The players from Venezuela look as happy as any other team, dancing to “Shake Your Groove Thing” with the tournament mascot before a win over Mexico and raising the roof to “Taking Care of Business” before a loss to Canada.

They go through all the baseball routines — greeting a slugger after a home run, blessing themselves before at-bats and cheering their pitcher. When Omar “Spark Plug” Romero cracked a game-ending hit to beat the Dominican Republic 3-2 on Monday night, teammates mobbed him on the field, just as any other team would.

 

But they might not be at the Little League World Series were it not for the support of a couple of major league players from their home country.

 

“In a way, this helps them appreciate this in a different way,” Carolinne Valbuena, the mother of third baseman Jhann Bozo, said through an interpreter.

First to help is Odor

 

Venezuela has been caught in internal strife, pitting socialist President Nicolas Maduro against an opposition-led congress increasingly stripped of power. Underlying the civil unrest is a country living in poverty and beset by runaway inflation.

 

In addition, Maduro’s government has been at odds with the Trump administration. The U.S. president said this month he would not rule out a “military option” in Venezuela.

 

Texas Rangers second baseman Rougned Odor first learned to play baseball in Maracaibo, the town that’s home to the Venezuelan squad.

 

“I know everybody on that team, in that league,” Odor told The Associated Press in Texas this weekend. “And that’s why I tried to help those kids.”

 

The first step for the players was obtaining a visa to the U.S., and they had to go to Caracas, the nation’s capital, to get them. Odor paid for their flights.

 

Simply flying to Caracas, though, wasn’t enough to get the players to the Little League World Series. Visas to the U.S. run about $170.

Padres pitcher helps out

 

San Diego Padres pitcher Jhoulys Chacin is also from Maracaibo. He found out from a friend about the players’ financial plight and paid for all their visas.

 

Chacin’s Little League team lost to the Maracaibo team that went on to win the Little League World Series in 2000.

 

“I know how big a deal it is for the young guys … so they deserve to go,” Chacin said Sunday in San Diego. “I’m glad I could help them come here to play in the Little League World Series. That was one of my dreams when I was young.”

 

Still, there is a part of the Little League World Series experience that’s missing for most of the Venezuelan players. Only three parents of players on the team were able to make the trip.

 

And those three might not have made it if not for a donor from Venezuela who now lives in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, about a 30-minute drive to Williamsport. The man let them stay at his house, Valbuena said.

Doctor helps his home team

 

Javier Zerpa, who now lives in Maryland, was born in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, and he and his 12-year-old son have gone to each of the last nine Little League World Series. Zerpa and his son have become friends with the Venezuelan team. Although most of the parents are not there, Zerpa said, the kids are still happy to be on the field.

 

Canada coach Ryan Hefflick said the excitement of the Venezuelan team was evident as soon as it stepped on the field.

“They’re a great bunch of kids,” Hefflick said. “One of the boys on that team, I think his nickname is ‘Spark Plug.’ They’ve got a lot of energy.”

 
…

A Texas family who discovered their old Norman Rockwell work of baseball umpires was an authentic painting sold the work at auction for $1.6 million, Heritage Auctions said on Monday.

The painting, an original study for the work called “Tough Call,” shows three umpires pondering whether to halt a game as raindrops begin to fall. It became one of the best-known Rockwell illustrations after being published on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1949.

Rockwell gave a signed copy to John “Beans” Reardon, a baseball umpire featured prominently in the work. Sandra Sprinkle, Reardon’s granddaughter, later inherited the piece and put it above the mantle of her Dallas home for about a decade, it said.

After her death in 2015, her husband Gene Sprinkle sold the couple’s home and moved to a retirement community, where his nephew took a look at the piece and noticed brush strokes.

“We always thought it was a print, but we hung it over our fireplace because it was signed by Norman Rockwell to Beans Reardon,” Gene Sprinkle told Reuters by telephone on Monday.

Sprinkle, a 74-year-old retiree, said he agreed to let his nephew contact Dallas-based Heritage, which determined it was an original oil, painted as a study for the final version.

The buyer has asked to remain anonymous, according to Heritage officials.

“Sandra and her grandfather were very close,” Sprinkle said. “Whenever people came to our house to visit, she was always proud to show it off and tell them about her grandfather.”
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Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel, a fierce critic of President Nicolas Maduro, said on Monday that the government-backed Venezuela National Youth Orchestra’s tour of the United States has been canceled, calling the move heartbreaking.

