Katinka Hosszu has a case full of medals.

She wants so much more.

From marketing marvel to ambitious businesswoman to fledgling union organizer, the Hungarian swimmer known as the “Iron Lady” knows how to make a splash – in and out of the pool.

Along with American star Katie Ledecky, Hosszu is perhaps the biggest name at the world championships this week, the home-country favorite whose face seemingly appears on every billboard around Budapest, whose every appearance at Duna Arena is accompanied by foot-stomping, flag-waving euphoria.

She lived up to the enormous expectations in her first event of the meet, winning the 200-meter individual medley Monday night.

“Katinka’s Gold!” blared the front-page headline on the country’s largest daily sports newspaper.

While Hosszu and her American husband-coach, Shane Tusup, have built a rapidly growing swimsuit and apparel company based on the “Iron Lady” moniker – it now has about 50 employees and is omnipresent in retail stores around Hungary – the 28-year-old has turned her sights to what she considers an even greater cause.

After governing body FINA changed its the rules to limit the number of events a swimmer could enter on the World Cup circuit, a capricious decision that seemed targeted specifically at Hosszu and her grueling program (that’s how she got her nickname, after all), the swimmer vowed to fight back.

“I’m obviously trying to do a lot more for swimming than what I do in the pool,” Hosszu said. “I think it’s important to put the same effort into it outside the pool.”

She formed the Global Association of Professional Swimmers (GAPS) and quickly drew attention by persuading more than two dozen of her fellow competitors to come on board, including such major stars as Australian sisters Cate and Bronte Campbell, Britain’s Adam Peaty, Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom and American Katie Meili.

Hosszu has been outspoken in her criticism of scandal-plagued FINA and seems intent on giving swimmers a much bigger voice in governing the sport.

“I’ve been talking to a lot of swimmers lately,” she said. “I had no idea that all over the world, swimmers from different continents, we really speak the same language.”

As swimming’s first millionaire based strictly on her race-prize earnings, Hosszu wants to spread the wealth to others. Given the sport’s enormous popularity during the Olympics and financial strides it made while riding the wave of Michael Phelps, she sees no reason for so many accomplished swimmers to be struggling to make ends meet.

“The main thing is for all these swimmers to come together,” Hosszu said. “That’s something that hasn’t happened before. I think if we can put more effort into swimming, we can push the sport even further.”

She’s still a bit vague about her goals, but it’s clear she wants to give swimmers the same sort of influence that athletes have in sports such as soccer and NBA basketball.

“I don’t think swimming should be watched only during the Olympics,” Hosszu went on. “We deserve to be treated as professional swimmers. We’re partners in this relationship.”

That Hosszu finds herself in such a prominent position would have seemed totally improbable after the 2012 London Olympics, when she was a medal favorite in several events but didn’t make the podium at all. She likely would have retired from the sport if not for Tusup, whom she had first met when both were swimming for the University of Southern California.

Tusup took over as her coach, becoming well known for his boisterous antics on deck, and their personal and professional relationship yielded an Olympics of redemption in Rio de Janeiro last summer. Hosszu won three golds and a silver, more than any other swimmer in individual events.

“I wouldn’t be where I am if it wasn’t for Shane,” Hosszu said.

Tusup returns the compliment, praising his wife for her commitment to the sport beyond winning more championships and selling more merchandise.

“It means so much more than a medal,” he said. “At the end of the day, you’re like, ‘Great, I did all those hours for this?’ The object itself is not that valuable. It’s what it does and what it means. For us, it’s the stories, the process, the journeys.”

Hosszu’s cause seemed to take on increased urgency during these championships.

At a meeting held last weekend in a luxury hotel along the Danube, FINA re-elected its 81-year-old president, Julio Maglione, to a third term after changing the rules to remove the age limits. The organization also retained another top official, first vice president Hussain al-Musallam, even though he is facing bribery allegations.

In Hosszu’s eyes, it’s time for swimmers to start cleaning up the sport.

