Australian actress Cate Blanchett says she is bewildered by Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s silence over the atrocities being committed against Rohingya Muslims.

More than 670,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar have sought safety across the border in Bangladesh since August 2017, after a military campaign against the minority group that a U.N. official has previously called genocide.

Oscar-winning actress Blanchett visited some of the displaced Muslims from Myanmar last week in her capacity as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador.  The Australian star warns that thousands of refugees are at risk of disease and starvation as the monsoon season approaches.  The Rohingya are not recognized as citizens by Myanmar and have lived under a segregated ethnic system in the country’s western Rakhine state for decades.

Blanchett, who is also goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), is criticizing Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s de facto leader, for not speaking out over the crisis.

​“It is bewildering, is it not, that someone who has been such a fighter for even a fragile democracy, someone who upholds human rights, does not seem to be speaking out more clearly about the atrocities that are so very clearly happening under her watch.  The most pressing thing for me is the need to support the refugees in the very immediate present as the monsoon comes.  Obviously, political solutions are absolutely vital,” Blanchett said.

Aung San Suu Kyi was in Australia earlier this month for the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, where she was also criticized by the Malaysian Prime Minister.  In unusually stern language, Najib Razak said Myanmar’s treatment of Rohingya Muslims put them at risk of radicalization by extremists because they have no hope for the future.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Aung San Suu Kyi had addressed the controversy during private talks with other South-East Asian leaders in Sydney.  

Aung San Suu Kyi was kept under house arrest for many years by Myanmar’s military dictators before the country embraced democracy.  The author and winner of a Nobel Peace Prize was widely thought to be the champion of human rights and tolerance in Myanmar, although her reputation has clearly been dented by the Rohingya crisis.

 
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Two Asian-American photographers from New York traveled to the deep south — The Mississippi Delta — to explore the roots of a seldom-mentioned, but long-established Chinese community. Their images explore the diverse contributions and experiences of both native-born and immigrant residents. But the young photographers’ journey is also a story of self-identity in an environment far from home.
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We’re on the move with the five most popular songs in the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles chart, for the week ending March 24, 2018.

It’s always a good week when we welcome a new song, and this one is already setting records.

Number 5: Bebe Rexha & Florida Georgia Line “Meant To Be”

Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line are your Top Five newcomers this week, as “Meant To Be” rises two slots to fifth place.

This song comes with a pedigree: It’s now in its 16th week atop the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. That’s the longest reign in that chart’s history for a song with a lead female vocal. Ironically, it was originally released on the contemporary hit radio format … not country.

Number 4: Post Malone Featuring Ty Dolla $ign “Psycho”

Post Malone and Ty Dolla $ign back off two slots to fourth place with “Psycho.” 

Post’s next album “Beerbongs & Bentleys” has been a long time coming …and we still don’t have a release date. However, he’s now offering two different beer bongs on his merchandise page for $20 apiece … so that new album can’t be too far off, can it?

Number 3: Bruno Mars & Cardi B “Finesse”

Bruno Mars and Cardi B take over third place with “Finesse,” and Cardi just gave us her unfiltered opinion of the #MeToo movement.

Speaking with Cosmopolitan magazine, Cardi said she doesn’t feel the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements will have much effect on the hip hop scene. She says sexual favors were expected back when she was trying to break into videos, and if women spoke up they were belittled. Cardi also doesn’t feel that male producers and directors have learned much from anti-harassment initiatives … they’re just scared.

Number 2: Ed Sheeran “Perfect”

Ed Sheeran recovers a slot to second place with “Perfect.” Ed’s plans to build a chapel on his English estate may be foiled by newts. Ed submitted an application to the Suffolk Coastal District Council, but neighbors worry about the planned structure’s impact on the crested newt population. The little amphibians are a protected species.

