Tiger Woods’ victory at the Tour Championship on Sunday has given the entire American Ryder Cup team a “nice buzz”, captain Jim Furyk said on Monday.

Furyk and his European counterpart Thomas Bjorn heaped praise on each other’s teams at a news conference at Le Golf National, where Woods was the center of attention even though he was not present.

The 14-times major champion ended a five-year drought with an emotional victory at East Lake in Atlanta on Sunday.

“It’s obviously a nice buzz for our team,” Furyk said.

“Not that this event needs much more energy brought to it. It’s probably the biggest, grandest event in all golf but it’ll add that much more excitement I believe.

“You could see the emotion in (Woods) fighting back tears. It was important to him to win.”

Furyk said that Woods, who will be playing in his eighth Ryder Cup, had grown into his role as an elder statesman of the American team.

“What’s important to him right now is to be a part of that team, part of that group.

“He won yesterday as an individual and I know how much that means to him but he’s flipped that page pretty quickly and is really excited to join his team mates and move forward in that process.”

Bjorn also spoke warmly of Woods, and what he brings to the sport.

“Him winning golf tournaments again is brilliant because, in the end, whatever it is these 24 guys are going to do this week, the game of golf needs that boost of somebody like him that transcends the game to the masses,” Bjorn said. “So for everyone in golf it’s brilliant.”

As for each other’s teams, both captains were effusive ahead of the Friday start.

“Thomas mentioned this is probably the strongest American team we’ve ever had and maybe it’s the strongest team Europe has ever fielded top to bottom,” Furyk said.

Furyk’s players are well aware that the Americans have not won a Ryder Cup on European soil since 1993.

“We’re reminded of it quite often. Is it extra motivation? I’m not sure you need extra motivation in a Ryder Cup,” he said.

“There are some veteran players who have never won on foreign soil. That’s something that’s missing in their careers, so they’re anxious to get started. They are well aware of how difficult it is to win in Europe.”

The American team arrived in Paris early afternoon after an overnight flight from Atlanta, where all but Jordan Spieth played in the Tour Championship won by Tiger Woods on Sunday.

“We were on the ground by 12.45 and a nice police escort to the hotel, so guys are there, settled, trying to get ready for the week,” Furyk said.

Six of the European team also played in Atlanta, but captain Bjorn is not worried about fatigue.

“One thing I learnt about Ryder Cup is no matter how tired you are, you’re going to carry yourself, the last bit of adrenaline you have in your body,” the Dane said.

“Achieving big things obviously takes a bit out of you but they will carry themselves through this week because they’re top athletes and this is what they’ve been looking forward to probably the most all season.”
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After spearheading an epic, 18-hour documentary on the Vietnam War, acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns has turned to more personal subject matter — one that knows him very intimately, too.

Burns tackles the famed Mayo Clinic in his next film, exploring the history of the innovative Rochester, Minnesota-based hospital that has been dubbed “The Miracle in a Cornfield.” It has treated luminaries such as the Dalai Lama — and Burns.

The first time Burns went, he was immediately impressed by the level and detail of his medical care, like the patient was at the center, not the doctor. “I began to get curious about why this was so different from any other health care experience I’d had,” he said.

The result is the two-hour documentary The Mayo Clinic: Faith, Hope, Science, which starts with the hospital’s birth during a tornado in 1883 and ends with the modern-day Mayo, state-of-the-art facilities over several campuses that treat up to 14,000 patients in 24 hours.

“The Mayo is just a quintessentially American story, just as baseball is a quintessentially American subject, as are the national parks, the Civil War,” Burns said. “And this was a story firing on all cylinders, at least as far as I felt. And it was a story that I don’t think had been fully understood.”

The documentary — directed by Burns, Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren Ewers — features the voices of Tom Hanks, Sam Waterston and Blythe Danner, as well as familiar touches: Peter Coyote narrates, there’s rousing music by Aaron Copeland and Scott Joplin, and evocative slow-scans of old photographs known as “the Ken Burns effect.”

