$60 Million ‘Pink Star’ Diamond Goes Back on Sale Next Month

A 59.60-carat diamond known as “The Pink Star” is returning to auction next month and could fetch a record $60 million, three years since it was sold for even more – only for the buyer to pull out of the deal.

The diamond was presented by Sotheby’s in London ahead of the auction in Hong Kong on April 4.

In November 2013, a Geneva auction of the stone fetched a world record $83 million but the buyer, New York-based diamond cutter Isaac Wolf, could not pay up and defaulted.

However, after some more successful auctions of colored diamonds in recent years, the auction house said that now was a good time to try again.

“The last few years we’ve had colored diamonds perform extremely well, many new records been created at auction for the colored diamonds, pinks and blues mainly, so we thought it was a good time to bring it to the market,” David Bennett, worldwide Chairman of Sotheby’s Jewelry Division, told Reuters.

In 2015 the “Blue Moon of Josephine” sold for $48.5 million in Geneva. At 12.03 carats, it set a price-per-carat record.

“The Pink Star” is the largest Internally Flawless Fancy Vivid Pink diamond ever graded by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), the auction house said, yet the sparkling stone is still small enough to fit onto a ring.

Sotheby’s said that the mixed-cut diamond was initially mined by De Beers in 1999 in Botswana as a 132.5 carat rough diamond before being cut and polished.

Its refined form is now set to be the most valuable polished diamond ever offered at auction.

“The extraordinary size of this 59.60-carat diamond, paired with its richness of color, surpasses any known pink diamond record in history,” Bennett said.

Bennett said the current record for a pink diamond was held by the “Graff Pink”. At 24.78 carats it is half the size of The Pink Star and was sold in Geneva for $46.2 million in 2010.

 

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Palestinian Women Try to Bring Baseball to Gaza

The young Palestinian women don baseball caps on top of their Islamic headscarves and field tennis balls with fabric gloves, giving a decidedly local feel to the great American pastime.

They are trying to bring baseball to the Gaza Strip, an effort that is still in its early innings.

The players, who work out on a small soccer pitch in a southern Gaza town, admit they are still trying to understand the rules of the complicated sport. With pitches lobbed underhand, the game they play is closer to softball.

“I only know it through TV,” said Valentina Shaer, a 23-year-old English literature student.

Mahmoud Tafesh, the team’s coach, said he has dreamed of bringing baseball to Gaza since he was introduced to the game last year.

Although baseball is a fringe sport throughout the soccer-crazy Middle East, the game has grown in popularity. Iraq has a national team, and one of the country’s coaches introduced Tafesh to baseball last year while both were in Egypt, which now boasts a baseball and softball federation.

Tafesh admits he still has much to learn. He is unfamiliar with any of the teams or players in Major League Baseball and gets most of his knowledge from YouTube videos.

When he returned to Gaza, he was concerned about the lack of equipment and whether the conservative society, which is governed by the Islamic militant group Hamas, would accept the idea of girls playing the sport.

He first approached girls at the only sports education college in Gaza. To his surprise, he found interest in baseball was stronger among girls than boys.

“We targeted this group because they had permission from their families to play sport as sports students. Through them, we started to spread, attracting girls from other fields such as journalism and accountants,” he said after finishing a two-hour training session for the girls.

The women say their families had no objection, and some parents even encouraged them. But the society overall has not been as receptive.

Shaer said people “on social media had a bad idea about us,” noting abusive comments when their pictures first appeared.

On Sunday, the team, which includes 20 to 30 members, had its weekly practice on a soccer pitch in the female section of Al-Aqsa University, built on lands that were part of Jewish settlements before Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005.

There were no males except for the coach, and some other students gathered to watch the women playing catch and taking batting practice. The batters took wild swings, often missing but occasionally making solid contact.

The players wore headscarves as well as long-sleeve running tops and loose pants, in keeping with local norms.

“While we face difficulties, we would like a specialized softball field to learn it correctly and train freely without any obstacles,” said Iman Shahin, an athlete who studies sports education.

Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on Gaza after Hamas seized power in 2007, heavily restricting travel and trade, and making it difficult to acquire specialized sports equipment.

Tafesh said he found just one baseball glove in all of Gaza, at the Sports Ministry building, and took it to local tailors who used it to make replicas out of black fabric.

With no proper bats in the territory, the team took a piece of wood and shaped it to look like one.

While seeking funding and real equipment, the women dream of eventually competing abroad.

“All of us share the same goal: participate and represent the name of Palestine outside and show that there are sports for the girls in Gaza,” said 24-year-old Iman Mughaier.

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Billionaire Philanthropist David Rockefeller Dies at Age 101

David Rockefeller, the philanthropist billionaire whose family name is the very definition of American capitalism, died in his sleep Monday at age 101.

The former head of Chase Manhattan Bank was the last grandson of the legendary 19th-century founder of the Standard Oil empire, John D. Rockefeller.