Number 1: Drake “God’s Plan”

Drake heads the hit list for a seventh week with “God’s Plan.” Last year, author Margaret Atwood suggested that Drake should appear in the TV adaptation of her novel The Handmaid’s Tale. On March 18, cast members made their own appeals for Drake to take a cameo role in the dystopian show. Season 2 releases on April 25 on Hulu … without Drake, as far as we know.

We’ll be back next week with a new lineup!

 
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Ramona Isbell is worried. What will people say when they find out? After all, she mostly kept her secret for more than 50 years.

The practices. The out-of-town — and out-of-country — travel. Her role as a hidden figure in a lesser-known aspect of integration brought on by the civil rights movement.

Her life as one of the country’s first black female professional wrestlers.

“I liked the freedom, I liked the money, I liked the travel, and I had fun,” Isbell said.

A new documentary explores the role of black women recruited as professional wrestlers in the 1950s and 1960s. Columbus was an epicenter for the female wrestlers thanks to promoter Billy Wolfe.

Lady Wrestler: The Amazing, Untold Story of African-American Women in the Ring debuts Thursday at Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the Arts.

Filmmaker Chris Bournea said people like Isbell wrestled not only before women were deemed capable of athletic accomplishments, but before blacks had civil rights in many places.

They also didn’t talk a lot about what they did, perhaps concerned about others’ reactions. And when they were finished, they wanted to move on with their lives.

Bournea, who is black, grew up in Columbus without ever hearing the stories. After he learned of them as a journalist about a decade ago, he knew he had to do something.

“Awareness needed to be brought to these women’s accomplishments,” Bournea said.

The driving force behind their recruitment was Wolfe, a former wrestler and trainer, who was white. A gambler, cigar smoker and womanizer, he was a classic American hustler, said Jeff Leen, a Washington Post reporter whose 2009 book on Wolfe’s wife, wrestler Mildred Burke, The Queen of the Ring offers a comprehensive history of the early years of women’s professional wrestling.

Whatever else he was, though, Wolfe wasn’t prejudiced.

Wolfe didn’t care if his wrestlers “were straight or gay, black or white,” Leen said. “He cared if they were a great dynamic performer who was going to put butts in the seat and make him money.”

He also wanted real athletes, despite the staged matches, and required women to work out diligently.

The matches promoted by Wolfe preceded the Glorious Women of Wrestling, or GLOW, syndicated TV promotion of the 1980s, now the subject of a Netflix comedy series.

Bournea said he has planned screenings in other cities with large professional wrestling fan bases and will then release the film on Amazon.

Life in the ring

Isbell signed with Wolfe in Columbus in 1961 in her early 20s, one of a few dozen black women that wrestled for Wolfe, in addition to many white women.

Isbell practiced three times a week, and wrestled in modified one-piece swimsuits. She appeared throughout the U.S., wrestling white women in northern cities like Detroit, and black women only in the Jim Crow South. She made anywhere from $100 to $400 a match.

Isbell also saw the world, wrestling in matches in Australia, Japan and Nigeria. Along the way she raised four children, who were vaguely aware of what their mom was up to. She wrestled into the 1970s, with a final appearance in a promotion in California in the 1980s. By then she was working for the state, retiring as a purchasing agent with the Ohio Industrial Commission.

Now 78, she keeps fit through yard work, walks in the park, and exercising on a treadmill in her east-side Columbus home.

Next month, she plans to attend an annual professional wrestling reunion in Las Vegas held by the Cauliflower Alley Club, a pro-wrestling preservation society.

News of her exploits is leaking out as word of the documentary grows in Columbus. But that doesn’t stop Isbell from considering people’s reaction.

“That’s why I’m worried now,” Isbell said with a laugh. “What are they going to say at church?”
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Inmates from an eastern Iowa prison have spent weeks learning German and perfecting inflections to make their New York City opera debut in a broadcast performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio.

Heartbeat Opera invited the Oakdale Community Choir to perform the Prisoner’s Chorus for its New York City live production in May.

Production Director Ethan Heard traveled to the medium-security prison in Coralville, Iowa, on Wednesday to record the choir, comprised of 40 inmates and 30 community members. It’s among six choirs being recorded singing for a pivotal scene.