It’s past time for them to get their rightful share.

“I’m not only talking about the top swimmers getting paid more,” she said. “I’m talking about swimmers trying to be professional, trying to make money from swimming. It should be the goal that all people who make the semifinals can make a living from swimming and not have to worry about their next job. They can just focus on swimming – be like basketball players and football players, just focusing on their sport.”
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The shocking announcement on July 26, 1985, came via press release.

Rock Hudson, age 59, tall, dark and undeniably handsome, was sick with AIDS, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, a disease that was, at the time, disproportionately killing gay men in the United States.

Just four months later, Hudson was dead. 

AIDS had begun to be recognized as a public-health crisis during the early 1980s, but the general public had relatively little knowledge about it. Little knowledge, but plenty of suspicion and fear. 

Despite a small, vocal community of activists calling for a government response to the crisis, AIDS was a deeply stigmatizing burden.

Most Americans believed the complex disease affected only gay men; it was some time before it became known that intravenous drug users, those who received blood transfusions containing the HIV virus and other groups also were at risk. 

President Ronald Reagan would not speak publicly about AIDS and the need to combat the disease for years after he took office in 1981.

He defended his administration’s anti-AIDS research spending during a news conference in September 1985, about two weeks before Rock Hudson died.

The president also expressed skepticism about whether children infected with the AIDS virus should be allowed to remain in school.

That worsened the stigma for those who were afflicted, and it diluted the advice of U.S. government health officials who said “casual person-to-person contact, as would occur among schoolchildren, appears to pose no risk.” 

By 1985, AIDS had killed an estimated 12,000 or more Americans, with a very high mortality rate among those infected.

That same year the U.S. government licensed a blood test to detect the AIDS virus and screening of the national blood supply began, but overall efforts to find drugs to treat, and perhaps cure, sufferers were still moving slowly. 

Double life 

Since his first days in Hollywood in his 20s, rumors about Hudson’s sexual preferences had been common. To suppress a former lover’s threats to expose him as homosexual, and thus very likely wreck his budding film career, Hudson married Phyllis Gates, his business agent’s secretary, in 1955.

Initially, even his wife did not know that her husband was living a lie. 

The union lasted only three years. Gates was silent about their relationship for a quarter-century, but she wrote a book in 1987 that depicted her husband as bisexual, but also indicated that their marriage included sex. 

After his marriage failed, Hudson went on to star in one of his best known films, an unforgettable pairing with actress Doris Day in the comic romance Pillow Talk. He was the main attraction in literally scores of films during the 1950s, ’60s and early ’70s, and also had a number of popular television roles. 

Although his homosexuality was kept secret – Hudson once said that coming out as gay would have been “career suicide” – some of his close friends, including Doris Day, were fully aware of his private life. Another great friend of his in Hollywood was Elizabeth Taylor, a former co-star. 

Worldwide scope of epidemic 

After Hudson died in October 1985, Taylor became an AIDS activist and formed a foundation to raise funds for research on how to combat AIDS. By the late 1980s AIDS was beginning to be known as no longer simply a “gay scourge,” but a massive threat to public health worldwide. 

Taylor gained fame as a humanitarian for her work on anti-AIDS research, which continued until her death in 2011. She has been credited with helping persuade the scientific establishment to focus more attention on the disease, and for informing the public that AIDS was not a moral stigma to hide due to a gay lifestyle.  

Since the AIDS epidemic began, more than 70 million people around the world have been infected with the HIV virus, and more than 35 million have died, according to the World Health Organization.

Sub-Saharan Africa remains the area most severely affected by AIDS, which still kills about 1 million people per year worldwide. 

Thanks in large part to improved detection and more effective medications and treatment, the American share of the AIDS toll has declined sharply. Since the epidemic began, about 675,000 people in the United States have died of HIV/AIDS. 