David Rockefeller was the youngest of six children born to John D. Rockefeller Jr.

Aspects of the Rockefeller brothers’ upbringing became famous, including the 25-cent allowance, portions of which had to be set aside for charity and savings, and the inculcation that wealth brings great responsibility.

Throughout his life, David Rockefeller carried out the family name by his strong support for American-based global capitalism, but making sure no one was left behind.

“American capitalism has brought more benefits to more people than any other system in any part of the world at any time in history,” he once said. “The problem is to see that the system is run as efficiently and as honestly as it can be.”

He was critical of fellow billionaires who sought ways to dodge taxes. Rockefeller didn’t say how much he paid in taxes and never spoke publicly about his personal worth. In 2015, Forbes magazine estimated his fortune at $3 billion.

Rockefeller also made sure the family fortune was used for philanthropic purposes, including funding for the arts and environmental causes.

To mark his 100th birthday in 2015, Rockefeller gave 1,000 acres of land next to a national park to the state of Maine.

As head of Chase Manhattan Bank, David Rockefeller opened the first offices of an American bank in Moscow and communist China. He also spurred the project that led to the World Trade Center.

But Rockefeller helped persuade then-President Jimmy Carter to allow the Shah of Iran to come to the U.S. for cancer treatment in 1979 — a move that led to the U.S. hostage crisis in Tehran.

Rockefeller’s philanthropy and other activities earned him a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 1998.

 

Rockefeller and his wife, the former Margaret McGrath, married in 1940 and had six children — David Jr., Richard, Abby, Neva, Margaret and Eileen. His wife, an active conservationist, died in 1996.

Some information for this report was provided by Associated Press.

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Report: Norway Unseats Denmark as World’s Happiest Country

Norway displaced Denmark as the world’s happiest country in a new report released on Monday that called on nations to build social trust and equality to improve the well-being of their citizens.

The Nordic nations are the most content, according to the World Happiness Report 2017 produced by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), a global initiative launched by the United Nations in 2012.

Countries in sub-Saharan Africa, along with Syria and Yemen, are the least happy of the 155 countries ranked in the fifth annual report released at the United Nations.

“Happy countries are the ones that have a healthy balance of prosperity, as conventionally measured, and social capital, meaning a high degree of trust in a society, low inequality and confidence in government,” Jeffrey Sachs, the director of the SDSN and a special advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General, said in an interview.

The aim of the report, he added, is to provide another tool for governments, business and civil society to help their countries find a better way to wellbeing.

 

Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, Finland, Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Sweden rounded out the top ten countries.

South Sudan, Liberia, Guinea, Togo, Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi and the Central African Republic were at the bottom.

Germany was ranked 16, followed by the United Kingdom (19) and France (31). The United States dropped one spot to 14.

 

Sachs said the United States is falling in the ranking due to inequality, distrust and corruption. Economic measures that the administration of President Donald Trump is trying to pursue, he added, will make things worse.

“They are all aimed at increasing inequality – tax cuts at the top, throwing people off the healthcare rolls, cutting Meals on Wheels in order to raise military spending. I think everything that has been proposed goes in the wrong direction,” he explained.

 

The rankings are based on six factors — per capita gross domestic product, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, social support and absence of corruption in government or business.

“The lowest countries are typically marked by low values in all six variables,” said the report, produced with the support of the Ernesto Illy Foundation.

Sachs would like nations to follow United Arab Emirates and other countries that have appointed Ministers of Happiness.

“I want governments to measure this, discuss it, analyze it and understand when they have been off on the wrong direction,” he said.

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Robot Is the Star in New Play

Robots are becoming commonplace in many areas of society — from manufacturing to medicine to our homes. But now, a robot has taken to the stage, in a British play called Spillikin, where a humanoid robot plays the male companion of a woman with Alzheimer’s disease. 

The “Robothespian,” as the droid is being called, plays the lead in an unconventional play.

 

“It’s a story about a robot maker. All of his life he builds robots, and he develops degenerative illness in mid-life,” Jon Welch, the writer and director, said. “And realizes he’s not going to live to remain a companion to his wife. His wife, by now, is developing early Alzheimer’s, so he builds his final creation, his final robot be a companion to his wife.”

British actress Judy Norman plays the woman with Alzheimer’s. During the performance, she mostly talks to the robot but also shares a kiss.

“When he looks at me, I know this going to sound weird, but he is very affectionate and I like him, I really like him,” Norman said.

Welch said the concept for the play came from a real robot maker.

“The idea for the play started with the robot maker approaching us and offering us the use of one of his incredible robot creations to use in a play,” he said. “He’s seen one of our plays before, he liked us as a local theatre company, and he’s been making robots for ten years. And you find him in science museums all over the world, but he’s never really had one of his robots as a character in a play.”

Norman has found the experience interesting.

“This show has proven to me that really working with a robot is seriously not that different than working with a normal actor,” she said.