Inmate Shane Kendrick says any humanizing depiction of inmates is good for them and the community that they’ll re-enter.

Heard tells the Iowa City Press-Citizen that the idea to reimagine Fidelio came to him when he began exploring injustice in today’s prison system.
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The death this month of 45-year-old Sudan, the last male northern white rhino on the planet, rings the alarm on the imminent extinction of other endangered animals. The news also gives a renewed urgency to Kate Brooks’ documentary, “The Last Animals,” about the threat poaching poses to the dwindling populations of rhinos and elephants. The film was showcased at the environmental film festival in Washington. VOA’s Penelope Poulou has more.
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Bill Cosby’s lawyers on Thursday asked the judge in his upcoming sexual assault retrial to step aside, arguing the judge could be seen as biased because his wife is a social worker who has described herself as an “activist and advocate for assault victims.”

Cosby’s lawyers contend some of Judge Steven O’Neill’s recent pretrial rulings could give the appearance he’s being influenced by his wife’s work, particularly his decision last week to let prosecutors have up to five additional accusers testify when he allowed just one at the first trial.

O’Neill did not immediately rule on the request. He and his wife, Deborah, did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Prosecutors called the recusal request “a thinly veiled attempt to delay and pollute the jury pool.”

Deborah O’Neill is a psychotherapist at the University of Pennsylvania and coordinates a team providing care, support and advocacy for student sexual assault victims. In 2012, she wrote her doctoral dissertation on acquaintance rape, the type of assault at issue in Cosby’s criminal case.

Last year, Cosby’s lawyers said, Deborah O’Neill gave money to a group linked to an organization that’s planning a protest outside the retrial.

Cosby has pleaded not guilty to charges he drugged and molested former Temple University athletics administrator Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004.

Cosby’s first trial ended in a hung jury last year. Jury selection in his retrial is scheduled to start April 2.

Seeking a new judge is the latest attempt the 80-year-old Cosby’s retooled defense team has made to push back the start of his retrial.

O’Neill rejected a request last week to delay the retrial at least three months so Cosby’s lawyers, led by former Michael Jackson lawyer Tom Mesereau, could have more time to prepare for the five additional accuser witnesses.

Cosby’s wife, Camille, blasted O’Neill after the first trial as “overtly arrogant and collaborating with the district attorney,” but his lawyers back then never objected to him presiding over the case.

Lawyers’ arguments

Making the case that Deborah O’Neill’s work should disqualify her husband could be tough.

Cosby’s new legal team cited just one relevant case. But in that case, a judge’s spouse worked as a deputy district attorney. The team also referenced judicial rules that bar judges from letting family interests influence their conduct.

If O’Neill refuses to drop out, Cosby’s lawyers said he should let them appeal the decision right away.

The lawyers argued in their filings that O’Neill first gave an appearance of bias at the first trial when he refused to let jurors hear from a woman who claimed Constand told her she wanted to falsely accuse a famous person of sexual misconduct so she could sue and get money.

They also cited O’Neill’s insistence that the retrial go on, despite telephone records, travel itineraries and other evidence showing the alleged assault could not have happened in January 2004, when Constand says it did, and thus falls outside the statute of limitations. O’Neill said he would leave that for the jury to decide.

The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission, which Constand has done.
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The 700-pound sea lion blinked in the sun, sniffed the sea air and then lazily shifted to the edge of the truck bed and plopped onto the beach below.

Freed from the cage that carried him to the ocean, the massive marine mammal shuffled into the surf, looked left, looked right and then started swimming north as a collective groan went up from wildlife officials who watched from the shore.

After two days spent trapping and relocating the animal designated #U253, he was headed back to where he started — an Oregon river 130 miles (209 kilometers) from the Pacific Ocean that has become an all-you-can-eat fish buffet for hungry sea lions.

