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gstqaobc · 5 years ago

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The Royal Fascinator Friday, February 21, 2020

How a ‘future Queen in training’ is finding her voice

(Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

When a high-profile member of the Royal Family took her turn on a podcast the other day, listeners heard a voice that might have seemed unfamiliar.

Sure, Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, has had a prominent position in royal affairs since her marriage to Prince William in 2011. But she has rarely been interviewed for broadcast. So it came as something of a surprise when she popped up behind the mic for the

Happy Mum, Happy Baby

podcast in the U.K.

But there Kate was, chatting easily with the podcast host for half an hour or so about something that has become a passion for her — early child development. The mother of three sprinkled the podcast with a few personal details — that she tried

hypnobirthing

, that she wasn’t “the happiest of pregnant people.”

As breezy as the conversation may have seemed, it also reflected a significant evolution Kate has made since joining the Royal Family.

“In her recent podcast, the Duchess of Cambridge showed in a variety of ways how much she has raised her game since she married Prince William nearly a decade ago,” royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith said via email.

“She has significantly improved her skill at public speaking, which at the beginning was an ordeal to her.”

She is also showing confidence that comes from years of studying an issue that is — and will be — a major focus for her, said Bedell Smith.

“And she is willing to reveal personal details in an effort to help other new mothers, but stopping shy of over-sharing. In this way, she is being ‘modern’ without being self-consciously ‘progressive.’"

The podcast was only one of several high-profile outings for Kate over the past few weeks, and has drawn inevitable speculation about the degree to which she may be stepping up as the Royal Family deals with the departure of Prince Harry and Meghan.

“Although Kate's high-profile engagements over the past weeks have been planned months in advance, they have highlighted her new level of visibility and engagement that the media obsession with Harry and Meghan has tended to overshadow,” said Bedell Smith.

“With Meghan's departure from official royal duties, Kate can go about her business without the risk of her sister-in-law trying to steal her thunder.”

Kate is reticent by nature, Bedell Smith said, and that gives her a modesty that has “considerable appeal” for the public.

“She has a natural ability to combine accessibility and dignity with a royal mystique, which is very difficult to pull off.”

For the past several months, there have been various headlines around the same emerging theme — that Kate is stepping up her game, hitting her stride, coming into her own.

Last weekend, the Daily Telegraph was reporting how the “Duchess of Cambridge finds her voice as a down-to-earth mother of three.”

As much as the more prominent role is an evolution for Kate, she is treading relatively safe ground. Offering support for parents and caregivers and promoting the importance of early childhood development carry a relatively low risk of controversy.

And those looking for shocking revelations out of her podcast will still be looking.

“To be quite honest, it was quite bland,” public relations expert Mark Borkowski said in an interview from London. “There was nothing much in it.”

And maybe in some ways, that’s not a surprise.

Kate is fully aware she is a “future Queen in training,” Bedell Smith said.

“With the guidance of her husband, the Queen, Prince Charles and expert advisers, [Kate] fully understands that hers is a lifetime commitment that calls for restraint and self-discipline. She knows what she is expected to do, and she has embraced her duties wholeheartedly, not only with enthusiasm, but with an evident sense of joy.”

The Queen, Bedell Smith said, had high hopes for Kate from the moment she entered the scene.

“She clearly is fulfilling those hopes today.”

What can they do?

More than a month after their seismic announcement to go their own way, more details have emerged about how Prince Harry and Meghan will actually leave the upper echelons of the Royal Family. After returning from Canada to the U.K. for a flurry of engagements over the next couple of weeks, they will officially end their royal duties on March 31. Less clear, however, is how they will forge their own path as they seek financial independence and work on building their brand. In the absence of official information, speculation runs rampant, particularly as reports emerge of various meetings, appearances or alliances they may be striking in the U.S. There was an appearance at an exclusive JP Morgan event in Miami, where there were several other high-profile celebrities in attendance. Harry may also be in discussion with investment bank Goldman Sachs about possibly giving a talk on mental health and the military. What they’re doing isn’t really a surprise, suggests Borkowski. “They’re damned if they do, they’re damned if they don’t. It’s a very difficult road they have to navigate now. They do have to achieve some economic independence,” he said. “If you’re going to set out on this journey and you’re going to change the world, set up a foundation, create a movement … you’ve got to raise a lot of money. You’ve also got to start working in rooms of huge influence.” In the U.K., there has been considerable questioning from some media quarters about the alliances they appear to be trying to forge. Some of it has been quite critical. “As much as the media want to stir up the negativity, what are they meant to do? Really, what are they meant to do?” Borkowski said. And those who hear them speak at engagements might find themselves supporting the causes Harry and Meghan are trying to promote. “Arguably, they’re in rooms where they might change conversations, attitudes …. and make [those listening] think about some issues that are close to their hearts,” said Borkowski. “They have a vision. They have a brand and they have to work with people who can make that brand work.” But they may have to tweak — or significantly change — how that brand is developed. Buckingham Palace is reviewing their use of the label “Sussex Royal,” with the “Royal” element of that potentially causing concern. The BBC reported that their spokesperson said the use of that word is under discussion, and an announcement on that would come along with the launch of Harry and Meghan’s new non-profit organization.

The pain — and tolerance — of royal divorce

(Stefan Rousseau/The Associated Press)

Royal departures of a rather different nature are also unfolding, with the divorces of two family members announced in short order over the past few days.

The Queen’s eldest grandson, Peter Phillips, is splitting from his Canadian wife, Autumn Kelly. Also divorcing are the Queen’s nephew, David, Earl of Snowden, and his wife, Serena Stanhope.

Since the splits became public, there has been much speculation about how Elizabeth feels about it all.

“Just as the Queen was distressed by the divorces of three of her children, it is likely that the latest announcements have pained her equally,” said Bedell Smith, author of Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch.

“But her attitude has become more tolerant, recognizing many marriages don't work out for any number of reasons that are impossible for outsiders to fully understand.”

It wasn’t always that way.

Bedell Smith looks back to a speech Elizabeth made in 1949, while still a princess, when she condemned divorce for creating “some of the darkest evils in our society today.”

That was a result of a number of factors, including the Church of England rules of divorce, the view of the British establishment of the day and her family’s “revulsion over the abdication of her uncle, King Edward VIII, to abandon his sovereign duty to marry a twice-divorced woman — a major crisis that threatened the foundations of the monarchy,” said Bedell Smith.

Other divorces rocked the family, including those of the current Earl Snowden’s parents, Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones, and three of the Queen’s four children: Charles, Anne and Andrew.

“It was only after the Anglican divorce rules were relaxed that the Queen could accept the remarriage of Prince Charles to divorced Camilla Parker Bowles,” said Bedell Smith.

The current divorces appear to be amicable, and Bedell Smith thinks that must have at least offered “some consolation” for Elizabeth.

“With divorces today, one can only hope for civilized arrangements and an absence of acrimony and publicized court battles — both of which may have been averted with the Phillips and Snowden marriages,” said Bedell Smith.

“In both cases, the negotiations were complete, and the Queen fully informed, before the announcements were made to the public.”

Royally quotable

"With each story that is told, the taboo around domestic abuse weakens and the silence that surrounds it is broken, so other sufferers can know that there is hope for them and they are not alone."

— Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall,

speaks at a reception

marking the 15th anniversary of a domestic abuse charity.

Home renovations, palace-style

During a home renovation, saving the wallpaper isn’t usually a priority.

But when the home is Buckingham Palace, and the wallpaper is an early 19th- century Chinese version that came from King George VI’s Brighton Pavilion, that’s exactly what will happen.

video posted on YouTube

and Twitter by the Royal Family takes viewers into the east wing of the palace, revealing some of the painstaking work being done to conserve the wallpaper that will return to the Yellow Drawing Room.

Royal reads

1. William and Kate made a

rare joint visit

with Charles and Camilla to a military rehabilitation centre. [ITV]

2. Prince Andrew turned 60 on Wednesday

with little fanfare

and under the shadow of his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. [Daily Mail]

3. Princess Anne has

her own fashion playbook

, and attracted lots of attention when she turned up at London Fashion Week. [The Guardian]

Cheers!

I’m always happy to hear from you. Send your ideas, comments, feedback and notes to

[email protected]

. Problems with the newsletter? Please let me know about any typos, errors or glitches.