What is not so normal is the time it takes to make sure the Robothespian is in sync during the one and a half hour play. The robot is connected to a cord that goes to a control room with a laptop.

“We have pre-programmed every single thing the robot says and every single thing the robot does — all the moves,” Welch said. “There’s about nearly 400 separate queues but they are made up of other files, all stuck together so there’s probably a couple of thousand cues in reality.

“So the robot will always say the same thing and move the same way, depending on what queue is been triggered at what particular time,” he said.

Spillikin is on now tour in Britain.

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Robot Is the Star in a New Play

Robots are becoming commonplace in many areas of society — from manufacturing to medicine to our homes. Now, a robot has taken to the stage, in a British play called “Spillikin.” A humanoid robot plays the male companion of a woman with Alzheimer’s disease. VOA’s Deborah Block tells us more about it.

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‘Sesame Street’ to Add Julia, Muppet With Autism

Folks on Sesame Street have a way of making everyone feel accepted.

That certainly goes for Julia, a Muppet youngster with blazing red hair, bright green eyes — and autism. Rather than being treated like an outsider, which too often is the plight of kids on the spectrum, Julia is one of the gang.

Look: On this friendliest of streets (actually Studio J at New York’s Kaufman Astoria Studios, where Sesame Street lives) Julia is about to play a game with Oscar, Abby and Grover. In this scene being taped for airing next season, these Muppet chums have been challenged to spot objects shaped like squares or circles or triangles.

“You’re lucky,” says Abby to Grover. “You have Julia on your team, and she is really good at finding shapes!”

Group skedaddles

With that, they skedaddle, an exit that calls for the six Muppeteers squatted out of sight below them to scramble accordingly. Joining her pals, Julia (performed by Stacey Gordon) takes off hunting.

For more than a year, Julia has existed in print and digital illustrations as the centerpiece of a multifaceted initiative by Sesame Workshop called Sesame Street and Autism: See Amazing in All Children.

She has been the subject of a storybook released along with videos, e-books, an app and website. The goal is to promote a better understanding of what the Autism Speaks advocacy group describes as “a range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech and nonverbal communication, as well as by unique strengths and differences.”

But now Julia has been brought to life in fine Muppet fettle. She makes her TV debut on Sesame Street in the Meet Julia episode airing April 10 on both PBS and HBO. Additional videos featuring Julia will be available online.

Years of consultation

Developing Julia and all the other components of this campaign has required years of consultation with organizations, experts and families within the autism community, according to Jeanette Betancourt, Sesame Workshop’s senior vice president of U.S. Social Impact.

“In the U.S., one in 68 children is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder,” she says. “We wanted to promote a better understanding and reduce the stigma often found around these children. We’re modeling the way both children and adults can look at autism from a strength-based perspective: finding things that all children share.”

Julia is at the heart of this effort. But while she represents the full range of children on the spectrum, she isn’t meant to typify each one of them: “Just as we look at all children as being unique, we should do the same thing when we’re looking at children with autism,” Betancourt says.

It was with keen interest that Stacey Gordon first learned of Julia more than a year ago. “I said, ‘If she’s ever a puppet, I want to BE Julia!’ ”

No wonder. Gordon is a Phoenix-based puppeteer who performs, conducts classes and workshops, and creates whimsical puppets for sale to the public.

She also has a son with autism, and, before she started her family, was a therapist to youngsters on the spectrum.

Although she figured her chances of landing the dream role of Julia were nil, her contacts in the puppet world paid off: Two friends who worked as Muppeteers on Sesame Street dropped her name to the producers. After submitting tapes, then coming to New York for an audition, she was hired.

In the introductory segment, Julia is having fun with Abby and Elmo when Big Bird walks up. He wants to be her new friend, but she doesn’t speak to him. He thinks she doesn’t like him.

“She does things just a little differently, in a Julia sort of way,” Abby informs him.

Different-but-fun way

Julia, chuckling, then displays a different-but-fun way of playing tag, and everyone joins in. But when a siren wails, she covers her ears and looks stricken.

“She needs to take a break,” Big Bird’s human friend Alan calmly explains. Soon, all is well and play resumes.

“The Meet Julia episode is something that I wish my son’s friends had been able to see when they were small,” says Gordon. “I remember him having meltdowns and his classmates not understanding how to react.”

Gordon says her son, now 13, isn’t drawn to puppetry. “He’s more interested in math and science, and plays the piano brilliantly,” she says with pride.

But she’s having a blast being part of the show that helped hook her, as a child, on puppeteering.

“It is so much fun to be on set with everyone, and get to play up all the positive things I’ve seen with the kids that I’ve worked with,” Gordon says. “At the same time, I come at this with a reverence. I don’t want to let the autism community down.”

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Philadelphia Cancels Cinco de Mayo Festivities

The eastern U.S. city of Philadelphia has canceled this year’s celebration of Cinco de Mayo, an event that attracts as many as 15,000 people.