“I think he’s saying, ‘Ah, crap! I’ve got to swim all the way back?’” said Bryan Wright, an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife scientist.

It’s a frustrating dance between California sea lions and Oregon wildlife managers that’s become all too familiar in recent months. The state is trying to evict dozens of the federally protected animals from an inland river where they feast on salmon and steelhead that are listed under the Endangered Species Act.

The bizarre survival war has intensified recently as the sea lion population rebounds and fish populations decline in the Pacific Northwest.

The sea lions breed each summer off Southern California and northern Mexico, then the males cruise up the Pacific Coast to forage. Hunted for their thick fur, the mammals’ numbers dropped dramatically but have rebounded from 30,000 in the late 1960s to about 300,000 today due to the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act.

With their numbers growing, the dog-faced pinnipeds are venturing ever farther inland on the watery highways of the Columbia River and its tributaries in Oregon and Washington — and their appetite is having disastrous consequences, scientists say.

In Oregon, the sea lions are intercepting protected fish on their way to spawning grounds above Willamette Falls, a horseshoe-shaped waterfall about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Portland. Last winter, a record-low 512 wild winter steelhead completed the journey, said Shaun Clements, the state wildlife agency’s senior policy adviser.

Less than 30 years ago, that number was more than 15,000, according to state numbers.

“We’re estimating that there’s a 90 percent probability that one of the populations in the Willamette River could go extinct if sea lion predation continues unchecked,” he said. “Of all the adults that are returning to the falls here, a quarter of them are getting eaten.”

Clements estimates the sea lions also are eating about 9 percent of the spring chinook salmon, a species prized by Native American tribes still allowed to fish for them.

Oregon wildlife managers say sea lions are beginning to move into even smaller tributaries where they had never been seen before and where some of the healthiest stocks of the threatened fish exist. The mammals also have been spotted in small rivers in Washington state that are home to fragile fish populations.

California sea lions are not listed under the Endangered Species Act, but killing them requires special authorization under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which was changed to address the issue of fish predation.

Biologists this spring started trapping the sea lions in the Willamette River and releasing them at the coast. They also have applied with the federal government to kill the worst offenders to protect the fish runs.

Native tribes, which have fished for salmon and steelhead for generations, support limited sea lion kills because of the cultural value of the fish, said Doug Hatch, a senior fisheries scientist with the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission.

“You’re pitting this protected population that has been fully recovered against these Endangered Species Act-listed fish,” Hatch said. “We think it’s an easy choice.”

If U.S. officials grant the request, the trap-and-kill program would expand a similar and highly controversial effort on another major Pacific Northwest river. Oregon and Washington wildlife managers are allowed to kill up to 93 sea lions trapped each year at Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River under certain conditions.

In the past decade, the agency has removed 190 sea lions there. Of those, 168 were euthanized, seven died in accidents during trapping and 15 were placed in captivity, according to state data.

The Humane Society of the United States sued over the trap-and-kill program and may sue again if it’s allowed on the Willamette River, said Sharon Young, the organization’s field director for marine wildlife.

The animals are not the only problem facing wild winter steelhead and chinook salmon, she said.

Hydroelectric dams that block rivers, agricultural runoff, damage to spawning grounds and competition with hatchery-bred fish have all hurt the native species, Young said. And new sea lions will take the place of those that are killed, she added.

“It’s easier to say, ‘If I kill that sea lion, at least I keep him from eating that fish.’ But if you don’t deal with the cause of the problem, you’re not going to help the fish,” she said. “It’s like a treadmill of death. You kill one, and another one will come.”

While Oregon awaits word on the sea lions’ fate, wildlife managers are trapping them and hauling them to the ocean, which can sometimes seem futile.

Five days after his 2 ½-hour drive to the Oregon coast, #U253 was back at Willamette Falls, hungry for more fish.
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Time to check that mailbox.

Kensington Palace said Thursday that invitations for the wedding between Prince Harry and his American fiancée Meghan Markle have been dispatched.