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themomsandthecity · 2 years ago

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Parents Are Increasingly More Opposed to School Vaccine Mandates - What to Know

For most families, getting school-aged children vaccinated was a normal part of the back-to-school routine. But increasingly, some parents have called vaccinations into question, citing (completely debunked) concerns that vaccinations are linked to autism, and more recently, that the COVID-19 vaccines do more harm than good. The CDC has even released statements specifically targeting misinformation about COVID - addressing concerns that the vaccine contains a microchip, can make you magnetic, or can even alter human DNA. If these examples sound absurd to you, that because they are. But the pervasiveness of vaccine paranoia has serious consequences, particularly for children. The World Health Organization reports that vaccination coverage for measles - a respiratory virus that can become life-threatening to children - has steadily declined during the pandemic, seeing a record high "of nearly 40 million children miss[ing] a measles vaccine dose" in 2021. More broadly, the Association of American Medical Colleges notes that the decline in childhood vaccinations can result in a resurgence of previously controlled diseases (Polio for example, was declared eliminated in the US decades ago, only to resurge in New York earlier this year.) Attitudes around vaccinations are certainly changing - and a new survey released by the Kaiser Family Foundation points to continued ideological concerns over state-required school vaccinations. According to the survey, about seven in ten adults (71 percent) agree that healthy children "should be required to get vaccinated for MMR [measles, mumps, and rubella] in order to attend public schools." That number represents a noticeable decrease from the 82 percent reported in a 2019 Pew Research Center poll. Additionally, around three in ten adults (28 percent) say that parents should decide if their school-age children will be vaccinated, "even if this creates health risks for others," marking a jump up from 16 percent based on the 2019 Pew data. As of now, all states and the District of Columbia require children to be vaccinated for certain diseases in order to attend public schools, including measles and rubella, though exemptions are allowed in certain circumstances. Where do you stand when it comes to vaccinations and school attendance? Let us know by voting in the poll. Image Source: Getty / Inside Creative House ONSUGAR.Event.registerEventHandler('triggerAjaxReplace_poll_ajax_placeholder_35918729', function () { if (window.FlipboardWidgets) { FlipboardWidgets.widgetize(); } }); if (ONSUGAR.UserProfile.isIOSApp()) { ONSUGAR.Event.registerEventHandler('triggerAjaxReplace_poll_ajax_placeholder_35918729', function() { var poll = document.getElementById('poll_view_voting_35918729'); poll.onsubmit = function(e) { var choice = document.querySelector('#poll_view_voting_35918729 input:checked').getAttribute('value').split('-')[0]; triggerAjaxReplace('https://www.popsugar.com/family/poll/ajax_vote?nid=35918729&choice=' + choice + '&slide=0', 'poll_view_voting_35918729'); e.preventDefault(); } }); }ONSUGAR.Event.registerEventHandler('SSOComplete', function() {triggerAjaxReplace('https://www.popsugar.com/family/poll/view/dynamic/35918729/1/0/', 'poll_ajax_placeholder_35918729')}); https://www.popsugar.com/family/Vaccination-Poll-35918729?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

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newsfact · 3 years ago

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Mariska Hargitay opens up about losing her mom Jayne Mansfield as a child: ‘There’s no guarantees’

Mariska Hargitay was only 3 years old when she lost her mother.

Jayne Mansfield was 34 years old when she died in 1967 from injuries she sustained in a late-night car accident. Driver Ronald B. Harrison and companion Samuel S. Brody also perished. Three of the Hollywood star’s five children, including Hargitay, were riding in the back seat. They survived.

Hargitay went on to live a relatively normal childhood as she was raised by her father, former Mr. Universe Mickey Hargitay.

Today, at age 57, the actress is reflecting on the painful lessons she learned as a child about loss.

JAYNE MANSFIELD’S CHILDREN SAY ‘50S BLONDE BOMBSHELL ‘CARED SO MUCH ABOUT BEING A GOOD MOTHER’

Jayne Mansfield was a sought-after Hollywood blonde bombshell alongside Marilyn Monroe and Mamie Van Doren. (Getty)

“I think I learned about crisis very young, and I learned very young that s—t happens and there’s no guarantees, and we keep going,” the “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” star told Glamour magazine as part of its Women of the Year issue.

“And then we transform it,” she continued. “That’s been kind of my superpower, and the gift of having trauma early in life. I’ve spent the last 50 — how old am I? — 57, so 54 years sort of trying to figure out what happened and why, and what am I supposed to do with it?”

Hargitay admitted the trauma left her in a “frozen place.”

“I clearly was in that frozen place for a lot of my childhood — of trying to survive, actually trying to survive,” she said. “My life has been a process of unpeeling the layers and trust and trusting again.”

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Actress Jayne Mansfield and her children (left to right): Jayne Marie Mansfield, 15, Zoltan Hargitay, 5, Mickey Hargitay Jr., 6, unidentified hospital attendant, Jayne holding baby Anthony, and then-husband Matt Cimber with Mariska Hargitay, 1. (Getty Images)

According to the outlet, the star began receiving thousands of letters about sexual trauma from “Law & Order” fans when the series began airing in 1999. The show explores how a specially trained squad of detectives investigate sexually related crimes. In response, Hargitay launched Joyful Heart, a nonprofit that aims to “heal, educate and empower survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse.”

“That’s what the foundation has been about — giving back possibility,” the mother of three shared.

Today, Hargitay said she has some much-needed advice she would give to her younger self.

“People ask you that question, ‘What would you say to your younger self?’” she reflected. “And I think for me, I would have grabbed that little girl’s hand and said, ‘Everything is going to be OK. Trust me. Trust me. Everything’s going to be OK.’”

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Mariska Hargitay on the set of the “Law and Order: Organized Crime” TV series on May 17, 2021, in New York City. (Photo by Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)

“[My life] has been a journey in healing,” she added.

Back in 2018, Hargitay opened up to People magazine about how she coped with the loss of her mother.

“The way I’ve lived with loss is to lean into it,” she said at the time. “As the saying goes, the only way out is through. In my life, certainly, I’ve tried to avoid pain, loss, feeling things. But I’ve learned instead to really lean into it because sooner or later you have to pay the piper.”

“I’m not saying it’s easy, and it’s certainly hasn’t been for me,” Hargitay admitted. “There’s been a lot of darkness. But on the other side things can be so bright.”

JAYNE MANSFIELD’S FATAL CAR CRASH CHANGED ELAINE STEVENS’ LIFE FOREVER

The vision of Marisha Hargitay’s Joyful Heart foundation “is a world free of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse.” (Photo by Leon Bennett/WireImage/Getty Images)

The outlet noted that Hargitay teared up while talking about Mansfield.

“My mother was this amazing, beautiful, glamorous sex symbol – but people didn’t know that she played the violin and had a 160 IQ and had five kids and loved dogs,” she shared. “She was just so ahead of her time. She was an inspiration, she had this appetite for life, and I think I share that with her.”

“Someone once said about [remembering] my mother: ‘All you have to do is look in the mirror,’” Hargitay added. “She’s with me still.”

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lauraramargosian · 7 years ago

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Kidney Disease Treatment: The 11th Annual George Lopez Celebrity Golf Classic!

Kidney Disease: The 11th Annual George Lopez Celebrity Golf Classic is raising awareness!

George Lopez and his team raising money for kidney disease

Kidney disease treatment is no joke. Remember when George Lopez had to learn that he was in need of kidney disease treatment? Well, if you didn’t know there was a time in Lopez’s life when he needed kidney disease treatment and fast. His wife stepped up to the plate and was ready to do all she could to help with his kidney disease treatment plan.

“I’ll give you one of mine,” Ann Lopez told her husband. When the words flew from her mouth the comedian thought she was just joking. George Lopez, best known for “The George Lopez Show,” wasn’t living in a comedic world at this moment in his life.

The day was Tuesday, April 2005, the Lopezes arrived at Cedar -Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles gearing up for surgery in neighboring rooms. First, it would be her surgery and with love, faith and devotion she left George a letter and a rosary.

Mrs. Lopez opened up about the letter, saying:

“I wrote that I was doing this out of love, and that I had faith in the operation,” Ann recalls. “To me, this was about us, about our daughter, Mayan. But George, he comes from a very dysfunctional family, a horrific childhood. It was hard for him to accept that someone would give him the gift of life.”

Ironic, how some people with the hardest lives have to face hardships but the truth is, this makes us all grow stronger and George has been a positive influence in the industry for such a long time, we are thankful that his beautiful wife was able to give him the gift of life. Ann wasn’t worried, in fact she was excited to be able to give her love another chance at a healthy life. But George, he was nervous.

TOLUCA LAKE, CA – MAY 01: (L-R) Cheech Marin, George Lopez and Eddie Van Halen attend the 10th Annual George Lopez Celebrity Golf Classic at Lakeside Country Club on May 1, 2017 in Toluca Lake, California. (Photo by Jerod Harris/Getty Images for George Lopez Foundation)

“I was crying. I thanked her and I told her I loved her,” George recalls. “I was more concerned about her than I was about myself.”