Edgar Ramirez, one of the event’s organizers, said the unanimous decision by the planners was “sad,” but it was the “responsible” thing to do because of “the severe conditions affecting the immigrant community.”

Ramirez said the organizers were afraid federal immigration officers would stage a raid on the annual festival in Philadelphia — the country’s fifth-largest city.

U.S. President Donald Trump has called for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to step up the arrests and deportations of people living illegally in the U.S.

Cinco de Mayo — or the Fifth of May — commemorates the Mexican army’s 1862 victory over France at the Battle of Puebla during the Franco-Mexican War. In the United States, Cinco de Mayo has evolved into a celebration of Mexican culture and heritage, particularly in areas with large Mexican-American populations.

 

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Meteorite a Catalyst to Store Renewable Energy

A huge meteorite slammed into the southern African country of Namibia during prehistoric times. Now, pieces from that meteorite could be used as a natural catalyst to store energy from renewable sources. Scientists at a technology institute in Switzerland found that the meteorite’s composition is key to its effectiveness as a catalyst. VOA’s Deborah Block has more.

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A Simple, New Way to Spin Spider Silk in the Lab

In textiles, nothing has the impact of spider silk. These protein strands are stretchy and in some ways as strong as steel but without the weight. Scientists have been making artificial spider silk for years, with varying degree of success. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports some Swedish researchers have found a new way to spin the miracle fiber, and they make it look easy.

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Gyllenhaal and Reynolds Forge a Friendship Filming ‘Life’

There’s a bromance brewing between actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds. 

 

The Hollywood stars say they hit it off so well during the filming of their new sci-fi thriller called Life that a genuine friendship has blossomed. The movie, about a team of scientists aboard the International Space Station who find an alien life form from Mars, premiered Saturday at the South by Southwest festival in Austin. 

 

The Brokeback Mountain and Deadpool stars were mostly all jokes during rounds of press interviews before the film’s premier, answering most questions with a back-and-forth comedy shtick. But they turned serious when asked about the connection formed on set. 

‘A lucky thing’

 

“You do these films and get to work with really amazing people, really talented people and you think ‘oh I’m going to hang out with these people afterward and see them again,’” said Reynolds. “You don’t most of the time because you go on living your life. But with this guy, we’ve stayed friends. That’s a lucky thing. It doesn’t always happen.” 

 

Some of the first signs of the newly forged bond came earlier this week when Reynolds gave high praise to Gyllenhaal on Good Morning America, calling him one of the most interesting actors currently working in Hollywood. Reynolds said Saturday that his co-star is “one the greatest actors of this generation.” 

 

“I loved working with this guy,” he said. “I loved spending time with this guy. It’s not often you get this experience.” 

 

Gyllenhaal was equally complimentary, saying Reynolds’s role last year as a foul-mouthed superhero is exactly what he strives for: a performance so authentic that it would be nearly impossible for another actor to duplicate. 

 

“We sort of grew up in this business together without knowing each other until very recently,” Gyllenhaal said. “It’s hard in a business where … a lot of times we’re pretending to get closer to the truth and to find somebody who you feel is genuine. I feel that way about him, so we’re friends.” 

Parallels classic thriller

 

The movie plot draws some notable parallels to Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic Alien, tracking a team of scientists on a spaceship who encounter an alien life form that wreaks havoc. Their discovery — the first evidence of extraterrestrial life on Mars — turns out to be a threat not only to the crew but to all life on Earth. 

 

But even with the backdrop of a sci-fi heart pounder, Gyllenhaal says he and Reynolds found some levity throughout the filming. 

 

“This experience of what’s happening right now was consistent to what it felt like while we were shooting,” Gyllenhaal said in between puns served as answers to questions. “We had really scary situations in the movie and scenes that were really tense, but we were laughing constantly and it was so much fun.” 

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Rock ’n’ Roll Icon Chuck Berry Dies at 90; But Legend Lives On

One of the kings of American rock ’n’ roll, Chuck Berry, has died. He was 90.

The legendary African-American musician, a native of St. Louis, Missouri, gave his first performance in high school. Since then, he forged a life that included three years in reform school, 20 months in prison, and decades in the spotlight, pioneering a musical form that has become synonymous with American music.

Charles Edward Anderson Berry, who went by the nickname Chuck, was famous for such 1950s hits as Maybellene, Roll Over Beethoven, Sweet Little Sixteen, and Johnny B. Goode. The singles — revolutionary combinations of pop, country music and blues — were dance hits in high school gymnasiums and music clubs across the United States. His musical style helped give birth to the age of the American teenager, all hormones and energy and optimism.

Influence for many musicians

Berry’s hit Maybellene was a rock ’n’ roll treatment of a country song known as Ida Red. Berry wrote in a memoir that his music label, Chess, “couldn’t believe that a … hillbilly song could be written and sung by a black guy.”