Dudamel, 36, one of Venezuela’s best-known celebrities, did not give a reason, but the cancellation follows escalating criticism by the conductor of government tactics in quelling protests.

“Heart-breaking cancellation of our 4-city NYOV US tour. My dream to play with these wonderful young musicians cannot come true this time,” Dudamel tweeted.

“We will continue to play and to fight for a better Venezuela and a better world,” he added.

Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional reported over the weekend that the order to cancel came from the office of the Venezuelan presidency. There was no official confirmation of that report.

Dudamel is the artistic director of the youth orchestra, whose 180 members had been due to play four dates in the United States in September, including the Hollywood Bowl. The fiery young conductor is also the artistic director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Dudamel has spoken out strongly in recent months in support of anti-government protests that have rocked Venezuela for four months, leaving more than 120 people dead, including an 18-year-old musician from the youth orchestra.

In an op-ed in the New York Times in July, he said Venezuelans were “desperate for the recognition of their equal and inalienable rights and to have their basic needs met.”
…

Americans gazed in wonder through telescopes, cameras and protective glasses Monday as the moon began blotting out the midday sun in the first full-blown solar eclipse to sweep the U.S. from coast to coast in nearly a century.

“The show has just begun, people! What a gorgeous day! Isn’t this great people?” Jim Todd, a director at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, told a crowd of thousands at an amphitheater in Salem, Oregon, as the moon seemed to take an ever-bigger bite out of the sun.

The celestial show was expected to be the most observed and photographed eclipse in history, with millions staking out prime viewing spots and settling into lawn chairs to watch, especially along the path of totality — the projected line of shadow created when the sun is completely obscured. The path was 60 to 70 miles (96 to 113 kilometers) wide, running from Oregon to South Carolina.

With 200 million people within a day’s drive from the path of totality, towns and parks braced for monumental crowds. Clear skies beckoned along most of the route, to the relief of those who feared cloud cover would spoil this once-in-a-lifetime moment.

Astronomers were giddy with excitement. A solar eclipse is considered one of the grandest of cosmic spectacles.

The Earth, moon and sun line up perfectly every one to three years, briefly turning day into night for a sliver of the planet. But these sights normally are in no man’s land, like the vast Pacific or Earth’s poles. This is the first eclipse of the social media era to pass through such a heavily populated area.

The moon hasn’t thrown this much shade at the U.S. since 1918. That was the country’s last coast-to-coast total eclipse. In fact, the U.S. mainland hasn’t seen a total solar eclipse since 1979 — and even then, only five states in the Northwest experienced total darkness.

Scientists said Monday’s total eclipse would cast a shadow that would race 2,600 miles (4,200 kilometers) through 14 states, entering near Lincoln City, Oregon, at 1:16 p.m. EDT, moving diagonally across the heartland over Casper, Wyoming, Carbondale, Illinois, and Nashville, Tennessee, and then exiting near Charleston, South Carolina, at 2:47 p.m. EDT.

Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois was in line to see the longest stretch of darkness: 2 minutes and 44 seconds.

All of North America was on track to get at least a partial eclipse, along with Central America and the top of South America.

In the southern Illinois village of Makanda, population 560 and home of the Eclipse Kitchen, lawn chairs were out and excitement was building.

“More and more people are coming in all the time,” said Debbie Dunn, designated car parker for the day.

Joe Roth, an amateur photographer, traveled south from the Chicago area to Alto Pass, Illinois, to catch his first total solar eclipse — on his 62nd birthday, no less. He said the stars aligned for him — “a Kodak moment for me to cherish and experience.”

Kim Kniseley drove overnight from Roanoke, Virginia, arriving in Madisonville, Tennessee, before dawn to get a parking spot at Kefauver Park, where by sunrise dozens of folks had claimed benches and set up tents.

He said he could have stayed home in Roanoke and seen a partial eclipse of 90 percent, but that would have been like “going to a rock concert and you’re standing in the parking lot.”

NASA and other scientists were in position to watch and analyze from telescopes on the ground and in orbit, the International Space Station, airplanes and scores of high-altitude balloons beaming back live video.

From aboard the space station, NASA astronaut Jack Fischer tweeted out a photo showing about a dozen cameras ready for action.

“All hands (cameras) on deck for #SolarEclipse2017 today,” he wrote, adding: “Don’t forget to protect your eyeballs!”