The two (as expected) spoke on one another through the phone because they had to be in different rooms and post kidney treatment would take sometime in recovery.

Ann Lopez’s surgery took two hours. And George’s took five. But he was given the chance to continue making people laugh. And I’ve we’ve said before, laughter is a gift, if you can make someone laugh, you can make someone listen.

It’s great he got a second chance at life. Living a life with Kidney Disease is not an easy life. And we’re certain that’s why George Lopez is now taking part in the 11th Annual George Lopez Celebrity Golf Classic, raising money and awareness about kidney disease.

Sponsors included Century Healthcare, 3 Arts Entertainment, Aftershokz, Allen & Anita Kohl, Alveo Technologies, Axis Capital, Baltaire Restaurant, Beer Pong Golf, Boulevard Management, Bunnin Chevrolet Cadillac, The Gilbert and Jacki Cisneros Foundation, City National Bank, CoachLabs, Coca-Cola, Combi Charitable Foundation, Committed U, Companion Life, Curtis & Co. Watches, El Chicano Productions, Endemol Shine Group, Fifty150 Brand, Glenmorangie, HBO, Healthcare Highways Rx, Ken Corday of Days of Our Lives, King Taco, MGO Wealth Advisors, Moët Hennessy USA, Municipal Packaging, OnCore Golf, PXG, Santo Mezquila, Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP, Snoop’s Premium Nutrients, Stacey & Larry Kohl, Sultana Distribution Services, UTA, Vektor Vodka, Vino Latino USA, WebTPA, WBBO, Sheryl Underwood Radio, ZORIZ Golf and many more!

Doris Bergman’s Annual “Gratitude Lounge,” is also featuring an amazing assortment of luxury gifting!

George has made it his mission to raise awareness to kidney disease and organ donation.

“As we enter our tenth [now 11th] year, we continue to improve quality of life for underprivileged children, adults and military families, giving them the opportunity for a brighter future. Please join George Lopez in supporting this very worthwhile cause.”

Did you know that Kidney disease is the 9TH leading cause of death in the United States.1 An estimated 31 million people in the United States (10% of the adult population) have chronic kidney disease (CKD)?

Kidney Disease Facts and Kidney disease treatment

9 out of 10 people who have stage 3 CKD (moderately decreased kidney function) do not know it.

CKD is more common among women, but men with CKD are 50 more likely than women to have their CKD turn into kidney failure (also called end-stage renal disease or ESRD).

Some racial and ethnic groups are at greater risk for kidney failure. Compared to whites, the risk for African Americans is almost 4 times higher, Native Americans is 1.5 times higher, Asians is 1.4 times higher. Compared to non-Hispanics, Hispanics are almost 1.5 times as likely to be diagnosed with kidney failure.

The leading cause of kidney failure is diabetes.

Kidney disease treatment ranges from simple diet changes to needing a transplant.

“Diabetes causes 44% of all new cases of kidney failure. In 2012 it was the primary cause for 239,837 kidney failure patients. An estimated 29.1 million people have diabetes; 8.1 million of them don’t know they have it. About 40% of people with diabetes will get CKD.7 African Americans with diabetes are 3.5 times more likely than whites to get kidney disease. Most people (69%) participating in a 2011 nationwide survey by the American Kidney Fund could not name diabetes as a leading cause of kidney disease, despite the fact that over half (55%) had a loved one with diabetes.”

And then of course, high blood pressure is the 2nd leading cause of kidney failure.

“High blood pressure (HBP) causes 28.4% of all new cases of kidney failure. In 2012 it was the primary cause for 159,049 kidney failure patients. An estimated 70 million (29%) people have HBP — that is every 1 in 3 American Adults. And most people (85%) participating in a 2011 nationwide survey by the American Kidney Fund could not name high blood pressure as a leading cause of kidney disease, yet most of them (75%) had a loved one with high blood pressure.”

Kidney Disease: Early Detection and Treatment

According to “Medlineplus.gov,” here are some things to consider if you’re worried about kidney disease.

How can you tell if you are at risk for kidney disease? Ask yourself these questions

Do you have diabetes (problems with your blood sugar)?

Do you have high blood pressure?

Do you have heart disease?

Did your mother, father, sister, or brother have kidney disease? (Kidney disease runs in families) and may eventually need kidney disease treatment

It doesn’t matter how old or young you are kidney disease treatment is important.

“If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you are at risk for kidney disease. Now is the time to get tested. Your health care provider will order two simple tests to check your kidneys—a blood test to check your glomerular filtration rate (GFR) and a urine test to check for protein.”

These tests are a quick and painless way to get tested to see if you need kidney disease treatment. And it’s certainly a great way to stay ahead of the staying healthy game.

[ Eva Longoria, George Lopez, Carlos Santana at Padres El Sueno de Esparanza! ]

TOLUCA LAKE, CA – MAY 01: (L-R) Pat Monahan, George Lopez and Eddie Van Halen attend the 10th Annual George Lopez Celebrity Golf Classic at Lakeside Country Club on May 1, 2017 in Toluca Lake, California. (Photo by Jerod Harris/Getty Images for George Lopez Foundation)

Those are the facts, it’s not all about “drinking too much,” or “doing drugs.” Health is a constant crisis all over the world. And that’s why George Lopez and other high-profile celebrities including Eva Longoria, Andy Garcia, Anthony Anderson, Andy Buckley, Yasiel Puig, Eddie Van Halen, Luke Wilson, Don Cheadle, David Arquette, Adam Rodriguez, Cedric the Entertainer, Joe Mantegna, Dean Geyer, Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong, Alfonso Ribeiro, Dennis Haysbert, Tim Allen, Oscar De La Hoya, Sheryl Underwood, Joe Regalbuto, Joe Pesci, Billy Dawson, Esai Morales, Bruce McGill, D.L. Hughley, Emilio Rivera, Frank Buckley, Dr. Jason Diamond, John Brotherton, John Pyper-Ferguson, Johnathan Fernandez, Ken Corday, Kevin Rahm, Kyle Lowder, Jonathan Antin, Lizzy Small, Mark Rolston, Mauricio Umansky, Norman Nixon, Pat Monahan, Patrika Darbo, Paula Trickey, Richard Karn, Roland Martin, Steven Michael Quezada, Yancey Arias, Vinnie Jones, Gary Valentine, Phillip Palmer and others will be taking part in the tee off Monday morning, May 7th.

But you can make a difference as well and you don’t need to be rich. Firstly, if you can’t visit www.georgelopezfoundation.org and give a donation, make sure to stop in and learn more about kidney disease, share this article and spread the word. It starts with education and the whole point about any disease is knowledge!

[ Selena Gomez teaches us to take care of our health! ]

We all know someone who suffers from a chronic illness but many have become afraid to speak up and talk. That’s why it’s important to share, learn and remember that our bodies are truly amazing, they spend every waking and sleeping moment attempting to heal the damage done naturally and unnaturally, so, if you find yourself on the wagon of drinking, drugs or other things that could be harming your bodies systems, take a step back and remember, you deserve to live a healthy life.

Some people aren’t given a second chance but education, just knowing it can happen to you… well, that can change your life.

Huge shout out to George Lopez and the rest of the team for continuing to tee off to raise awareness to kidney disease, we are proud of you.

Do you know someone who has had a kidney transplant or needed kidney disease treatment? How did it go? How are they doing now? Let us know in the comments below (and of course use an alias for their name) but talking about it is important because it teaches. And you never know who is reading your comment. Words are power as are stories. And it’s all about giving back at the Celebrity Golf Classic and taking action on raising awareness to kidney disease and kidney disease treatment!

Blessed be!

Throwback: 10th Anniversary George Lopez Celebrity Golf Classic 2017

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ifreakingloveroyals · 3 months ago

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Through the Years → Princess Madeleine of Sweden (225/∞) 14 November 2024 | Princess Madeleine attends the World Childhood Foundation's 25th Anniversary Gala in New York City. (Photo by Joy Malone / Getty Images)

#Princess Madeleine #Sweden #2024 #Joy Malone #Getty Images #through the years: Madeleine

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vinayv224 · 5 years ago

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Read Obama’s inspiring commencement address to 2020’s high school graduates

Former President Barack Obama speaks during the “Graduate Together” television special. | Getty Images for EIF & XQ

“Leave behind all the old ways of thinking that divide us: sexism, racial prejudice, status, greed,” Obama said. “Set the world on a different path.”