The film is part of a documentary film empire Burns has on tap. Upcoming are works on the history of country music, Ernest Hemingway, Muhammad Ali, Benjamin Franklin and the American Revolution, as well as deep dives into crime and punishment in America and civil rights during President Lyndon Johnson.

“I’m plotted out to 2030 — God and funding willing,” he said with a laugh. “As much as I’d like to believe that I pick projects, in fact I think they pick me. And they pick me because they’re just quintessential American stories, whatever they might be.”

Burns has built a reputation for capturing sweeping historic moments with intimate details of peoples’ lives, tackling topics ranging from the Brooklyn Bridge to baseball, from Mark Twain to jazz. His films make the past come alive: Burns was once escorted out of an Alabama church by state troopers from people still upset by the Civil War’s outcome.

Mayo’s ‘secret sauce’

The Mayo film begins with the unusual collaboration by Dr. W.W. Mayo — “a doctor who worshipped Darwin,” Burns said — and a group of Franciscan nuns who began working with Mayo to help tornado victims in 1883.

The hospital adopted a salary-based model of teamwork — not based on ordering tests or a revolving door of patients — that is said to encourage innovation, time with patients and collaboration. In the film, Tom Brokaw and John McCain endorse its methods.

So does co-director Ewers, who started the project not as a Mayo patient but ended up one. He had been suffering from intestinal problems for 20 years and had been given seven different diagnoses without finding relief. While he was filming the Mayo documentary, its doctors reached out.

“They diagnosed it in two days,” Ewers said.

Burns calls Mayo’s formula a “secret sauce” — one that also manages to have poor patients get free care — and hopes it can offer answers to America’s health care problems.

“We were making a film about the history the Mayo Clinic, but realized that in their story and in their example might be a way for us all to re-enter a conversation about the essential question: What do we owe each other in terms of taking care of each other?” he said.

Hard-won perspective

Burns’ inimitable visual style is sometimes mocked, but the filmmaker isn’t in a rush to embrace flashy special effects, something he calls “all sizzle and no steak.” He admits to dragging his heels on embracing digital cameras and computer editing because he simply liked splicing film stock. But that doesn’t mean he’s inflexible — he used drones in the Mayo film.

“There’s a lot of sleek hares out there who are racing past the turtle that we are,” he said. “We make long films. And if you’re going to watch a long film, we have to make sure that we honor the attention you’re giving to us with an equal care in the crafting of it.”

The work is painstaking. For the documentary on country music, he estimates his team has poured over 100,000 photographs and scanned 60,000 of them — only to use less than 3,000. “I use the analogy of maple syrup: It takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup,” Burns said.

By delving into America’s past so much, Burns has learned a lot about human nature, but he dislikes the cliche that history repeats itself. He prefers to quote Mark Twain, who said “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.”

His work has given him hard-won perspective. When people during the financial crisis in 2007 began evoking the Great Depression, Burns knew his history. He replied that if animals in the zoos were being shot for food, then it was an apt analogy.

“That’s what history can do. It’s a kind of an armor, or at least a thermal layer, that protects you from the chill of the present moment,” he said.
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Celine Dion has announced she will end her Las Vegas residency next year.

The singer announced on social media Monday that she will leave Caesars Palace in June 2019.

Dion says the decision brings mixed emotions as the Colosseum venue has been a big part of her life for the past 20 years.

This will mark the end of her second long-running residency at Caesars Palace.

Dion has performed nearly 1,100 shows there since 2003. The first time was from 2003 until 2007. Her current residency began in 2011.

Tickets for next year’s shows go on sale Tuesday.

Her final concert will be June 8, 2019.
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It’s apt that a maze cut into an Oklahoma cornfield featuring the likeness of a former NASA astronaut can be seen from space – and has been photographed by a satellite orbiting Earth.

The image of Oklahoma-born Thomas P. Stafford is cut into a 10-acre field at P Bar Farms in Hydro, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) west of Oklahoma City.

 

The maze was created in partnership with the Stafford Air and Space Museum, named for the astronaut, in nearby Weatherford.