His music influenced most of the popular musicians that came after him, including such well-known music legends as the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys and the Grateful Dead. Referring to Berry in the mid-1980s, Rolling Stone’s Keith Richards famously quipped, “I’ve stolen every lick (guitar improvisation) he ever played.”

Born in the Midwest

Berry was born into a middle-class family in Missouri and gave his first performance at Sumner High School, historic in its own right as the first African-American high school west of the Mississippi River, a dividing line that separates the eastern third of the country from the West.

Berry is credited with originating many quirks exclusively associated with the rock ’n’ roll genre, including a rollicking, danceable beat, his famous “duck walk” and a heavy, rhythmic guitar style that he may well have been described in the song Johnny B. Goode: “just like he’s ringin’ a bell.” Legend has it that he developed his duck walk as a means of hiding the wrinkles in the one good suit he had brought on tour.

As for Johnny B. Goode — originally meant to be about a black boy, but changed to “country boy” for wider appeal — countless bands covered it, among them the Beatles, country star Buck Owens and heavy metal band Judas Priest.

Run-ins with the law

Berry’s brushes with the law came early and late. In high school, he was arrested for armed robbery and spent three years in a reformatory, between 1944 and 1947. He emerged to go to work in an automobile factory, but he was playing music publicly with the Johnnie Johnson Trio by 1953. A meeting in Chicago with famed blues musician Muddy Waters led to the release of Maybellene, national fame and a string of hits.

In 1961, Berry got in trouble for transporting a 14-year-old girl across state lines and served 20 months in prison, a period in his life that friends said changed him forever. In 1979, he served 120 days in prison for tax evasion.

Berry’s music evolved at a time when racism was running high; blacks and whites were segregated into different schools, businesses, churches and public facilities. But his music attracted fans of all ethnicities.

Music for everyone

“I made records for people who would buy them,” he said once. “No color, no ethnic, no political — I don’t want that, never did.”

Despite his troubles with the law and the conditions of the times, Berry rose to the top of his profession.

He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984, became one of the first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, and was given a Kennedy Center Honors Award in Washington in 2000 for his lifetime of contributions to American cultural life.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced March 16 that Berry’s work will be featured in a new exhibit alongside that of Elvis Presley and other rock ’n’ roll greats, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the music magazine Rolling Stone.

Berry said the musical genres that inspired him were swing and big band, the music of the 1940s. In an appearance on The Tonight Show in 1987, Berry said he originally wanted to play the more traditional musical styles.

“The main guy was Louis Jordan. I wanted to sing like Nat Cole, with lyrics like Louis Jordan, with the swing of Benny Goodman, with Charlie Christian on guitar playing Carl Hogan’s riffs with the soul of Muddy Waters,” he said.

But Berry knew a good thing when he saw it. Married to his wife, Themetta Suggs, since 1948 and with four children to support, Berry embraced the musical style that made his career. In the 1957 hit Rock and Roll Music, Berry sang, “It’s gotta be rock ’n’ roll music, if you wanna dance with me.”

Berry’s final original album, titled Chuck, is expected to be released by Dualtone Music Group later this year.

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US National Parks Visitor Jazzed by Louisiana

Mention New Orleans and most people will immediately associate it with jazz, a genre of music that originated among African Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

And that distinctly American music can be heard everywhere throughout the famed city – and in most other areas of the state of Louisiana.

The ‘Big Easy’

National parks traveler Mikah Meyer recently visited New Orleans to soak up some of those sounds and learn about the city’s other cultural highlights.

“There’s the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park, which basically celebrates the contribution of the culture of New Orleans, to this music that is authentically and originally American…a relatively new genre that is distinctly American,” he said.

“So it’s a bunch of little sites basically all scattered throughout the French Quarter in the older parts of the city that celebrate this heritage.”

Wild wetlands

Just south of the city is the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, named in honor of a French pirate who helped General Andrew Jackson defend New Orleans against the British in the final battle of the War of 1812.

Meyer spent time in the wetlands paradise that’s home to an impressive variety of plants and wildlife.

“The Preserve was a really good example of a lot of the sites I had seen throughout the whole Gulf Coast,” Meyer observed. “Everything from the Everglades, northwest up through Tampa, through Pensacola, all the way to New Orleans. It was a good example of that ecosystem that lives in between the ocean and easily habitable land.”

The National Park Service describes the six sites of Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve as representing “a treasure trove of south Louisiana’s historical and cultural riches. People from nearly every country, ethnic group, language and religion have come to the lower Mississippi River delta and left traces of their passing.”

Ancient culture

Traces of a prehistoric culture that made the lower Mississippi River Delta home are preserved at Poverty Point National Monument. The 3,400-year-old Native American settlement is now a World Heritage site. Meyer noted the unique geometric design that is considered a masterpiece of engineering.

“It has six lines of slightly raised ground, which they believe is where people lived, and then it has a bunch of different mounds – basically like man-made hills with millions of pounds of dirt.”