In less than a decade, the number of HIV infections in the United States has declined 18 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Still, more than one million Americans are living with HIV, and one in seven of them are unaware they have the virus.

 
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Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro’s attempt to use Latin hit “Despacito” – which means ‘slowly’ – to inject some cool into his controversial new congress has backfired quickly.

Maduro’s unpopular leftist government on Sunday promoted a remixed version of “Despacito” to encourage Venezuelans to vote for the Constituent Assembly, which will have powers to rewrite the national charter and supersede other institutions.

“Our call to the ‘Constituent Assembly’ only seeks to unite the country … Despacito!” goes the Socialist Party-sanctioned remix of the catchy dance song, which was played during Maduro’s weekly televised show.

“What do you think, eh? Is this video approved?” a grinning and clapping Maduro called out to the crowd, which roared back in approval.

But Puerto Rican singers Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee on Monday said they do not approve at all.

“At no point was I asked, nor did I authorize, the use or the change in lyrics of “Despacito” for political ambitions, and much less in the middle of a deplorable situation that Venezuela, a country I love so much, is living,” Fonsi said in a message posted on Twitter.

Daddy Yankee, meanwhile, posted a picture of Maduro with a big red cross over it on Instagram.

“That you illegally appropriate a song (Despacito) does not compare with the crimes you commit and have committed in Venezuela. Your dictatorial regime is a joke, not only for my Venezuelan brothers, but for the entire world,” he said. “With this nefarious marketing plan, you only highlight your fascist ideal.”

Millions of Venezuelans have been staging months of protests against Maduro, a former bus driver and union leader narrowly elected to replace the late Hugo Chavez in 2013.

Some 100 people have died in the unrest, which has further hammered an imploding economy that is running short of food and medicine.

Critics say Maduro is trying to cement a dictatorship by pushing forward with the Constituent Assembly this Sunday. He says it is the only way to bring peace back to the convulsed nation.
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The hijab — one of the most visible signs of Islamic culture — is going mainstream with advertisers, media giants and fashion firms promoting images of the traditional headscarf in ever more ways.

Last week, Apple previewed 12 new emoji characters to be launched later this year, one of a woman wearing a hijab.

Major fashion brands from American Eagle to Nike are creating hijabs, while hijab-wearing models have started gracing Western catwalks and the covers of top fashion magazines.

Many Muslim women cover their heads in public with the hijab as a sign of modesty, although some critics see it as a sign of female oppression. But there is one thing most can agree on: when it comes to the hijab, there is money to be made.

“In terms of the bottom line — absolutely they’re [young Muslims] good for business … it’s a huge market and they are incredibly brand savvy, so they want to spend their money,” said Shelina Janmohamed, vice president of Ogilvy Noor, a consultancy offering advice on how to build brands that appeal to Muslim audiences.

Nike announced it is using its prowess in the sports and leisure market to launch a breathable mesh hijab in spring 2018, becoming the first major sports apparel maker to offer a traditional Islamic head scarf designed for competition.

In June, Vogue Arabia featured on its cover the first hijabi model to walk the international runway, Somali-American Halima Aden, who gained international attention last year when she wore a hijab and burkini during the Miss Minnesota USA pageant.

“Every little girl deserves to see a role model that’s dressed like her, resembles her, or even has the same characteristics as her,” Aden said in a video on her Instagram account.

Western advertising

Hijabs have also become more visible in Western advertising campaigns for popular retailers like H&M and Gap.

“Brands especially are in a very strategic and potent position to propel that social good, to change the attitudes of society and really push us forward and take us to that next step,” Amani al-Khatahtbeh, founder of online publication MuslimGirl.com, said by phone from New York.

In Nigeria, a medical student has become an Instagram sensation for posting images of a hijab-wearing Barbie, describing hers as a “modest doll” — unlike the traditional version. And mothers in Pittsburgh have started making and selling hijabs for Barbies in a bid to make play more inclusive.

However, al-Khatahtbeh warned of the potential for the young Muslim market to be exploited just for profit without any effort to promote acceptance and integration.