In his second commencement speech of 2020, former President Barack Obama implored graduating high schoolers to be brave in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, and to reject old ways of doing things while working together to solve pressing problems, from economic inequality to the climate crisis.

“If the world’s gonna get better, it’s gonna be up to you,” Obama said during the television special, “Graduate Together” on Saturday. “Leave behind all the old ways of thinking that divide us — sexism, racial prejudice, status, greed. And set the world on a different path.”

The speech followed one Obama delivered to graduates of historically black colleges and universities in which he offered both pointed criticisms of the Trump administration — specifically that “this pandemic has fully finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing” — and his signature optimistic rhetoric.

Saturday evening’s remarks also contained a few gentle rebukes of the Trump administration, with the former president telling the graduates that adults “don’t have all the answers. A lot of them aren’t even asking the right questions,” and that “things are so screwed up” because “a lot of so-called grownups — including some with fancy titles and important jobs” do “what’s convenient, what’s easy” rather than what is right. But its focus was on inspiring the graduates to use the pandemic as an opportunity to improve both themselves and their countries.

“Your graduation marks your passage into adulthood,” Obama said, noting that passage can be frightening, but arguing that with adulthood comes new agency. “With all the challenges this country faces right now, nobody can tell you, ‘No, you’re too young to understand.’ Or, ‘This is how it’s always been done.’ Because with so much uncertainty, with everything suddenly up for grabs, this is your generation’s world to shape.”

“This is your generation’s world to shape.”—@BarackObama to graduating high school seniors #GraduateTogether Join us at https://t.co/aGSLPSDtgE. pic.twitter.com/3OOnbPa3Gu

— The Obama Foundation (@ObamaFoundation) May 17, 2020

Read the full rush transcript of Obama’s speech below:

Hi, everybody! Aniyah, thank you for that beautiful introduction. I could not be prouder of everything you’ve done in your time with the Obama Foundation. And, of course, I couldn’t be prouder of all of you in the graduating class of 2020. As well as the teachers, and the coaches, and most of all, parents and family who guided you along the way.

Now, graduating is a big achievement under any circumstances. Some of you have had to overcome serious obstacles along the way. Whether it was an illness, or a parent losing a job, or living in a neighborhood where people too often count you out. Along with the usual challenges of growing up, all of you have had to deal with the added pressures of social media, reports of school shootings, and the specter of climate change. And then, just as you’re about to celebrate having made it through, just as you’ve been looking forward to proms and senior nights, graduation ceremonies, and — let’s face it — a whole bunch of parties, the world has turned upside down by a global pandemic. And as much as I’m sure you love your parents, I’ll bet that being stuck at home with them and playing board games or watching Tiger King on TV is not exactly how you envisioned the last few months of your senior year.

Now, I’ll be honest with you. The disappointments of missing a live graduation, those will pass pretty quick. I don’t remember much of my own high school graduation. I know that not having to sit there and listen to a commencement speaker isn’t all that bad. Mine usually go on way too long. Also, not that many people look great in those caps. Especially if you have big ears like me. And you’ll have plenty of time to catch up with your friends once the immediate public health crisis is over. But what remains true is that your graduation marks your passage into adulthood. The time when you begin to take charge of your own life. It’s when you get to decide what’s important to you — what kind of career you want to pursue. Who you want to build a family with. The values you want to live by. And given the current state of the world, that may be kind of scary.

If you planned on going away to college, getting dropped off at campus in the fall, that’s no longer a given. If you were planning to work while going to school, finding that first job is going to be tougher. Even families that are relatively well-off are dealing with massive uncertainty. Those who were struggling before, they’re hanging on by a thread. All of which means that you’re going to have to grow up faster than some generations.

This pandemic has shaken up the status quo and laid bare a lot of our country’s deep-seated problems. From massive economic inequality, to on-going racial disparities, to a lack of basic healthcare for people who need it. It’s woken a lot of young people up to the fact that the old ways of doing things just don’t work. And it doesn’t matter how much money you make, if everyone around you is hungry and sick. And that our society and democracy only work when we think not just about ourselves, but about each other.

It’s also pulled the curtain back on another hard truth, something that we all have to eventually accept once our childhood comes to an end. You know all those adults that you used to think were in charge and knew what they were doing? Turns out they don’t have all the answers. A lot of them aren’t even asking the right questions. So, if the world’s gonna get better, it’s gonna be up to you. That realization may be kind of intimidating, but I hope it’s also inspiring. With all the challenges this country faces right now, nobody can tell you, “No, you’re too young to understand.” Or, “This is how it’s always been done.” Because with so much uncertainty, with everything suddenly up for grabs, this is your generation’s world to shape.

Since I’m one of the old guys, I won’t tell you what to do with this power that rests in your hands. But I’ll leave you with three quick pieces of advice — first, don’t be afraid. America’s gone through tough times before. Slavery, civil war, famine, disease, the great depression, and 9/11. And each time, we came out stronger. Usually because a new generation — young people like you — learn from past mistakes and figured out how to make things better.

Second, do what you think is right. Doing what feels good — what’s convenient, what’s easy — that’s how little kids think. Unfortunately a lot of so-called grownups — including some with fancy titles and important jobs — still think that way, which is why things are so screwed up. I hope that instead, you decide to ground yourself in values that last. Like honesty, hard work, responsibility, fairness, generosity, respect for others. You won’t get it right every time, you’ll make mistakes like we all do. But if you listen to the truth that’s inside yourself — even when it’s hard, even when it’s inconvenient — people will notice. They’ll gravitate towards you, and you’ll be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

And finally, build a community. No one does big things by themselves. Right now, when people are scared, it’s easy to be cynical and say, “Let me just look out for myself or my family or people who look or think or pray like me.” But if we’re gonna get through these difficult times, if we’re gonna create a world where everybody has opportunities to find a job and afford college, if we’re gonna save the environment and defeat future pandemics, then we’re gonna have to do it together.

So be alive to one another’s struggles. Stand up for one another’s rights. Leave behind all the old ways of thinking that divide us — sexism, racial prejudice, status, greed. And set the world on a different path. When you need help, Michelle and I have made it the mission of our foundation to give young people like you the skills and support to lead in your own communities. And to connect you with other young leaders around the country and around the globe. But, the truth is, you don’t need us to tell you what to do, because in so many ways, you’ve already started to lead.

Congratulations, class of 2020. Keep making us proud.

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sheilacwall · 5 years ago

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Common: ‘I wanted to be the dopest. Then I found a higher purpose’ | Music

It’s apt that Common and I meet in Philadelphia, the US city of brotherly love. The rapper, who is also an activist and Emmy-winning actor, has a preoccupation with the subject, which he believes should be the driving force behind personal and social change. “My mother’s love was the first thing I pretty much knew,” he says as we drive to the soundcheck for a gig. His new album, Let Love, his 12th, is full of lush, moving jazz and soul-tinged odes to life, hip-hop, his mother, his 22-year-old daughter, his hope for a future romantic relationship and to God.

Common, 47, speaks powerfully about his childhood, growing up on Chicago’s notorious South Side. His parents split when he was a baby, but he maintained regular contact with his father, and his grandmother walked him to school. There he met Mr Brown, a teacher who “took a lot of pride in what it was to be a black man”. Although the drugs and gangs that plagued the neighbourhood were close by, “it wasn’t like every day we were walking around dodging bullets,” Common explains in a laid-back drawl. “The ultimate thing was that, man, I had something to aspire to. One of the solutions to the violence that goes on in the inner city is providing young people with something [that makes them] feel valued.”

Common performing in Austin in August. Photograph: Gary Miller/Getty Images

He’s become known for writing conscious rap, but his debut album, Can I Borrow a Dollar, came out in an era when gangsta rap was the genre’s driving force. It depicted a less mature person, particularly on the misogynist track Heidi Hoe. “I definitely put a lot of that down to youth,” Common explains, sounding a bit embarrassed. “It was ‘bros before hoes’ – stuff you’re repeating from your homies when you’re not really thinking for yourself yet.”

After the album failed to achieve commercial success, he embarked on a journey of personal and spiritual growth. He read the Bible and the Qur’an, listened to jazz and worked on his craft as an MC. Two years later, he came back with a critically acclaimed second album, Resurrection. It was “as if Common had gone from playing dozens on the corner to standing in as an elder statesman”, declared one critic. “[He was] socially conscious, verbally dexterous and seemingly wise beyond his years.” Clearly, his underwhelming experiences with his first album affected him. “I named the album Resurrection because I felt like I was coming back from the dead,” he says, with a deep belly laugh.