Hundreds of amateur astronomers converged on Casper, Wyoming. Among them was Mike O’Leary, whose camera was outfitted with a homemade eclipse filter, its focus and aperture settings locked in with blue painter’s tape. He was there to log his ninth eclipse.

“It’s like nothing else you will ever see or ever do,” O’Leary said. “It can be religious. It makes you feel insignificant, like you’re just a speck in the whole scheme of things.”

Citizen scientists also planned to monitor animal and plant behavior as daylight turned into twilight and the temperature dropped. Thousands of people streamed into the Nashville Zoo just to watch the animals’ reaction.

Scientists warned people not to look into the sun without protection, except when the sun is 100 percent covered. Otherwise, to avoid eye damage, keep the solar specs on or use pinhole projectors that can cast an image of the eclipse into a box.

The next total solar eclipse in the U.S. will be in 2024. The next coast-to-coast one will not be until 2045.
…

Lebanese band Mashrou’ Leila’s blend of indie rock and lyrics about social and political injustice has won a passionate following among fans seeking an alternative to Arab pop with its romantic themes.

But securing a firm footing in the Middle East has been difficult for the band. Jordanian authorities cancelled its concert in June, for the second year in a row. Lebanese radio stations steer clear of its music.

“They don’t know where to place us,” said Hamed Sinno, 29, the openly gay vocalist of the five-member band formed in 2008 that has stirred controversy in the region with songs tackling oppression, classism, sectarianism and homophobia.

“We can’t play in Syria, we can’t play in Palestine, we can’t play in Jordan apparently, we obviously can’t play in Saudi,” he said, listing places where conflict or social conservatism prohibit them from performing.

And things don’t seem to be changing in the region, Sinno said, so the band has been playing more abroad.

Mashrou’ Leila has played concerts in cities including Paris, London, New York and San Francisco since its 2015 album Ibn El Leil reached number 13 on the Billboard world album chart.

The band’s music has broken away from the norm in a region whose pop stars steer clear of social issues, singing mostly of romances. Arabic music doesn’t really have a tradition of “teenagers rebelling or expressing a lot of anger,” Sinno said.

“Are we the rebellious teenagers of the Middle East? No, I think we’re just a band that’s writing about our lives and about the stuff that affects us,” he said.

“And because of the way we are as individuals and people, a lot of what does inspire us is political, because that’s the stuff that we freak out about on a daily basis.”

The band’s most recent song, Roman, focuses on overcoming betrayal, with references to Judas and Jesus.

The video was directed by a woman, Jessy Moussallem, and is dominated by women, their hair and hijabs flapping in the wind side by side in the back of a truck as Sinno sings among them.

“I think it’s literally speaking about what I would like to see and what I think men should do, especially in the Middle East, which is just to shut up and sit back,” Sinno said in an interview ahead of a concert in the Lebanese town of Ehden.

Focusing on the Music, Not the Audience

At sunset, young fans gathered at the venue, wearing shirts emblazoned with the Arabic numeral “3”, the symbol of Mashrou’ Leila’s latest and third album. Others wore Nirvana and Beatles T-shirts.

Both Lebanese and non-Lebanese fans said they liked the band because it is not at all like traditional Arabic music.

“They have this sort of Western twang,” a Lebanese fan, Anthony, said. “The way he sings and vocalizes, it’s not very clear what he’s saying.”

In fact, Sinno said the music they most identified with growing up came out of the United States and Britain.

The band draws inspiration from R&B, jazz, rock, Seattle grunge and metal, he added, and they listen to a lot of Michael Jackson, Tina Turner, Madonna and Fleetwood Mac.

Beirut, with its eclectic mixture of noise and language, also had a big influence on the band.

Asked if he believes the band’s music had alienated audiences, Sinno said that’s always a risk, but one he’s willing to take.

Critics in the region often focus on Sinno’s way of singing: he elongates words so they are often incomprehensible. The Arabic word for jasmine hung in the air for 11 seconds in a live rendition of “Shim el Yasmine”, or “Smell the Jasmine.”

An hour after listening to the band rehearse in Ehden, someone unfamiliar with their music looked up and said: “You know, I think I can hear them sing the occasional Arabic word.”
…

Jerry Lewis, the manic, rubber-faced showman who jumped and hollered to fame in a lucrative partnership with Dean Martin, settled down to become a self-conscious screen auteur and found an even greater following as the tireless, teary host of the annual muscular dystrophy telethons, has died. He was 91.