“It can easily become exploitative by profiting off of communities that are being targeted right now, or it could be a moment that we turn into a very, very empowering one,” she told Reuters.

Emojis and fashion

Frustrated she could not find an image to represent her and her friends on her iPhone keypad, Saudi teenager, Rayouf Alhumedhi, started an online campaign, the Hijab Emoji Project.

She proposed the idea of the emoji last year to coding consortium Unicode that manages the development of new emojis, Alhumedhi said on her campaign’s website, helping to prompt Apple to create its hijab-wearing emoji.

“It’s only really in the last 18 to 24 months — perhaps three years — that bigger mainstream brands have started to realize that young Muslim consumers are really an exciting opportunity,” said Janmohamed of Ogilvy Noor.

A global Islamic economy report conducted by Thomson Reuters showed that in 2015, revenues from “modest fashion” bought by Muslim women was were estimated at $44 billion, with designers Dolce & Gabbana, Uniqlo and Burberry entering the industry.

Janmohamed, author of the memoir “Love in a Headscarf,” sees young hijabi representation in the digital communications and fashion space a step forward for tolerance.

“It feels particularly empowering for young people to see themselves represented. So today I think it is the least that consumers expect and anyone that doesn’t do it is actually falling behind.”
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Linkin Park said their hearts are broken following the death of lead singer Chester Bennington, who died by hanging last week.

The rock band said Monday that the “shock waves of grief and denial are still sweeping through our family as we come to grips with what has happened.”

Bennington, who was 41, hanged himself from a bedroom door in his home near Los Angeles.

The band said Bennington “touched so many lives, maybe even more than you realized.”

Linkin Park had planned to launch a tour this week, but canceled it following Bennington’s death. Their hits include “In the End” and “Numb.”

 
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Jordan Spieth won golf’s British Open on Sunday, outdueling fellow American Matt Kuchar over the final holes to capture his third major championship.

Spieth, just shy of turning 24 in the coming week, won the tournament at the Royal Birkdale course in Lancashire, England by three shots over the 39-year-old Kuchar, long a fixture on the world golf scene.  

Spieth, who won the Master’s and U.S. Open championships in 2015, led the British tournament by three shots over Kuchar after the third round and both carded final round scores of 69, one under par.

But through 13 holes Sunday, Kuchar had pulled a shot ahead of Spieth before he regained control with three birdies and an eagle on the 14th to 17th holes to win the Claret Jug, the tournament’s signature trophy.

Three different golfers have now won the first three major tournaments this year, with Spain’s Sergio Garcia winning the Master’s in April and American Brooks Koepka the U.S. Open in June. The last of the sport’s four annual major championships, the Professional Golfers’ Association tournament, will be contested next month.

 
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You may have heard of the downward dog pose in yoga, or the cobra or the cow. Now, get ready for the goat, it’s goat yoga. Faith Lapidus explains.
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The U.S., Canada and Mexico have joined forces for a bid to host the 2026 Football World Cup. If they get the nod, the three nations would be the first joint hosts of football’s (soccer’s) most prestigious international tournament. The bid comes as the sport continues to gain in popularity with American kids, both boys and girls — especially as the U.S. Women’s Team has won several World Cup Titles . Behzod Muhammadiy has this report from a Virginia children’s tournament.
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A New Jersey resident with a degree in accounting is this year’s World Series of Poker champion.

Scott Blumstein won the series’ marquee no-limit Texas Hold ‘em main event early Sunday in Las Vegas and is now more than $8.1 million richer. The 25-year-old Blumstein eliminated Pennsylvania’s Daniel Ott on the 246th hand of the final table, more than 60 hands with just the two of them with bricks of bills and a gold bracelet separating them.

Blumstein’s final hand of an ace of hearts and a two of diamonds was stronger than that of Ott, who went all in with an ace of diamonds and an eight of diamonds. The community cards were a jack of spades, a six of spades, a five of hearts, a seven of hearts and a two of hearts. 