“My ambition initially was driven by wanting to be seen, wanting to be heard – I wanted to be the dopest. But when I started writing stories about myself I would have people come to me and say, ‘Wow, your song Retrospect for Life [about abortion] made me decide to have my child.’ When people start telling you how your music has affected them, you know that it has a higher purpose.”

Common: Resurrection – video

The experience taught him that change doesn’t happen unless you make it happen. He applied the same line of thinking to acting, which he began studying in 2001. He’s appeared in more than 50 movies – including a role in Ava DuVernay’s Selma and in the next 10 years, he says: “I want people to say, “Man, he’s one of the great actors of his generation.’” Calling acting enlightening and therapeutic, he says it has taught him that “what’s more important than being cool is telling the truth”.

This might sound like so much celebrity puff, but Common credits acting with a profound late-in-life revelation. While filming The Tale, a film about sexual abuse starring Laura Dern, he recalled that he had been molested as a child by a male relative of a family friend. Common opens up easily about the recollection: “It was something I had removed from my thoughts, but through being part of the movie, the situation came to my memory. As a kid I must have felt, ‘I don’t want nobody to know about this, I don’t wanna get in trouble or get this person in trouble’, so I just didn’t let it exist in my mind.”

Common with Democratic party politician Stacey Abrams at a rally in 2018. Photograph: Lawrence Bryant/Reuters

He also wrote about this in his memoir, Let Love Have the Last Word, published earlier this year. “I’ve recently been getting into the mental health of the community and how we deal with some of the issues that are generational [but] we never talk about,” he says. “This is one of them.”

At first reticent to write about the issue – music was “a safer place” to deal with it, he says – he discussed it with his mother, who told him something similar had happened in their family. “It was something people never talked about, but the not talking about it is what allows it to continue,” Common says. He felt it was vital he share his story so that “anybody who has experienced [abuse] can feel they don’t have to carry the shame and can figure out a way to get past it and heal”.

The topic of healing weighs heavily on the rapper’s mind these days, especially when it comes to race, poverty and US politics. “There has to be a shift in values,” he says. “What can we offer our communities to provide people not only with hope but with practical ways to advance and live a full life?”

More than a decade ago, he created the Common Ground Foundation, which focuses on empowering high-school students from underserved communities. It is about to open the Art in Motion charter school in Chicago. He is also involved in criminal justice reform initiatives. Since 2017, he has toured California prisons, talking to and performing for inmates. His efforts have been credited with helping pass a bill in California that allows young offenders sentenced to life without parole the opportunity to have their cases reheard.

Sitting on his tour bus after his show, Common sips on red wine while showing friends the video for Show Me That You Love, a song about how his relationship with his daughter has evolved. A few years ago, she told him she didn’t think he had been the best father – he was separated from her mother and away on tour all the time – and she felt that he didn’t really care about her. At first, Common says, he was defensive, but then they started mending their relationship with the help of therapy.

“It’s important that people see there are artists out there who have achieved, but they still have issues they are working through,” he says, explaining why he wants to reveal vulnerability in his music. “This is why I talk about therapy and mindfulness and meditation in my [new] songs. It’s why I talk about being molested, and my father. The job of the artist is to not always show the accolades.”

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turkiyeecom · 6 years ago

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Facebook’s New Competition: The U.S. Dollar