 

Publicist Candi Cazau says Lewis died Sunday of natural causes in Las Vegas with his family by his side.

 

Tributes from friends, co-stars and disciples poured in immediately.

 

“That fool was no dummy. Jerry Lewis was an undeniable genius an unfathomable blessing, comedy’s absolute!” Jim Carrey wrote Sunday on Twitter. “I am because he was!”

 

Comedian Dane Cook considered Lewis to be a mentor.

 

“The world has lost a true innovator & icon,” Cook wrote.

 

Lewis’ career spanned the history of show business in the 20th century, beginning in his parents’ vaudeville act at the age of 5. He was just 20 when his pairing with Martin made them international stars. He went on to make such favorites as “The Bellboy” and “The Nutty Professor,” was featured in Martin Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy” and appeared as himself in Billy Crystal’s “Mr. Saturday Night.”

 

“Jerry was a pioneer in comedy and film. And he was a friend. I was fortunate to have seen him a few times over the past couple of years. Even at 91, he didn’t miss a beat. Or a punchline,” Lewis’ “The King of Comedy” co-star Robert De Niro said in a statement.

 

In the 1990s, he scored a stage comeback as the devil in the Broadway revival of “Damn Yankees.”

 

In his 80s, he was still traveling the world, working on a stage version of “The Nutty Professor.” He was so active he would sometimes forget the basics, like eating, his associates would recall. In 2012, Lewis missed an awards ceremony thrown by his beloved Friars Club because his blood sugar dropped from lack of food and he had to spend the night in the hospital.

A major influence on Carrey and other slapstick performers, Lewis also was known as the ringmaster of the Labor Day Muscular Dystrophy Association, joking and reminiscing and introducing guests, sharing stories about ailing kids and concluding with his personal anthem, the ballad “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” From the 1960s onward, the telethons raised some $1.5 billion, including more than $60 million in 2009. He announced in 2011 that he would step down as host, but would remain chairman of the association he joined some 60 years ago.

“Though we will miss him beyond measure, we suspect that somewhere in heaven, he’s already urging the angels to give ‘just one dollar more for my kids,”’ said MDA Chairman of the Board R. Rodney Howell on Sunday.

 

His fundraising efforts won him the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 2009 Oscar telecast, an honor he said “touches my heart and the very depth of my soul.” But the telethon was also criticized for being mawkish and exploitative of children, known as “Jerry’s Kids.” A 1960s muscular dystrophy poster boy, Mike Ervin, later made a documentary called “The Kids Are All Alright,” in which he alleged that Lewis and the Muscular Dystrophy Association had treated him and others as objects of pity rather than real people.

 

“He and his telethon symbolize an antiquated and destructive 1950s charity mentality,” Ervin wrote in 2009.

 

Responded Lewis: “You don’t want to be pitied because you’re a cripple in a wheelchair, stay in your house!”

 

He was the classic funnyman who longed to play “Hamlet,” crying as hard as he laughed. He sassed and snarled at critics and interviewers who displeased him. He pontificated on talk shows, lectured to college students and compiled his thoughts in the 1971 book “The Total Film-Maker.”

 

“I believe, in my own way, that I say something on film. I’m getting to those who probably don’t have the mentality to understand what … ‘A Man for All Seasons’ is all about, plus many who did understand it,” he wrote. “I am not ashamed or embarrassed at how seemingly trite or saccharine something in my films will sound. I really do make films for my great-great-grandchildren and not for my fellows at the Screen Directors Guild or for the critics.”

In his early movies, he played the kind of fellows who would have had no idea what the elder Lewis was talking about: loose-limbed, buck-toothed, overgrown adolescents, trouble-prone and inclined to wail when beset by enemies. American critics recognized the comedian’s popular appeal but not his aspirations to higher art; the French did. Writing in Paris’ Le Monde newspaper, Jacques Siclier praised Lewis’ “apish allure, his conduct of a child, his grimaces, his contortions, his maladjustment to the world, his morbid fear of women, his way of disturbing order everywhere he appeared.”