 

A satellite photographed the tribute from its orbit 400 miles (650 kilometers) away.

 

The 88-year-old Stafford is a Weatherford native whose space missions included commanding the Apollo flight that linked with a Soviet spacecraft in 1975. It was the first meeting of American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts in space.
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Comedian Bill Cosby will likely learn his fate this week as the sentencing phase in his sexual assault trial begins Monday near Philadelphia.

Cosby was convicted in April on three counts of aggravated indecent assault against former Temple University administrator Andrea Constand.

Under sentencing guidelines, Cosby could get as much as 30 years in prison, which would be a life sentence for the 81-year-old entertainer.

His attorneys are expected to appeal to the judge to sentence Cosby to house arrest because of his fragile health. Cosby is legally blind.

The judge could also sentence Cosby to a short stay in prison.

Two women who say Cosby sexually assaulted them in the 1980s say he deserves to spend time in prison.

One of the alleged victims, Chelan Lasha, told reporters Sunday she wants Cosby to get the maximum time in prison, saying she still has nightmares about the assault.

After a mistrial during the first case against him in 2017, a jury convicted Cosby of drugging and sexually assaulting Constand at his Philadelphia home in 2004. Constand came to Cosby’s house seeking career advice because he was a Temple alumnus.

Cosby denied the charge and said any sexual contact he had with Constand was consensual.

About 60 women have alleged Cosby sexually assaulted them dating back to the 1960s, when Cosby became famous. Constand’s case is the only one to come to trial.

Cosby is best known for his 1980s television series The Cosby Show, which solidified his now destroyed image as a wise and genial family man.
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Tiger Woods scored his first victory in more than five years on Sunday, completing a two-shot win at the Tour Championship to crown a fairy tale comeback after a near two-year absence.

The 42-year-old, 14-time major winner carded a one-over-par 71 at Atlanta’s East Lake Golf Course to claim the 80th title of his glittering career.

Woods, who finished with an 11-under-par aggregate 269, raised his arms in delight after the victory, with several thousand fans ringing the green roaring appreciation.

Woods admitted he had nearly been overcome with emotion as he walked up the 18th fairway.

“I was having a hard time not crying coming up the last hole,” Woods said.

“I kept saying ‘Hey, I could still play this out of bounds.’ But once I got the ball on the green I gave (caddie) Joey (LaCava) a high five because I knew it was done.”

It was an emotional finale to a year which saw Woods return to the highest level after he had once feared he may never play golf again.

“It was just a grind out there,” Woods said of his final round. “I loved every bit of it. The fight, the grind, the tough conditions.

“Beginning of the year (winning) was a tall order. But as the year progressed I found my swing and put the pieces together and I knew I could do it.”

The victory erased any last lingering doubts about Woods’ ability to compete at the highest level, something he had served notice of with top 10 finishes at the British Open and US PGA Championships.

Woods, who returned in January after missing almost the entire previous two years with a debilitating back injury, held a three-shot advantage heading into the final round.

A birdie on his opening hole extended Woods’ lead to four shots to give the former world number one a dream start.

With the remainder of the 30-man field struggling to make any inroads, Woods then played solid if unspectacular golf to keep a stranglehold on the lead.

A bogey on the 10th was a mere blip, with Woods re-establishing a five-shot cushion at 13 under after rolling in a 13-foot birdie putt on the par-four 13th.

Billy Horschel closed the gap to four shots after after a four-under-par final round 66, but Woods looked to be in control.

Woods, however, gave his army of fans roaring him on a scare though when back-to-back bogeys on the 15th and 16th holes cut his lead to two with two to play.

But he steadied the ship with a par on the 17th and then closed out the win with a par on 18.

The victory was Woods’s first since his win at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational in August 2013.