 

Poverty Point, once at the center of a huge trade network, is one of North America’s most important archeological sites.

Creole influence

At the Cane River Creole National Historical Park, the fourth of Louisiana’s national parks, Meyer learned that the state’s culture was not just influenced by the French.

“It’s very heavily influenced by all the people and all the countries and cultures that did trade in New Orleans, so Spanish, British, French… and so this Creole culture that developed out of that melting pot in the melting pot of America is a very unique thing,” he said.

Even though they’re part of the U.S., Meyer says the southern states he has visited so far show just how diverse America can be.

“If someone is looking to understand the unique culture and portion of American History, along with topography, whether it’s from the western edge of the Everglades all the way over to Louisiana, the Gulf Coast offers that chance,” he said.

Meyer invites you to learn more about his travels across America by visiting his website, Facebook and Instagram.

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How to Optimize School Bus Networks

Each day in the United States hundreds of thousands of yellow-painted buses carry millions of children to schools and back home. Scientists at the University of Maryland are developing algorithms that can help transport students more efficiently. VOA’s George Putic reports.

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Depeche Mode Hopes New CD Gets ‘People to Think a Bit’

Depeche Mode’s new album kicks off with a dire warning that we’re going backward as a society. Things go quickly downhill from there.

 

“Spirit” then tells us we’ve been lied to and advocates revolution, convicts everyone of treason and urges selfish scum to turn their guns on themselves – and that’s just the first four songs.

 

“First and foremost, we wanted to make a fun album,” deadpans chief songwriter Martin Gore. “That was a joke.”

 

The gloomy British electronic trio resurfaced this month with its first new music in four years and the timing seems impeccable. The dozen new dark songs seem the perfect soundtrack to a world rocked by Brexit and Donald Trump.

 

“It’s a little bit of a heavy listen,” acknowledges lead singer Dave Gahan. “Look, that’s what we do. It’s about creating these atmospheres with this backdrop of the world we’re living in.”

 

“Spirit” continues the band’s evolution in alternative-rock under the new guidance of producer James Ford, who has worked with Florence and the Machine and the Arctic Monkeys.

 

Band member Andy Fletcher said Ford, who also played drums on many of the tracks, managed to “freshen us up a bit.” The songs are drenched in dread, slithering synths and strong hooks, exploring everything from trickle-down economics to heartbreak.

 

Gore, who had a hand in nine of the tracks, said the album might sound like a reaction to recent political and cultural shocks but was actually written in the second half of 2015 and early 2016.

 

“The world was still in a mess then and it was quite depressing to me. I felt that I couldn’t just ignore it. If I was going to actually write and be honest to myself I had to kind of like face it,” he said.

 

“I wanted to say that I feel that we’ve lost our way a bit, that mankind has lost its way spiritually. I’m not talking from any denomination here. I just mean in a general sense and by pointing that out, maybe it just gets people to think a bit.”

 

Depeche Mode will go on the road – their Live Nation-backed, 28-show North American tour starts in Salt Lake City in August – mixing the new songs with their go-to anchors, including “I Feel You” and “Walking In My Shoes.”

 

“I try and find songs from some other albums that will relate to what we’re doing now,” said Gahan, who mused that “Everything Counts” would sit nicely with the new tracks. “Hopefully, there will be a couple of little surprises.”

 

Depeche Mode was part of a wave of English pop-synthesizer bands to sweep into America in the 1980s with light-hearted songs like “Just Can’t Get Enough.” They matured with edgier, socially conscious tunes like “People Are People” and “Blasphemous Rumours” before hitting big success with 1990’s “Violator,” which produced the singles “Personal Jesus,” “Enjoy the Silence” and “Policy of Truth.”

 

The band found itself this year on the list of potential inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but failed to make the cut for the Class of 2017.

 

“To be honest, we were surprised. We never aimed to be in it. We think, ‘An electronic band in the Rock and Roll Hall?”’ Fletcher said. “To be nominated is quite good, really. I don’t know if we’ll eventually go in. It’s not really on the top list of our wishes. It would be nice if it happened, I suppose.”

 

If it ever happens, it would be a remarkable crowning for a group of acknowledged misfits from East London that made its reputation making symphonies from smacking pots and pans and wearing eyeliner, nail polish and black leather.

 

“Definitely, we were not the cool kids in town,” said Gahan. “We were those weirdos, the ones that got chased home from school.” Now their songs have been covered by the likes of Johnny Cash and Susan Boyle, and Depeche Mode’s influences are heard everywhere, from airy Scandinavian pop to EDM.

 

“I think we’ve been lucky enough to have made some timeless records at certain points. Some of them, not so timeless,” said Gahan, laughing. “I feel like you get led somewhere and you’ve got to take that risk to jump in. I feel like ‘Spirit’ is an album that we’ve been led to.”