Some 600 people have been invited to the May 19 nuptials at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. All 600 have also been invited to a lunchtime reception given by Queen Elizabeth II at St George’s Hall.

The invitations, which are beveled and gilded in gold along the edges, feature Prince Charles’ three-feather badge. They were made by Barnard & Westwood, which has held the Royal Warrant for printing and bookbinding since 1985.

Harry and Markle will also celebrate with some 200 guests at a private evening reception given by Prince Charles.

The palace declined to comment as to who is on the list.
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The Trump administration is facing off against AT&T to block the telephone giant from absorbing Time Warner, in a case that could shape how consumers get — and how much they pay for — streaming TV and movies.

Opening arguments come Thursday in the landmark antitrust case in federal court in Washington. The Justice Department has sued to block the $85 billion deal, saying it would hurt competition and consumers would have to pay more to watch their favorite shows, whether on a TV screen, smartphone or tablet.

AT&T insists the merger is needed to compete in a rapidly shifting marketplace as more people use streaming services like Netflix, Amazon and others. It denies the government’s assertion that the merger would limit choice and push up prices.
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Tommy Mcilhon is a college student and enjoys attending large music festivals around the United States. The latest event he has attended is the South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival in Austin, Texas. Besides thinking about music, he thinks about the mass shootings in crowds over the last few years.

“It does cross my mind every time I go to a show or large size or anything like that, that something like that could happen because it is a concern that is possible.” Mcilhon added, “It makes me more aware of what’s going on around me. I pay more attention to the people around me.”

Being more alert does not mean being more afraid, many SXSW attendees said.

“If I look around, are there cops around? Are there guardrails up? Do they have exit signs that are clearly posted? But does it ever deter me from going somewhere? No,” said Marilyn Sitorus, festival attendee from New York.

WATCH: First Responders Learn Lessons from Mass Shootings, Acts of Terror

Season for festivals

SXSW is one of many large festivals, fairs and outdoor concerts that will be taking place in the U.S. as the weather warms. 

First responders, such as police and paramedics, are preparing to make such events more secure. The mass shooting at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas last year and the 2016 Pulse night club shooting in Orlando are not the only events on the minds of Austin police officers.

“There have been some incidents around the globe and around the country where vehicles have been used as weapons in crowds, so we do have a lot of intersections that we’re using vehicles to block, and we also use dump trucks to block some of these intersections,” said Ely Reyes, assistant chief of police of the Austin Police Department.

In addition to police officers in uniform at the festival, there are also undercover officers that keep watch over the event. Festival attendees have special badges that are scanned before they can enter a venue.

​Prepared for the unexpected

If something catastrophic were to happen, paramedics are also prepared with portable mini hospitals on wheels.

“So we deploy medics on Polaris Rangers and motorcycles because they’re able to access the patient” and then move them to a waiting ambulance, said Wesley Hopkins, division chief for Austin Travis County EMS.

The Polaris Rangers are vehicles that look like miniature two-seat Jeeps with a cargo bed in the back for first aid supplies and a stretcher. They can get patients from inside a crowded environment to an ambulance nearby quickly.

“In context of mass shootings, whether it be the Las Vegas incident or the Pulse night club shooting, we know that having medics at a forward position so that they’re able to treat patients immediately so that we can be proactive as opposed to reactive and access those patients very quickly,” Hopkins said.

Tools onsite also help reduce the number of people who need to go to a hospital.

“So we set up basically a mini emergency room. It’s complete with shelter, water, power, we do a Wi-Fi network that’s kind of a higher band so that we’re able to monitor patients with an EKG or cardiac monitor.” Hopkins added, “The patient collection point allows us to treat patients on site. A lot of those patients will never see the emergency room.”

First responders say after every mass shooter event or act of terrorism, they learn from it and try to improve on security. Attendees are also becoming more security smart.

“Now it’s raising a lot more awareness that people are taking (paying) attention to it which is very important, and I can only see things getting better from here,” Mcilhon said.
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