Four countries represented at final table

Blumstein, Ott and seven other players reached the final table after having bested more than 7,200 participants. Unlike the past several years, the final nine players didn’t have to wait until November to take their spots at the final table. Each of them was guaranteed at least $1 million. 

The famed tournament marked the end of this year’s series, in which dozens of tournaments drew 120,995 entrants from around the world, shattering attendance records. The men who made the final table represented the United States, Argentina, France and Britain.

Top two were rookies at main event

Ott, of Altoona, Pennsylvania, earned $4.7 million. Neither he nor Blumstein, of Brigantine, New Jersey, had previously played at the main event. 

Both had dozens of supporters who cheered and gasped — depending on the hand — throughout the night. Some in Team Blumstein sported T-shirts that wondered “Is this real” and others that declared “I don’t like folding.”

Blumstein, a graduate of Temple University, is a regular on New Jersey online poker sites but had never cashed in the World Series of Poker. His total live winnings stood at more than $300,000 before Sunday. Besides his multimillion-dollar payout, he also took home a bracelet made from white and yellow gold and diamonds and rubies.
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Chris Froome stands on the doorstep of the Tour de France’s greatest champions.

Sewing up his fourth Tour crown with a cool-as-a-cucumber ride in a high-pressure time trial in heat-baked Marseille on Saturday means he needs just one victory more to join the record-holders who have five.

His winning margin in this Tour, 54 seconds over Rigoberto Uran of Colombia going into Sunday’s processional final stage, is narrower than Froome’s previous wins in 2013, 2015 and 2016. It is the first he has won by less than one minute.

Over the three weeks, Froome executed fewer of his trademark devastating accelerations in the high mountains. He ran out of gas and temporarily lost the race lead on a super-steep climb in the Pyrenees. He didn’t win any of the 20 stages before Sunday’s Stage 21, which is traditionally a peaceful ride into Paris with only the sprinters dashing for the line at the end, for the bragging right of winning the stage on the Champs-Elysees.

But Froome at 90 or 95 percent of his previous best still proved plenty.

Certainly good enough to be able to start dreaming of win No. 5 — and of joining the exalted company of Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain. They have been the joint leaders since Lance Armstrong’s string of seven doping-assisted victories was expunged from the history of the 114-year-old race.

“It’s a huge honor just to be mentioned in the same sentence as the greats,” Froome said, adding that he had newfound appreciation for the five-time winners. “It certainly isn’t getting easier each year.”

Crowd backed Bardet

Yet he made the deciding time trial look easy enough. To boos and whistles from the partisan crowd backing Romain Bardet, the French rider who was only 23 seconds behind him in the overall standings, Froome set off last from the Stade Velodrome football stadium. Bardet had set off two minutes ahead of him.

Froome rode so strongly that by the end, he had Bardet in his sights. The French rider wilted on the twisting, tricky course with long, wind-affected straightaways by the sea and a short sharp uphill to Notre-Dame de la Garde cathedral, the dominant landmark in France’s second-largest city.

The suspense was quickly over. By the first time check, after just 10 kilometers (six miles) of riding, Froome was already 43 seconds quicker than Bardet. The only question became whether Bardet would even be able to save a place for himself on the podium. He did, by the narrowest of margins. Just one second was all that separated his third place from Mikel Landa of Spain, Froome’s teammate in fourth.

“It’s just an amazing feeling,” Froome said. “It was so close coming into this TT. This was my closest Tour de France, the most hard-fought between the riders. … I didn’t think it would come down to this TT in Marseille. There was a bit of pressure but, for me, it’s always a good thing having pressure.”

Uran was far quicker than Bardet over the 22.5-kilometer (14-mile) stage, despite overshooting a left-hand bend before the stadium finish and ricocheting off barriers. He vaulted over Bardet in the overall standings, into the runner-up spot. And with that, the 104th Tour had its podium. All that’s left for the 167 survivors — from 198 who started on July 1 — is to cross the line in Paris.