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Filmmaker: To Help Iraq, Western World Must Connect With its Everyday People

War-torn Iraq may never recover unless the Western world learns to connect and identify with the people of the Middle Eastern nation, a Kurdish-Norwegian filmmaker said on Friday.

His documentary film “Nowhere to Hide” could help Westerners to understand and empathize with the suffering of Iraqi families, Zaradasht Ahmed told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview.

Filmed in northern Iraq over five years, “Nowhere to Hide” recounts the rise of Islamic State that in 2014 took over the town of Jalawla, northeast of Baghdad, through the eyes of a young medic working in a hospital.

Forced to flee, the medic and his family live in a displacement camp and are frightened to return home.

Promoting his film at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in London, Ahmed said he would like outsiders to see struggling Iraqis as fellow human beings, not set them apart as refugees.

“There is nothing called the refugee crisis,” he said. “There are humanitarian crises. There are economic crises. There are war crises.”

The film director is pessimistic about the future of Iraq, which he said was permanently scarred by the invasion in 2003 of U.S. and British forces set on ousting its leader Saddam Hussein.

Now, he said, those Western nations do not recognize problems they started and “look at Iraq as a failure state without feeling like they had a hand on it.”

“We have to have more solidarity and try to think of Iraq as also part of this planet,” the filmmaker said.

Film Trailer:

Much of “Nowhere to Hide” was filmed by the medic, Nori Sharif, whom Ahmed taught to use a camera.

Sharif began filming in 2011 and recorded the retreat of the Iraqi Army from Jalawla in 2013 because of growing militant activity.

The director was born and raised in northern Iraq. His film on illegal immigration to Europe, made for SVT, Swedish public television, was screened at a number of film festivals.

IDFA Interview with Zaradasht Ahmed:

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Tech Workers Find Communal Living a Solution for High Rents

Zander Dejah, 25, pays $1,900 a month rent to live in a downtown San Francisco house with at least 40 other people, many of whom sleep in bunk beds.

Dejah is a resident of The Negev, a communal living space that styles itself as a home for millennial tech workers to brainstorm ideas, write code and create apps, even if they have to share toilets and bathrooms with dozens of others.

Houses like The Negev, located in a neighborhood known as “SoMa” or South of Market, have cropped up around San Francisco as an influx of young professionals, many of whom are tech workers, have faced the city’s notoriously high rents and apartment shortages. It has three floors and roughly 50 rooms, filled with bunk beds, beer bottles and laptops, according to residents.

Dejah, born and raised in New York, graduated last year with a degree in computer science and math from McGill University.

Unemployed, he moved to California six months ago and found his  room at The Negev on Craigslist.

“I thought New York was expensive,” said Dejah, who quickly landed a job as a virtual reality engineer at consulting firm moBack. “It’s basically an extension of college. We sort of live in a frat house.”

The home is certainly filled with parties on weekends, but the residents make sure to sit down every Sunday for a communal dinner, akin to a traditional family gathering.

While some say communal housing provides a solution for many first-time workers fresh out of college, such housing also has created its share of controversy. Housing advocates have complained that this new dorm-like style of living has pushed up rents and forced longtime residents to move out.

Alon Gutman, who co-founded a company called The Negev and began leasing the building on Sixth Street in 2014, said, “We have never made somebody move out of that building,” adding that his tenants pay 30 percent to 50 percent less than others in the neighborhood.

“We are trying to solve the housing crisis and increase density in a positive way.”

The Negev company runs nine communal properties, three of which are in San Francisco. The others are in Austin, Texas, and Oakland, California.

The Negev properties, generally in run-down, low-income neighborhoods, are restructured to accommodate a large number of tenants, Gutman explained.

Sarah Sherburn-Zimmer, executive director of the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco, said housing problems have arisen because occupants leave buildings being converted to communal homes and cannot afford to move back in or the space is no longer suitable for them.

“The Negev house takes affordable housing and makes it unaffordable,” said Sherburn-Zimmer. “All they’ve done is take away housing from people who had it and loved it and pushed them out to make a quick buck.”

Kumar Srikantappa, 31, who also pays $1,900 a month for a single room at The Negev, said he chose the house because of the social experience. After eight months there, the software engineer for Oracle Corp said he would soon be ready to live elsewhere.

“I met a bunch of friends, and I just want to move on to another location and into a bigger place,” he said. “It’s time.”

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Vast Beatles Collection Goes on Auction in Paris

A vast collection of rare Beatles vinyl records, photos and other  paraphernalia will go on auction in Paris on Saturday.

Beatles aficionado Jacques Volcouve began his collection in 1967 with the album “A Hard Day’s Night.” Decades later, it has grown to include nearly 15,000 records and more besides.

“Starting from 1967, I gave myself an absolutely impossible mission: own everything concerning the Beatles,” Volcouve told Reuters TV, as he was sorting through his collection in December.

The 60-year-old has decided to auction off his collection to fund his retirement.