Photo-Illustration: Jed Egan, Photos: Getty Images At least it’s not “GlobalCoin.” For months now, rumors, leaks, and speculation have held that Facebook’s newly developed cryptocurrency — the entrance of the most powerful private surveillance apparatus on the planet into a sector created by and for obsessively secretive cypherpunk libertarian cranks — would be called “GlobalCoin.” It felt a bit on the nose. (Was NewWorldOrderCoin already taken?) Instead, the coin will be called Libra … a reference to the currency system of history’s most famous conquering empire, Rome. I personally would have gone with “Facebucks.” Libra, which was finally, officially announced this morning, is expected to launch in 2020 with Calibra, a digital wallet for securely storing the currency that can be used as a stand-alone app or in WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Previous reporting has suggested that Indian WhatsApp users will be first to have access to the cryptocurrency, for no- or low-fee money transfers, and Facebook has apparently, and uncharacteristically, been wooing regulators and central bankers around the world to smooth the coin’s landing. The Libra blockchain — that is, the shared ledger of all transactions made in Libra — will be maintained by a network of nodes, which verify transactions and store the continuously updated record. These nodes will be operated by outside companies (early partners seem to include Mastercard, PayPal, Uber, and Booking.com), each of which will reportedly pay $10 million for the privilege, and the money from these licensing fees, the Information reports, will be used to back Libra with a “basket of currencies and low-risk securities from various countries,” keeping its value stable. How, precisely, users will exchange Libra for physical currency remains to be seen, though the most likely option is that Facebook partners with a cryptocurrency exchange, and the Information reports that there are plans for “physical terminals similar to ATMs.” Facebook is insistent that Calibra will not share “account information or financial data” to it, or to third parties — but that the wallet will use Facebook data to “comply with the law, secure customers’ accounts, mitigate risk and prevent criminal activity.” What this means in practice is not precisely clear, except that Facebook wants to make sure you’re aware that your Libra account balance will not be used to help target you with ads on its main platform. The coin itself will be governed by an independent foundation, the Libra Association, consisting of representatives from Facebook, financial institutions, nonprofits, merchants, venture capitalists, and the companies running the nodes. Facebook is already working on creating its own private supreme court, after all; why wouldn’t it want its own private, independent central bank as well? This highly centralized structure is very different from that of “traditional” cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, which spurn centralized authority and allow anyone to set up a node for free. And unlike Libra, whose value will be fixed to the aforementioned basket of currencies and securities, most cryptocurrencies don’t maintain fixed exchange rates — which is exactly what makes crypto such an exciting and volatile speculative market. Libra, by contrast, is intended to be boring because Facebook’s short-term plans for the currency are similarly boring or, at least, straightforward: Facebook wants to enter, and own, the cross-border payments market. If it is indeed launching in India, it’s not as part of a test run but because nearly $80 billion in remittances were sent to India in 2018; with more than 200 million Indian WhatsApp users already, the company is well-positioned to make its apps, and its currency, the method of choice for international money transfers to India — and, eventually, the world. But domination of the $689 billion global remittance economy is not actually Facebook’s end goal. In fact, it almost certainly won’t make much money directly from cross-border payments, since unlike its competition (payment systems like M-Pesa or remittance apps like PayPal’s Xoom), Facebook reportedly won’t charge transaction fees for peer-to-peer payments. That’s a very bad way to make money, but as Facebook knows well, it’s a very good way to entice new users into your network and, in turn, to convince stores, restaurants, and other businesses to set up to accept GlobalCoin in payment. This is the medium-term plan for Libra: To compete not just with money-transfer businesses but with credit-card companies, using cross-border payments as the beachhead for all payments everywhere. You receive a no-fee Libra payment from an expat family member, and then use that Libra to pay back a friend, who in turn uses the Libra to pay for a Chicken Maharaja Mac at the local McDonald’s. Facebook here is openly mimicking WeChat, which is both China’s largest social network and also the country’s ubiquitous payment app, an utterly dominant Facebook–WhatsApp–Apple Pay–Venmo–Seamless hybrid. It’s easy to see why Facebook might want this. There’s a familiar business model in merchant fees (though, if you’re levying payments in the currency that you yourself mint, “taxes” might be a better word), and payments fit much more naturally than advertisements in the privacy-focused, chat-based future that Mark Zuckerberg claims is coming for his company. But Facebook insists that its merchant fees would only be high enough to cover the cost of fraud risk. The real value of becoming the world’s ubiquitous payment app (outside of China, at any rate) goes beyond the revenue from merchant fees. Facebook’s biggest problem right now — the problem that lurks behind stagnant user growth in Europe and North America — is that it’s just not essential. Like any megaplatform, Facebook wants to be infrastructure: a service so important to daily life that most people have no choice but to use it. But Facebook in 2019 is increasingly easy for Americans and Europeans to quit without particular consequence, in a way that Google, say, isn’t. Libra could, if it takes off, change that. Payment infrastructure isn’t just (potentially) more lucrative than social infrastructure, it’s much less easy to replicate, either on the business side or on the consumer side. It’s pretty easy to quit Facebook, the app where you fight with your childhood neighbor about politics. It’s much more difficult to quit Facebook, the app you use to pay your rent. I imagine the widespread adoption of a digital currency on an aggressively centralized and privately surveilled blockchain tied to real-name ID is not really what the bitcoin faithful had in mind when they got into cryptocurrency in the first place. Even so, there’s some excitement about Libra among crypto nerds, who are hoping that Facebook’s backing will normalize cryptocurrency and entice the uninitiated into crypto culture. But the opposite seems more likely to me. Once you’ve got a usable digital currency, why would you want to “get into” other currencies? I use dollars every day, but don’t spend a lot of time buying up euro and yen. Still, it’s worth asking, at this point: Why a cryptocurrency at all? If the limit of Zuckerberg’s ambition is to be the Western WeChat, or the new Visa and American Express, why does Facebook feel like it needs a whole new means of exchange? It could partner with a global banking conglomerate to undercut rivals’ fees, and leverage its already enormous network to enter the payment sector, the way WeChat or, to a lesser extent, Apple has — all without having to build out an enormous, headache-inducing technical and regulatory apparatus. But since when has Zuckerberg limited his ambition to competing with mere companies? As far as I know, there’s only one other entity out there developing a blockchain-based digital currency for a billion-plus-member economy: China. The People’s Bank of China has been amassing blockchain and digital-currency patents as it develops its own cryptocurrency — loosely pegged to a basket of other currencies, just like Libra — which could help it more efficiently monitor and control capital flows. (So much for the decentralized, anarchist dream of cryptocurrency.) Facebook doesn’t want to compete with Mastercard, or even with Goldman Sachs. It wants to be the currency platform Mastercard operates on. Facebook’s payment product is a whole new currency because its long-term competition isn’t PayPal or Visa or even WeChat, but the renminbi, the euro, the yen, and the dollar. There’s long been a segment of crypto nerds for whom the ultimate goal of bitcoin is that it replace the dollar as the global reserve currency, held in mass quantities by monetary authorities and used as the dominant unit of account for international finance. But for most of its still fairly short life, bitcoin has been much too volatile, difficult to use, and unregulated for the idea of a global reserve cryptocurrency to be anything but a wild pipe dream. But what if — bear with me now — you had a stable cryptocurrency, created with regulator and institutional accession, and already in frictionless circulation among 2.3 billion people? Plenty of economists and central bankers have suggested that a supranational instrument might make for a better reserve currency than one printed by a national monetary authority. John Maynard Keynes’s proposed currency, the “Bancor,” is notable in that it might actually have a worse name than Libra, but it also seems to presage the ambition of Zuckerberg’s project — albeit as the product of an international system of cooperating sovereign governments, rather than as an app created by a Roman Empire–obsessed programmer. We’ve now entered the realm of wild, dystopian speculation, of course. Facebook has already tried and failed to build a sustainable proprietary payment system, called Facebook Credits, and there’s every chance that Libra could similarly fail. Even its short- and medium-term goals of entering and dominating payment sectors will be difficult to achieve — let alone the unprecedented idea of a corporation’s private digital currency being widely enough adopted and respected to be the foundation of a global reserve currency. But Facebook, right now, is being very open about its plans to remake the world’s financial systems. People may even welcome that: In the global banking industry, Facebook has probably found the one group of corporations less liked and less trusted than itself. But if you think Facebook is powerful now, just wait until it’s, essentially, the global federal reserve, overseeing a global currency over which it has not just monetary control but a visible, minable record of every transaction made. Maybe GlobalCoin would have been the right name after all. Facebook’s New Competition: The U.S. Dollar 10 mins ago The Washington Post has the details on a horrific incident that may have tripped up Patrick Shanahan’s nomination In November 2011, Shanahan rushed to defend his then 17-year-old son, William Shanahan, in the days after the teenager brutally beat his mother. The attack had left Shanahan’s ex-wife unconscious in a pool of blood, her skull fractured and with internal injuries that required surgery, according to court and police records.Two weeks later, Shanahan sent his ex-wife’s brother a memo arguing that his son had acted in self-defense.“Use of a baseball bat in self-defense will likely be viewed as an imbalance of force,” Shanahan wrote. “However, Will’s mother harassed him for nearly three hours before the incident.”Details of the incidents have started to emerge in media reports about his nomination, including a USA Today report Tuesday about the punching incident in 2010.In an hour-long interview Monday night at his apartment in Virginia, Shanahan, who has been responding to questions from The Post about the incidents since January, said he wrote the memo in the hours after his son’s attack, before he knew the full extent of his ex-wife’s injuries. He said it was to prepare for his son’s initial court appearance and that he never intended for anyone other than his son’s attorneys to read it. 1:07 p.m. Trump dumps Shanahan Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, who has done a wonderful job, has decided not to go forward with his confirmation process so that he can devote more time to his family….I thank Pat for his outstanding service and will be naming Secretary of the Army, Mark Esper, to be the new Acting Secretary of Defense. I know Mark, and have no doubt he will do a fantastic job! —@realDonaldTrump 12:43 p.m.the national interest the national interest Leftists Have Turned Obama Into Mitt Romney By Jonathan Chait Obama has been accused of redistributing wealth upward and undercutting Elizabeth Warren’s attacks on business. Both claims are false. 12:18 p.m. What a mess Montana @GovernorBullock has qualified for the second Democratic debates in July, after the DNC confirms that the three CBS/YouGov polls count as qualifying polls.21 candidates have now qualified for the Detroit debates, triggering the tiebreaker rules. —@kendallkarson 11:40 a.m. The Orlando Sentinel does not seem enthused about Trump’s re-election campaign kickoff 11:33 a.m. Trump’s characteristic blunder gives immigrants and advocates time to prepare for whatever’s coming DHS is planning to target “families” as part of stepped up effort to deport undocumented immigrants, a senior admin official told me, in response to Trump’s tweet last night. But the official said there are “not a lot of happy faces” at DHS, as Trump revealed plans in the works. —@Acosta vision 2020 Amy Klobuchar Needs a Plan to Enact Her 137 Plans By Ed Kilgore The Minnesotan now has more specific plans than the wonky Elizabeth Warren. But she could use some priorities and a strategy for enacting legislation. paul manafort Paul Manafort Rescued From Rikers by Deputy Attorney General By Adam K. Raymond “Calling this highly unusual doesn’t even begin to capture” it, one legal expert tweeted. life in pixels Facebook’s New Competition: The U.S. Dollar By Max Read Facebook just introduced Libra, a new cryptocurrency designed to blow up the global financial system. 10:41 a.m. The ship with the whimsical name is doing some serious work Boaty McBoatface’s maiden outing has made a major discovery about how climate change is causing rising sea levels. Scientists say that data collected from the yellow submarines’s first expedition will help them build more accurate predictions in order to combat the problem.The mission has uncovered a key process linking increasing Antarctic winds to higher sea temperatures, which in turn is fuelling increasing levels.Researchers found that the increasing winds are cooling water on the bottom of the ocean, forcing it to travel faster, creating turbulance as it mixed with warmer waters above. 10:08 a.m. Stocks are surging on this news Had a very good telephone conversation with President Xi of China. We will be having an extended meeting next week at the G-20 in Japan. Our respective teams will begin talks prior to our meeting. —@realDonaldTrump 9:41 a.m. Hopefully this will not be reminiscent of the 2011 quake TOKYO (AP) – Magnitude 6.8 earthquake hits off northwestern Japan, tsunami warning issued. —@carlquintanilla 8:56 a.m. Tonight’s rally will be even more of a spectacle than usual President Trump will announce his reelection campaign Tuesday in Orlando, where he will be greeted by a tailgate party as well as protesters and the orange “Baby Trump” balloon loved by his critics.Trump and Vice President Pence are making their 2020 candidacy official with a rally expected to pack a 20,000-seat arena, with thousands more outside. Supporters began lining up a day early, local news outlets said Monday.“The Fake News doesn’t report it, but Republican enthusiasm is at an all time high,” Trump tweeted Tuesday morning. “Look what is going on in Orlando, Florida, right now! People have never seen anything like it (unless you play a guitar). Going to be wild - See you later!”Trump campaign spokesman Marc Lotter said Tuesday morning that the campaign had set up an “outdoor festival area” that will feature live bands before the event. 8:29 a.m. Trump the peacenik Facing twin challenges in the Persian Gulf, President Donald Trump said in an interview with TIME Monday that he might take military action to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, but cast doubt on going to war to protect international oil supplies.“I would certainly go over nuclear weapons,” the president said when asked what moves would lead him to consider going to war with Iran, “and I would keep the other a question mark.”Just hours earlier, Iran announced an escalation of its nuclear program, saying that within 10 days it will breach the limit on its stockpile of enriched uranium that was set under a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.Last week, U.S. officials blamed Iran for attacks against Norwegian and Japanese oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. Trump described those and other recent attacks attributed by administration officials to Iran as limited. “So far, it’s been very minor,” Trump told TIME. racism How Police Brutality Can Function as Terrorism By Zak Cheney-Rice These incidents, like Phoenix cops drawing guns on a young family, have psychological effects that mirror living under the threat of terrorism. 7:59 a.m. What kid is going to vape if they know it’ll keep them out of the National Honor Society?! So one small Nebraska school district is trying an aggressive new approach: Forcing students in grades seven through 12 to submit to random nicotine testing if they want to take part in extracurricular activities such as speech competitions and the National Honor Society.… Though teenagers and privacy-rights advocates might find it extreme, the new policy is legal thanks to a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld an Oklahoma school district’s policy of randomly drug testing students who participate in “competitive” extracurricular activities ranging from cheerleading to choir. In 1997, the Supreme Court had determined that testing high school athletes for illegal drugs was constitutional.Fairbury Junior-Senior High School, where roughly 60 percent of the 387 students participate in after-school activities, has had a random drug-testing system for two years. Students and their parents are required to sign a consent form agreeing to the urinalysis tests, which are randomly assigned to 10 percent of the students in extracurriculars each month, the Journal Star reported. 7:52 a.m. Reinstating Obama’s environmental policies? Raising the minimum wage for federal contractors? Let’s not get too ambitious here Sen. Amy Klobuchar wants to reenter the Climate Paris Accords, raise the minimum wage for federal contractors to $15 and require publicly traded companies to disclose all political spending over $10,000 to their shareholders — and that’s just three out of 137 ideas she wants to put forward in her first 100 days as president.On Tuesday, the Democratic presidential candidate released an exhaustive list of policy prescriptions — more than 137 bullet points, extending over 17 single-spaced pages — that she would prioritize in the first months of her administration. Klobuchar’s plans run from extending veterans’ benefits to their newborn babies to restoring the Clean Power Plan, a set of Obama-era environmental protections. 7:36 a.m. Steve Bullock doesn’t need the Democrats’ stinking debate. His campaign has town halls and unexpected profanity Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana, after failing to qualify for the first Democratic presidential debates, announced on Tuesday morning that he would be participating in locally televised town halls in Iowa and New Hampshire on the days of the dueling events next week.Bullock will appear June 26 on Iowa’s WHO-TV with Dave Price, and June 27 on New Hampshire’s WMUR with Adam Sexton. The appearances will be televised ahead of the debates in Miami rather than concurrently.Bullock and his campaign have been hustling to turn his debate-outcast status into an advantage, with a round of free media coverage prompted by his willingness to attack the Democratic National Committee for its rules on polling and donor thresholds.“DNC is saying Governor Bullock doesn’t qualify for the debates. That’s horses**t,” one Montana voter said in a campaign web ad released last Friday. 7:20 a.m. New York narrowly passes law that gives undocumented driver’s licenses The New York State Senate approved a bill on Monday to grant driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, a deeply polarizing issue that had splintered Democrats and stirred a backlash among Republicans in New York and beyond, who have already vowed to highlight it during next year’s elections.The vote, together with the Assembly’s passage last week, thrust New York into the center of the explosive national debate over immigration. It would reverse a nearly 20-year-old ban and end years of political paralysis on the issue.It also signaled the strength of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which for months had pressed moderate legislators to support the bill despite concerns about alienating swing voters, especially among first-term Democrats who flipped seats on Long Island and helped their party win a majority last year. mueller report This Summer’s Hot Beach Read: The Mueller Report By Mark Walsh With more than 300,000 copies sold, the damning document is a certified publishing sensation. migrant crisis Trump Announces ‘Removal’ of ‘Millions of Illegal Aliens’ Starting Next Week By Matt Stieb Trump announced by tweet that ICE will begin removing “millions of illegal aliens,” surprising officials who didn’t know he would broadcast the plan. 6/17/2019last night on late night last night on late night Jon Stewart Stops by Late Show to Yell at Mitch McConnell Over 9/11 Survivors By Halle Kiefer If we’re being honest, Jon Stewart does seem “bent out of shape” about the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund. 6/17/2019 As of April, Bernie Sanders was leading Democrats with $20,688,027 Per pool report from Biden’s NYC fundraiser tonight, Biden told donors his campaign had 360,000 donors with an average contribution of $55. If correct, that math comes out to about $19.8 million since he joined the race on April 25. pic.twitter.com/0vxhsGd3Z1 —@myhlee politics Mitch McConnell Calls Statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico ‘Full-Bore Socialism’ By Matt Stieb The quote is certainly consistent with Mitch McConnell’s block-anything-blue legacy, but not all Republicans agree with their leader in the Senate. 6/17/2019intelligencer chats intelligencer chats How Worried Should We Be About Escalation With Iran? By Benjamin Hart and Heather Hurlburt Intelligencer staffers discuss whether tit-for-tat provocations between the two countries will lead to something much scarier. 6/17/2019presidential pardons presidential pardons Supreme Court Won’t Stop States From Prosecuting Federal Defendants By Ed Kilgore By leaving an exception to double-jeopardy rules in place, the Court did not make it easier for Trump to keep people out of jail via pardons. Read More Read the full article