No risks

“Today I did not take risks, I took all the bends carefully. You can lose everything on a day like this,” Froome said.

Bardet endured his first bad day of the three grueling weeks. He said he woke up feeling poorly on Saturday, “and I paid for it, in cash.”

Twice a runner-up at the Giro d’Italia, Uran added another second-place finish at a Grand Tour to his resume.

The time trial was won by Polish rider Maciej Bodnar, who covered the distance at an average speed of nearly 48 kph (30 mph) on the special aerodynamic bikes the riders used for the discipline. Froome has long excelled in it, winning Olympic bronzes in 2012 and 2016.

“I still can’t believe it,” Bodnar said. “Last year was close and this year was even closer, and now I finally get one. It’s amazing.”

Froome’s teammate, Michal Kwiatkowski, placed second, one second slower than Bodnar. Froome was third, just six seconds off what could have been a stage win to adorn his Tour crown.

But Froome wasn’t even slightly bothered about that.

He’d known from the start in Germany that this Tour would be unusual and likely open, because it had few mountain-top finishes, not huge amounts of time-trial kilometers, and many tricky days over all five of France’s mountain ranges. Unlike at previous Tours won with knockout blows in the high peaks, this victory had to be pieced together bit-by-bit like a jigsaw puzzle.

“Just chipping away on every stage,” he said. “It was always the tactic to ride a three-week race and basically not to go out there on one day with the aim of trying to blow the race apart and smash it.”
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Actor John Heard, whose many roles included the father in the Home Alone series and a corrupt detective in The Sopranos, has died. He was 71.

His death was confirmed Saturday by the Santa Clara Medical Examiner’s office in California. TMZ reported that Heard, who lived in southern California, was found at a Palo Alto, California, hotel where he was recovering from back surgery.

Heard played Peter McCallister, the father of Kevin, played by Macaulay Culkin, in Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. He said in later interviews that he sought a movie with kids in it so his son, age 5 at the time, could come to the set and have someone to play with.

After it became a big hit, he was reluctant to revisit the role but his agent convinced him the money was too good to pass up.

“I didn’t want to be the Home Alone dad for the rest of my life,” he told Yahoo News in 2013.

He was born March 7, 1946, in Washington, D.C., and grew up performing in local theater. One of his memorable early roles was as a disabled Vietnam War veteran in the 1981 film Cutter’s Way.

He was active in film for the next decade, playing Tom Hanks’ rival in Big, actress Geraldine Page’s son in The Trip to Bountiful and in the movies The Pelican Brief, Beaches, Gladiator, Rambling Rose and After Hours.

He earned an Emmy nomination for playing Vin Makazian in The Sopranos. Television also kept him busy. He acted in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Elementary, Prison Break, Modern Family and Entourage. One of his favorite jobs came in the original Sharknado television movie in 2013.

“I knew it was going to be a cult classic,” he told the Baltimore Media Blog last year. “It’s just ridiculous. I thought it would replace people calling me the `Home Alone’ dad.”

Fellow actor Michael McKean paid tribute on Twitter Saturday: “RIP John Heard. Never not good.”

Heard was married and divorced three times, including briefly to actress Margot Kidder. He had three children.
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Food halls, communal dining spaces featuring a variety of food vendors under one roof, are becoming a popular option for dining out in New York City. In a city where high rents and operating costs have made it difficult for aspiring restaurateurs to establish themselves, food halls offer an alternative path to profit. Foodies, culinary upstarts and investors are flocking to get a seat at the table. VOA reporter Tina Trinh explores.
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You may have seen her in magazines, modeling the latest fashions, whether they be for men or women. Rain Dove is becoming a fashion icon, and along the way, altering perceptions of masculinity and femininity. VOA’s Maxim Moskalkov profiles this gender-bending model.
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