Meanwhile England’s Olympic champion Justin Rose ensured he walks off with the FedEx Cup playoff title after finishing on six under for a share of fourth.
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Inside a hidden vault in Los Angeles, California, is a treasure trove of cars from around the world. It’s the collection of the Petersen Automotive Museum, and it is now open to the public. As Faiza Elmasry tells us, visiting the vault is like traveling back in time, exploring the history of auto-making. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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The consequences of Afghanistan’s increasingly deadly war are weighing heaviest on the nation’s civilians, with women bearing the brunt of the violence. The Taliban banned music and girls education, and restricted outdoor activities of women when the group was controlling most of Afghanistan.

But violence and social pressures have not deterred members of the country’s nascent orchestra of mostly young girls from using music to “heal wounds” and promote women’s rights in the strictly conservative Muslim society.

The ensemble, known as Zohra, was founded in 2014 as part of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) in Kabul, where suicide bombings lately have become routine.

​Hope and music

Students and trainers are not losing hope and regularly come to the city’s only institute to rehearse and learn new lessons, says Ahmed Naser Sarmast, the director of ANIM and the founder of the orchestra. Zohra is the name of a music goddess in Persian literature, he explained.

The musicologist spoke to VOA while visiting neighboring Pakistan earlier this month with the young ensemble to perform in Islamabad as part of celebrations marking the 99th anniversary of Afghanistan’s Independence Day. Kabul’s embassy in Islamabad organized and arranged for the orchestra’s first visit to Pakistan.

Despite the many challenges in Afghanistan, Sarmast said, student enrollment has consistently grown and more parents are bringing their children to the institute to study music. Around 300 students are studying not only music at the institute but other subjects, including the Quran, he said.

​Advances for women

Negin Khpolwak, the orchestra’s first woman conductor, says Afghanistan has made significant advances in terms of promoting women’s rights in the past 17 years. She says there is a need to sustain the momentum irrespective of rising violence.

“We need to stand up to protect those gains and we need to open the doors for other Afghan girls,” Khpolwak said when asked whether deadly attacks around the country are reversing the gains women have made.

But violence alone is not the only challenge for women and girls, especially those who want to study music, she said.

“When you are going in the street with your instrument to the school and they are saying bad words to you and if you are giving a concert in public they are telling the bad words to you. But we are not caring about it,” Khpolwak said.

​Ethnic groups help each other

Sarmast says that girls and boys in the orchestra come from different Afghan ethnic groups and they help each other when needed. 

“It’s hope for the future,” he said.

Ethnic rivalries have been a hallmark of hostilities in Afghanistan and continue to pose a challenge to efforts promoting peace and stability.

“I strongly believe without arts and culture there cannot be security and we are using the soft power of music to make a small contribution to bringing peace and stability in Afghanistan and at the same time using this beautiful, if I can call it a beautiful weapon, to transform our community,” the director said.

Some of the members of the Afghan orchestra were born and brought up in refugee camps in Pakistan, which still hosts around 3 million registered and unregistered Afghan families displaced by years of war, poverty, persecution and drought.

“We are using the healing power of music to look after the wounds of the Afghan people as well as the Pakistani people. We are here with the message of peace, brotherhood and freedom,” Sarmast said.

Afghanistan and Pakistan have experienced years of terrorist attacks, including massive casualties on both sides of their long shared border. Bilateral relations are marred by mistrust and suspicion.

The countries blame each other for supporting terrorist attacks. Afghans allege that sanctuaries in Pakistan have enabled Taliban insurgents to sustain and expand their violent acts inside Afghanistan. Pakistan rejects the charges.

The Islamist insurgency controls or is attempting to control nearly half of Afghanistan.
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The consequences of Afghanistan’s increasingly deadly war are weighing the heaviest on the nation’s civilians. But violence and social pressures have not deterred members of the country’s nascent orchestra of mostly young girls from using music to “heal wounds” and promote women’s rights in the strictly conservative Muslim society. Ayaz Gul reports from Islamabad.
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The most beautiful art is born where there is pain. This idea became the moving force behind the success of Iranian-born twin sisters Bahareh and Farzaneh Safarani. They moved to Boston from Tehran in order to advance their art and show it to the world, and they never regretted the decision. Karina Bafradzhian has the story.
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