#breakingnews #Competition #Facebook #news

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toldnews-blog · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/world/united-states-of-america/how-an-abuse-victims-nerve-and-a-hidden-iphone-led-to-the-arrest-of-a-sundance-founder/

How an Abuse Victim’s Nerve and a Hidden iPhone Led to the Arrest of a Sundance Founder

Sean Escobar had been waiting for the moment for more than a quarter-century.

Over the course of an hour in September, Mr. Escobar sat at a dining room table with Sterling Van Wagenen, a founder of the Sundance Film Festival and a respected figure in the Mormon community, and asked him about a moment that had bothered Mr. Escobar since he was 13.

Why, he asked, had Mr. Van Wagenen touched his genitals?

Mr. Van Wagenen apologized and said that he had been going through difficulties in his career and his marriage, that he struggles with depression. He sounded sincere and penitent. He pledged, again and again, that he had never done anything like that before or since.

Mr. Escobar thanked him and showed him out. Then he walked over to a potted plant, retrieved the iPhone he had hidden there, and tapped the red button to stop the recording.

It is rare for a sex abuse victim to have the chance to directly confront an abuser, even in a court of law. But Mr. Escobar’s remarkable confrontation did not quiet his nagging questions:

Had the abuse, which was reported at the time to a local church official and the sheriff’s office, been appropriately dealt with? Mr. Van Wagenen admitted to a detective that he had touched the boy inappropriately, according to sheriff’s records, but he was not charged.

And could Mr. Escobar really have been the only victim?

“All my life this has bothered me about Sterling,” Mr. Escobar, 38, said in an interview this month. “It would haunt me.”

So he released his recording to the Truth & Transparency Foundation, an investigative website focused on religion, thinking it would encourage any other victims to come forward. It was published in February, and for the next few weeks, Mr. Escobar agonized over his decision.

“Oh my God, what have I done?” he said he thought to himself. “I’ve ruined this guy’s life.”

This month, Mr. Van Wagenen was charged with two counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child, though not for anything he had done to Mr. Escobar. Prosecutors in Utah said he molested a girl younger than 10 on two occasions between 2013 and 2015.

A Nightmare Sleepover

Mr. Van Wagenen, 71, who declined to comment, has not entered a plea. He was released on $75,000 bail.

Though he never attained Hollywood prestige — one film he produced, “The Trip to Bountiful,” delivered a best actress Oscar in 1986 — he practically put Utah on the filmmaking map when he, along with others including the actor Robert Redford, began what became the Sundance Film Festival. (Mr. Redford’s wife at the time, Lola Van Wagenen, is a cousin of Mr. Van Wagenen’s.) A spokesman for the Sundance Institute said Mr. Van Wagenen has not had a role at the festival since 1993.

Mr. Escobar, the youngest of four children, lived three doors down from Mr. Van Wagenen in the Salt Lake City suburb of Holladay. He became friends with the two youngest Van Wagenen boys.

Mr. Escobar said he was sleeping over at the Van Wagenens’ house when the abuse happened. He was on a couch in the basement, with one of Mr. Van Wagenen’s sons on a different sofa. Another son slept on the floor.

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Sterling Van Wagenen, who apologized to Mr. Escobar in September, was a founder of what became the Sundance Film Festival and was a respected figure in the Mormon church.CreditDustin Finkelstein/Getty Images

In the middle of the night, Mr. Escobar said, he woke up to find Mr. Van Wagenen’s hand down his pants, stroking his genitals. Mr. Escobar stirred, hoping Mr. Van Wagenen would leave. Mr. Van Wagenen pulled his hand away, but a few minutes later, he resumed. The boy stirred again.

