich and with George Plimpton, for whom he later served as the first poetry editor at The Paris Review. He also met Daniel Ellsberg and would suspect well before others that the anonymous leaker of the Vietnam War documents known as the Pentagon Papers was his old college friend. 

After graduating from Harvard, Hall studied at the University of Oxford and became one of the few Americans to win the Newdigate Prize, a poetry honor founded at Oxford and previously given to Oscar Wilde, John Ruskin and other British writers. He returned to the states in the mid-1950s and taught at several schools, including Stanford University at Bennington College. He was married to Kirby Thompson from 1952-69, and they had two children. 

Hall’s first literary hero was Edgar Allan Poe and death was an early subject. He completed his debut collection, “Exiles and Marriages,” between visits to his ailing father, who died at the end of 1955. In the poem “Snow,” Hall confesses, “Like an old man/whatever I touch I turn/to the story of death.” 

In recent years, as Hall entered the “planet of antiquity,” many of his elegies were for himself. He worried that “anthologies dropped him out/Poetry festivals never invited him.” He pictured himself awaking “mournful,” dressed in black pajamas. He warned that a story with a happy ending had not really ended, but advised that we leave behind a story to tell. 

“Work, love, build a house, and die,” he wrote. “But build a house.”
…

Jehovah’s Witnesses have a long history of being persecuted around the world. Their activities are banned or restricted in several countries. They are considered an extremist organization in Russia, while their members are imprisoned in South Korea and Eritrea. Even near their main headquarters and publishing house in New York state, Jehovah’s Witnesses lead a somewhat secluded life. VOA’s Anush Avetisyan has the story.
…

Jehovah’s Witnesses have a long history of being persecuted around the world. Their activities are banned or restricted in several countries. They are considered an extremist organization in Russia, while their members are imprisoned in South Korea and Eritrea. Even near their main headquarters and publishing house in New York state, Jehovah’s Witnesses lead a somewhat secluded life. VOA’s Anush Avetisyan has the story.
…

Globalization in the 20th century facilitated the exchange of goods, ideas and technology. But it also helped spread deadly germs and viruses around the world. A new exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History illustrates the impact of these sometimes lethal biological linkages and looks back at the deadliest and scariest epidemics throughout history. Maxim Moskalkov has more.
…

Globalization in the 20th century facilitated the exchange of goods, ideas and technology. But it also helped spread deadly germs and viruses around the world. A new exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History illustrates the impact of these sometimes lethal biological linkages and looks back at the deadliest and scariest epidemics throughout history. Maxim Moskalkov has more.
…

In New York, Auxiliary Police Officers act as liaison between communities and the police department. Recently, Gursoch Kaur made headlines when she became the first female Sikh officer to serve in the Auxiliary Unit wearing a dastar, the traditional Sikh turban. Usually dastars are worn by Sikh men, but some women choose to wear them to raise awareness about their religion. VOA reporter Aunshuman Apte spoke to Gursoch Kaur to learn why she made that choice and how the community is reacting.
…

In New York, Auxiliary Police Officers act as liaison between communities and the police department. Recently, Gursoch Kaur made headlines when she became the first female Sikh officer to serve in the Auxiliary Unit wearing a dastar, the traditional Sikh turban. Usually dastars are worn by Sikh men, but some women choose to wear them to raise awareness about their religion. VOA reporter Aunshuman Apte spoke to Gursoch Kaur to learn why she made that choice and how the community is reacting.
…

“All I want to do is the Bataclan, the Bataclan.” Those are lyrics to a song released earlier in the year by rapper Medine. Two of his concerts are scheduled for the Bataclan theater in October. But not everyone wants to see the shows go on.

At issue, in part, are the words to another song by the artist, whose real name is Medine Zaouiche. In the song, “Don’t Laik,” one line goes, “I put fatwas on the heads of idiots.” The song was released in 2015 — the same year that France was hit by several terrorist attacks, including one targeting the Bataclan.

This is not the first time Medina has generated controversy. A decade earlier, he released an album titled Jihad — and he has been photographed in a T-shirt bearing the term, and a massive sword.

Now, thousands of people have signed a petition launched by the far right and demanding Medine’s concerts be canceled. Critics are tweeting their opposition via the hashtag #pasdemedineaubataclan, or “no Medine at the Bataclan.”

On French radio, far-right National Rally party head Marine Le Pen described Medine as an Islamic fundamentalist. His performance at the Bataclan, she said, is a threat to public order.

Victims’ associations are divided. Philippe Duperron, who heads one of them, is against the concerts taking place, out of respect for the victims and the memory of them.

Medine and his lawyers are fighting back. The rapper has criticized Islamic fundamentalism a number of times and says he is against violence. He says “Don’t Laik” is more of a slap at France’s tough secular creed, and that the jihad he refers to is an internal spiritual struggle, rather than violence.

“It’s been 15 years since I’ve criticized all forms of radicalism in my albums,” he posted recently on social media. Banning his concerts, he argues, amounts to caving in to the far right.

Medine’s arguments are drawing support, partly in the name of free expression. That appears to be the argument of Prime Minister Edouard Philippe. 

Still, others argue the divisions over the rapper’s concerts are the worst outcome, at a time when the French should be united against terrorism. 
…

U.S. celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, who killed himself in a French hotel room earlier this month, had no narcotics or alcohol in his body when he died, a local prosecutor said on Friday.

Bourdain, host of CNN’s food-and-travel-focused “Parts Unknown” television series, was 61. Brash and opinionated, he had spoken openly about his use of drugs and addiction to heroin earlier in his life.

“No trace of narcotics, no trace of any toxic products, no trace of medicines, no trace of alcohol,” prosecutor Christian de Rocquigny told Reuters.

Bourdain, whose career catapulted him from washing dishes at New York restaurants to dining in Vietnam with President Barack Obama, hanged himself in a hotel room near Strasbourg, France, where he had been working on an upcoming episode of his TV series, according to CNN.

 
…

Michael Benanav has traveled around much of the world, chronicling in words and pictures nomadic communities from Mali, to Jordan to Mongolia. But when the photographer heard about the Van Gujjar tribe of Northern India, he knew he wanted to do more than just document their existence. He wanted to join them on a migration to better understand their nomadic way of life and culture.
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