Among the 332 lots up for auction on Saturday is the disc “Tony Sheridan and the Beatles 7: My Bonnie,” signed by Paul McCartney and George Harrison, with an estimated price of 6,000-10,000 euro ($6,450-10,740).

A lot of 11 alternate cover photos for the Grammy-winning Sergeant Pepper Lonely Hearts Club album is expected to go for 10,000 to 15,000 euros.

Volcouve has written books and given radio commentaries about the Liverpool foursome. Letters he received from Harrison and Ringo Starr in 1976, thanking him for articles he had written, could fetch up to 3,000 euros each.

A set of dolls of the Fab Four with their instruments is expected to sell for 200-400 euros.

Among other items up for sale are an “authentic Beatle wig,” a Yoko Ono/John Lennon wedding album box and posters.

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Dark Clouds Hang Over South African Music, yet Silver Linings Shine

About two years ago, blues-folk artist Alice Phoebe Lou gave a performance in a park in Berlin, looking for donations as a street entertainer.

A listener invited her to perform at a function. Her career has since taken off. Last year, she released her debut record, and on Wednesday she played one of the world’s premier music festivals: the South by Southwest event in Texas. 

Lou is just one of a growing list of South African musicians who’ve felt compelled to leave their homeland to be rewarded for their art. Another is Josie Field.

“I feel my sound and where I want to go musically, I’ve hit a ceiling in South Africa,” Field said. “The market is extremely niche for what I do.”

As they do for most musicians in South Africa, live gigs provide Field’s staple income. But, in a depressed economy, they’re limited.

Despite the struggles, Field said she’d never regret the past decade of making music in the country of her birth.

‘Take another step’

“I’ve had a wonderful time,” she said. “There’s no doubt that there are proper music fans here. But I’m now ready to take another step and hopefully explore how other parts of the world see my music, and also grow as an artist.”

Andre le Roux, director of the Southern African Music Rights Organization, said it’s “natural” for extremely talented artists to leave South Africa.

The Dave Matthews Band “is doing far better in the U.S. than they would have done, ever, in South Africa,” he said. “So when people grow a little bigger [than the South African music scene], it’s time to leave.”

But he added that “what isn’t natural” is that exceptional, and scrupulous, musicians like Field often can’t get airplay in South Africa.

“There is the reality of payola, which is corruption —  taking money where you’re not supposed to take money to give people airplay when you’re not supposed to give them airplay,” he said.

Le Roux also said that South Africa’s national broadcaster, the SABC, was failing to fulfill its pledge to play 90 percent local music.

“Was it a policy that was put in place, or was it a statement that was made? In our view, it was very much a statement that was made, because we haven’t seen the policy position,” he said. “Which radio station do you know that has played 70, 80, 95 [percent local music]; who’s done the assessment?”

The SABC insists its stations are playing “mostly locally produced” music.

Lack of support seen

Le Roux is adamant that the state isn’t doing enough for music. Most public schools, for example, don’t teach it.

“Are those institutional tools in place to support an environment in which the arts and the artists can thrive?” he asked. “The honest answer to that is no.”  

The government says it’s doing its best with “limited funding” to support arts.

Field said another reason for her leaving is her disenchantment with politics in South Africa — something reflected in her track “Born Under the Stars.”

“It’s a song that has a political edge to it, coming just out of frustration for the future of South Africa and the leaders that aren’t leading,” she said.

Pride in artists’ progress

Le Roux expects more of the cream of local music to leave the country — not necessarily because of politics or corruption, but because they’re simply “too big” for the nation’s small, underfunded music sector.

“We don’t have the ability to absorb them within our cultural space,” he said. “That’s the problem of the state. But do we like to see them grow? Yes. Those that go abroad, good for them. Those that stay here, let’s build an industry together.”

Ultimately, he said, South Africa should be proud that its artists, like DJ and rapper Spoek Mathambo, are successful worldwide, in bigger, ultracompetitive markets.

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Rodin Marble Masterpiece ‘Andromeda’ Up for Auction in Paris

French sculptor Auguste Rodin’s newly re-discovered marble masterpiece titled “Andromeda” will be up for sale in Paris in May, auction house, Artcurial, said on Friday.

The auctioning of the sculpture is of particular importance as it has remained in the hands of the same family for roughly 130 years, according to the director of Artcurial’s impressionist and modern art department, Bruno Jaubert.

Rodin, renowned the world over for works like his bronze “The Thinker” and “The Kiss” made from marble, gave his sculpture of the mythical woman Andromeda to a friend and client, a Chilean diplomat living in Paris in the late 19th Century.

“The family who received it as a present from Rodin in 1888, from generation to generation, conserved it until 2017,” Jaubert explained, proudly adding that he and a colleague found it earlier this year during an inventory in Spain.

The sculpture is estimated to auction for between 800,000 and 1 million euros ($859,400 to $1.07 million U.S. dollars) and will be on exhibition at the auction house from March 18 to 28, coinciding with the centenary of Rodin’s death in 1917.

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