 

The French government awarded Lewis the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1983 and Commander of Arts and Letters the following year.
…

Danelle Johnson started designing her own clothes when she was a teenager. Not just because sewing was her hobby. She wanted to stand out among her classmates with a personal, distinctive look. Johnson’s vision of fashion motivated her to start her own design company … on wheels. As Faiza Elmasry reports, the fashion entrepreneur attracts customers who prefer her rolling retail boutique to big malls and online shopping. Faith Lapidus narrates.
…

Dick Gregory, the comedian and activist and who broke racial barriers in the 1960s and used his humor to spread messages of social justice and nutritional health, has died. He was 84.

Gregory died late Saturday in Washington, D.C. after being hospitalized for about a week, his son Christian Gregory told The Associated Press. He had suffered a severe bacterial infection.

As one of the first black standup comedians to find success with white audiences, in the early 1960s, Gregory rose from an impoverished childhood in St. Louis to win a college track scholarship and become a celebrated satirist who deftly commented upon racial divisions at the dawn of the civil rights movement.

“Where else in the world but America,” he joked, “could I have lived in the worst neighborhoods, attended the worst schools, rode in the back of the bus, and get paid $5,000 a week just for talking about it?”

Gregory’s sharp commentary soon led him into civil rights activism, where his ability to woo audiences through humor helped bring national attention to fledgling efforts at integration and social equality for blacks.

Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey tweeted, “Dick Gregory’s unflinching honesty & courage, inspired us to fight, live, laugh & love despite it all.” A tweet by actress/comedian Whoopi Goldberg said, “About being black in America Dick Gregory has passed away, Condolences to his family and to us who won’t have his insight 2 lean on R.I.P”

Gregory briefly sought political office, running unsuccessfully for mayor of Chicago in 1966 and U.S. president in 1968, when he got 200,000 votes as the Peace and Freedom party candidate. In the late ’60s, he befriended John Lennon and was among the voices heard on Lennon’s anti-war anthem “Give Peace a Chance,” recorded in the Montreal hotel room where Lennon and Yoko Ono were staging a “bed-in” for peace.

An admirer of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., Gregory embraced nonviolence and became a vegetarian and marathon runner.

He preached about the transformative powers of prayer and good health. Once an overweight smoker and drinker, he became a trim, energetic proponent of liquid meals and raw food diets. In the late 1980s, he developed and distributed products for the popular Slim-Safe Bahamian Diet.

When diagnosed with lymphoma in 2000, he fought it with herbs, exercise and vitamins. It went in remission a few years later.

He took a break from performing in comedy clubs, saying the alcohol and smoke in the clubs were unhealthy and focused on lecturing and writing more than a dozen books, including an autobiography and a memoir.

Gregory went without solid food for weeks to draw attention to a wide range of causes, including Middle East peace, American hostages in Iran, animal rights, police brutality, the Equal Rights Amendment for women and to support pop singer Michael Jackson when he was charged with sexual molestation in 2004.

“We thought I was going to be a great athlete, and we were wrong, and I thought I was going to be a great entertainer, and that wasn’t it either. I’m going to be an American Citizen. First class,” he once said.

Richard Claxton Gregory was born in 1932, the second of six children. His father abandoned the family, leaving his mother poor and struggling. Though the family often went without food or electricity, Gregory’s intellect and hard work quickly earned him honors, and he attended the mostly white Southern Illinois University.

“In high school I was fighting being broke and on relief,” he wrote in his 1963 book. “But in college, I was fighting being Negro.”

He started winning talent contests for his comedy, which he continued in the Army. After he was discharged, he struggled to break into the standup circuit in Chicago, working odd jobs as a postal clerk and car washer to survive. His breakthrough came in 1961, when he was asked to fill in for another comedian at Chicago’s Playboy Club. His audience, mostly white Southern businessmen, heckled him with racist gibes, but he stuck it out for hours and left them howling.

That job was supposed to be a one-night gig, but lasted two months — and landed him a profile in Time magazine and a spot on “The Tonight Show.”

Vogue magazine, in February 1962, likened him to Will Rogers and Fred Allen: “bright and funny and topical … (with) a way of making the editorials in The New York Times seem the cinch stuff from which smash night-club routines are rightfully made.” ″I’ve got to go up there as an individual first, a Negro second,” he said in Phil Berger’s book, “The Last Laugh: The World of Stand-up Comics.” ″I’ve got to be a colored funny man, not a funny colored man.”

His political passions were never far from his mind — and they hurt his comedy career. The nation was grappling with the civil rights movement, and it was not at all clear that racial integration could be achieved. At protest marches, he was repeatedly beaten and jailed.

He remained active on the comedy scene until recently, when he fell ill and canceled an August 9 show in San Jose, California, followed by an August 15 appearance in Atlanta. On social media, he wrote that he felt energized by the messages from his well-wishers, and said he was looking to get back on stage because he had a lot to say about the racial tension brought on by the gathering of hate groups in Virginia.

“We have so much work still to be done, the ugly reality on the news this weekend proves just that,” he wrote.

He is survived by his wife, Lillian, and 10 children.
…

The head of New York City’s largest evangelical church has resigned from President Donald Trump’s unofficial panel of evangelical advisers, one of the latest resignations in a string of high-profile withdrawals from advisory boards serving the president.

A.R. Bernard, head of the 37,000-member Christian Cultural Center, announced this week he submitted a formal letter to Trump on Tuesday announcing his withdrawal.

Tuesday was the day Trump gave a press conference from Trump Tower in New York City, in which he doubled down on his assertions that “many sides” were to blame for the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend when a counterprotester was killed at a white supremacist rally

Bernard was one of a few dozen leaders, reports The Washington Post, who gave advice to the president through the White House liaison office. Other members of the advisory group include a mix of Southern Baptist and Pentecostal church leaders.

Several other members of the board, including Southern Baptist Pastor Jack Graham, the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference’s Tony Suarez, and televangelist Mark Burns, told the Post that they plan to stay on the council.

Meanwhile the Commerce Department is also losing members of its board of “digital economy” advisers.

This week more than half of the 15 members of the expert board set up last year by President Obama resigned this week in the wake of the Charlottesville comments. Among them are Zoe Baird, president and CEO of the Markel Foundation; Mitchell Baker, executive chairwoman of the tech organization Mozilla; David L. Cohen, senior vice president and chief diversity officer at Comcast; and Microsoft president and chilef legal officer Brad Smith.

Earlier this week, Trump announced he had dissolved two business advisory committees composed of top American corporate executives, after at least seven CEOs announced they were resigning from the councils because of his remarks. Also, all 17 members of a presidential advisory committee on the arts announced their resignations in a letter on Friday over his comments about the Charlottesville rally, saying, “The false equivalencies you push cannot stand.”
…

U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump will not attend an annual ceremony at Washington’s Kennedy Center honoring the lifetime achievements of select artists to avoid distraction, a White House statement said Saturday.

“The president and first lady have decided not to participate in this year’s activities to allow the honorees to celebrate without any political distraction,” the White House said.

The announcement came after one of the honorees, dancer Carmen de Lavallade, said she would boycott a separate White House reception that is held in conjunction with the award ceremony.

The 86-year-old de Lavallade issued a statement Thursday announcing her decision.

“In light of the socially divisive and morally caustic narrative that our current leadership is choosing to engage in, and in keeping with the principles that I and so many others have fought for, I will be declining the invitation to attend the reception at the White House,” she said.

Another honoree, TV writer Norman Lear, has also said he will not attend the reception. A third, singer Lionel Richie, has said he is “on the fence” about the White House event.

In addition to Richie, Lear and de Lavallade, singer Gloria Esfefan and rapper LL Cool J will be celebrated for their lifetime contributions to the arts at the December 3 ceremony.

The White House announcement came just days after members of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities resigned in protest against Trump’s controversial remarks this week following last Saturday’s violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The latest developments are indicative of Trump’s contentious relationship with the arts world. After his election, Trump had a difficult time finding entertainers to perform at his inaugural gala in January.
…

Recruiting for Jihad is a Norwegian expose on the practices extremist Jihadists follow to recruit young men to fight for ISIS. During filming, Adel Khan Farooq, one of the two filmmakers, had unprecedented access to a radicalized network of Islamists in Europe. He met them through Norwegian-born Ubaydullah Hussain, a notorious recruiter, currently serving a nine-year sentence in a Norwegian prison.

 

“In the beginning, he was very charming,” Farooq told VOA, describing Hussain. “He was easy to talk with, and I never felt like he was a threat directly against me or anybody else for that matter, but when the attacks against Charlie Hebdo in France occurred and he was praising ISIS and then praising the attacks on Copenhagen, I certainly felt like that I did not know him after all.”

Still, Farooq kept filming Hussain.

“I wanted to find out why he became that way, why did he become so extreme, because there are some pieces of him that he used to be a referee in soccer and he was a bright child and did OK in school,” he says. Farooq accompanied Hussain to underground meetings and workshops among radicalized Islamists in a number of places in Europe, trying to learn what was behind the radicalization of people like him.

 

Farooq learned that most of the radicals are born in Europe but are culturally and psychologically displaced and vulnerable to the idea of close-knit radicalized communities.

 

“At least in Norway, 99 percent of Muslims, the majority of Muslims, are integrated in society. They work as lawyers, doctors, teachers, police officers, and have a Muslim background. But there are some, the minority, that have these extreme views. It’s not only in Norway, it’s in Sweden, Denmark, UK, France, Belgium, you always find a small minority of people who don’t fit in even as Muslims, they don’t fit in, they are marginalized, might struggle or have some struggles at home, hard time finding work.”

 

These types of people, Farooq says, are radicalized by leading Islamists such as Anjem Choudary, a British citizen, who supports the existence of an Islamic state.

 

Before his six-year incarceration for supporting Islamic State, Choudary was holding workshops throughout Europe advocating jihad. During one of those underground meetings, Farooq captured chilling footage of him preaching to a group of men, women and children in a basement room. His lecture, advocating that Islamic values are superior to British values and the British constitution, was also being recorded and distributed to thousands over the internet.

 

In 2015, Islamic extremists waged a series of attacks in Paris, first against the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, and months later, at a concert hall and football stadium, killing 130 and injuring 368. Afterward, Farooq says Hussain told him on camera that he did not know the attackers in Paris, but he knew people who knew them.

 

“These extremist groups,” Farooq said, “are really small, but they are strong because they work together. They either visit each other, have so called sessions, where they have seminars of sort.”

 

Though their ideas don’t represent the majority of Muslims in Europe, Farooq said, they impact the Muslim communities by fueling hatred against them.

 

“This radicalization is not a Muslim thing,” he says. “You find radicalization in America, too. Right wing extremists, they are radicalized; criminals, they are radicalized.”

One of Farooq’s last filming sessions of Hussain showed the Islamist recruiting a young Norwegian to fight for ISIS in Syria. The 18-year-old recruit was apprehended at the airport just before he boarded a plane with a fake passport. Hussain was arrested, and Norwegian police forces confiscated footage from Farooq and his co-director, Ulrik Rolfsen as evidence. The filmmakers’ fight for freedom of the press became a story in itself. Farooq and Rolfsen took their case all the way to Norway’s Supreme Court. They won.

 

“The key issue is that for any democracy, it is very, very vital that journalists and media are separated from authorities,” Rolfsen stressed. “My power is to tell stories and expose things that happen in society to educate the public, and I think it’s important that we don’t step on each other’s toes.”

When asked whether such a documentary can fuel fear and mistrust against Muslims, Rolfsen said that audiences’ reactions overall were positive, but he admitted it is a tough subject to tackle.

 

“We have a lot of people hating Islam, we have a lot of people pro Islam, the whole refugee situation is in the middle of that. Publishing the film felt like walking through a fire with a big balloon filled with gasoline and you know it’s going to blow up in your face if you don’t hold it high enough and you don’t walk fast enough.”

Farooq, raised as a Muslim, feels the film was close to his heart because he wanted to expose how these cells operate on the fringes of society.

 

“That was very important to me and Ulrik. Because most Muslims are not like these guys,” he said. “They are normal people.”
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‘Recruiting for Jihad’ is a Norwegian expose on the practices extremist Jihadists follow to recruit young men to fight for ISIS.  During filming, Adel Khan Farook, one of the two filmmakers, had unprecedented access to a radicalized network of Islamists in Europe. Farrook and his partner Ulrick Rolfsen spoke to VOA’S Penelope Poulou on the growth of Islamist organizations in Europe.
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A Los Angeles judge has denied the impassioned plea of Roman Polanski’s victim to end the criminal case against the fugitive film director.

Judge Scott Gordon ruled Friday that Polanski must appear in a Los Angeles court if he expects to have his 4-decade-old case resolved.

Gordon’s ruling follows a fervent request by Samantha Geimer to end a “40-year sentence” she says was imposed on both perpetrator and victim.

Polanski pleaded guilty to having unlawful sex with Geimer when she was 13. He fled the country on the eve of sentencing in 1978.

Polanski’s attorneys have failed to persuade judges to sentence him in absentia for the 42 days he was incarcerated for psychological testing before he fled.

Geimer has long supported Polanski’s efforts but made her plea in court for the first time in June.
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