When Mr. Van Wagenen touched Mr. Escobar a third time, the boy jumped off the couch, ran to the bathroom and locked the door. Mr. Van Wagenen tried repeatedly to get the boy to come out, but he refused, saying he did not feel well.

Mr. Escobar stayed in that bathroom all night.

“There was this big orange cat that got locked in the bathroom with me,” Mr. Escobar said. “I just pet the cat all night.”

In the morning, he left the bathroom and went straight to the phone. He called his mother and asked her to pick him up right away. She took him to a drive-through for a breakfast sandwich. With his mother behind the wheel and his sister in the front seat, he told them what happened.

“I just remember my mom,” he said, “it just looked like she’d seen a ghost. She just turned white.”

Mr. Van Wagenen told a therapist what he had done, and because the therapist was mandated to report it to the authorities, Mr. Van Wagenen went to the sheriff’s office himself. According to a Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office report, he told a detective that he had touched Mr. Escobar “sexually, inappropriately,” though he added that he had not gone under the boy’s clothes. (Mr. Escobar said he had.)

But the case was dropped after Mr. Escobar’s father told the detective that the family did not want to pursue the complaint and that it was “supportive of Mr. Van Wagenen in working out this problem.”

The Greater Salt Lake Unified Police Department, which has absorbed the sheriff’s office, said sex crimes involving children “are handled very differently” today. A spokeswoman said such a case would now be submitted to the district attorney regardless of the parents’ wishes.

Mr. Escobar’s parents, Randi and Tony Escobar, said this month that they had been trying to protect their son from the stress of a trial, exposure in the news media and teasing at school.

“The only thing we could think about was, ‘We can’t drag our son through all this,’” they wrote in an email. “Today is a very different era, where the victims’ identities are somewhat protected.”

Mr. Escobar said he understood his parents’ decision, and they remain close. But he wishes they had let the sheriff’s office continue the case so Mr. Van Wagenen perhaps could have been stopped.

Instead, his life moved on. After Mr. Escobar’s parents reported what had happened to a local leader in the Mormon Church, where they were members, the church disciplined Mr. Van Wagenen with a two-year “disfellowship,” a partial exclusion from church life that is short of an excommunication.

But in 1993, the same year he went to the police, Mr. Van Wagenen went to work as an adjunct professor of film at Brigham Young University, which is closely affiliated with the church. He would later work as director of content for BYU Broadcasting, and then as an instructor at the University of Utah.

Mr. Van Wagenen also directed movies for the church, according to his Facebook page and other biographical materials. The church produces a variety of official films, used for educational purposes or in sacred ceremonies.

A spokesman for the church, formally known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said it had taken “appropriate disciplinary action in this case,” but he did not directly respond to a question about why Mr. Van Wagenen was permitted to have roles in the church after he was disciplined.

The spokesman, Eric Hawkins, said that at the time of the report, the church’s practice was to provide spiritual counseling to individuals, and that it was offered. (Both Mr. Escobar and Mr. Van Wagenen said during the recorded conversation that they recalled no counseling.) Mr. Hawkins added that two years later, the church enacted several new safeguards against child sexual abuse, including a 24-hour help line and rules requiring “annotation of the membership record of any individual who has confessed to or been found guilty of abusing a child.”

‘I Don’t Lie Very Well’

Today, Mr. Escobar lives in Salt Lake City and St. George, in southern Utah, with his wife, Crystal, and their four young children. He and his wife have done well selling nutritional supplements with a company called Isagenix. She has written a book on motherhood, and the couple host a self-help podcast.

The abuse did not derail his life, he said. But its effects have never gone away.

He started sleeping with a hunting knife underneath his pillow, and having dreams that adults were hurting him. He got in fights at school. He became distrustful of adults and church leaders.

As an adult, he said, he is compulsively protective of his children. He will not allow them to be alone with other men. He said that when his children were assigned male teachers, he demanded they be moved to different classes. When they had play dates, he called ahead to make sure a woman would be present at all times. After decades as a “rock-solid” Mormon, he said, he left the church last year.

And he could not shake the questions: What if there were other victims out there? What if the abuse was still going on? So in January of last year, he reached out to Mr. Van Wagenen’s wife on Facebook.

“I only want to make sure that there are strict provisions in place to keep something like that from ever happening again with grandchildren and so forth,” he wrote.

She did not respond.

Eight months later, he texted each of Mr. Van Wagenen’s children. He told them that their father had molested him. It was like ripping out his own heart.

“I’m so sorry,” said Mr. Escobar, wiping tears from his eyes, in a video message he sent to one of Mr. Van Wagenen’s children. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”

One of Mr. Van Wagenen’s daughters suggested that Mr. Escobar and her father meet. He could offer assurances that he had never inappropriately touched another child. Maybe, she said, it could bring Mr. Escobar some peace.

For days leading up to the meeting, Mr. Escobar said, he could barely eat, sleep or function.

“I kept telling my wife, ‘I don’t think I can do this,’” he said. “It was like sending me back to my childhood. I was terrified.”

Mr. Escobar did not want Mr. Van Wagenen to know where he lived, so they met at someone else’s home. He said he recorded the conversation in case Mr. Van Wagenen threatened him. He attached a microphone to his iPhone and stashed it in a plant. His wife sat on the stairs just outside the room where the two men spoke.

After Mr. Van Wagenen sat down, Mr. Escobar ran through an excruciating list of questions, which he had written in a red spiral notebook.

Have you ever watched child pornography? He said he had not.

How would you have felt if this happened to your own son? “Awful.”

“How can I be the only one?” Mr. Escobar asked.

“I’ve never considered myself a pedophile,” Mr. Van Wagenen said. “That one instance was so horrifying to me. And I’ve carried the awareness of that — not to the degree that you have, for sure — but I’ve carried the awareness of that.”

“I don’t lie very well,” he added later. “I don’t.”

Afterward, Mr. Escobar said, he thought Mr. Van Wagenen was probably telling the truth. But probably was not good enough.

Through a friend, he connected with Ryan McKnight at the Truth & Transparency Foundation and handed over the recording. In the article that accompanied the recording, he went by a pseudonym, David. He is identifying himself publicly for the first time in this article.

Mr. Escobar said he heard from the parents of the girl Mr. Van Wagenen is accused of abusing that the recording had motivated her to come forward. The girl is someone Mr. Van Wagenen knew.

“This young girl, the other victim, is a hero to me,” Mr. Escobar said. “I helped her, and she helped me.”

He has not heard from Mr. Van Wagenen since he was charged. But after the recording went public in February, Mr. Van Wagenen’s wife, Marilee, sent Mr. Escobar a message on Facebook.

“It is all public now,” she wrote. “We are not angry and understand. I still love you and wish healing for you and all the best for your family.”

#integrale usa c news #usa news blogspot #usa news facebook #usa news games #usa news government #usa v bolivia team news

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ifreakingloveroyals · 8 months ago

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7 February 2019 | Prince Carl Philip of Sweden and Princess Madeleine of Sweden arrive at a charity dinner in connection with the World Childhood Foundations 20th anniversary at Tyrol restaurant in Stockholm, Sweden. (c) Michael Campanella/Getty Images

#Princess Madeleine #Prince Carl Philip #Sweden #2019 #Michael Campanella #Getty Images

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talhaghafoor2019-blog · 6 years ago

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Raffi, the King of Children’s Music, Takes on Trump

Raffi. Photo: @Raffi_RC/Twitter The subgenre of “children’s music” can be pretty barren lyrically, a wasteland of dada earworms, nonsense lullabies, nursery rhymes, and edutainment. It is not generally considered fertile ground for discussing political and social issues. But a quick journey into Spotify proves that these songs have the power to inform a fledgling’s belief system. There’s Christian kids’ music (“Jonah was a Prophet” honestly slaps … and I’m Jewish). Sweet Honey in the Rock is a black gospel a capella group that is popular among the 10-and-under set. Their arrangement of “This Train Is Bound for Glory,” a spiritual once made famous by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, makes me tear up. It’s also not typical children’s music. There have been some notable indie efforts but they are overshadowed by unrelenting trash heaps like last year’s viral sensation, “Baby Shark.” And, eureka! In a league onto himself, is Raffi. If you grew up in the ’80s and ’90s, have children, or have ever been to a kid’s birthday party, then you’ve probably heard the Canadian crooner’s timeless bangers “Baby Beluga” and “Banana Phone.” Raffi’s saccharine melodies and lyrics actually read like discrete guides on how to live and love with dignity, starting at childhood. With an adult’s ear, the chorus of Raffi’s biggest hit — “Baby beluga in the deep blue sea / Swim so wild and you swim so free” — appears to be about learning how to individuate while still feeling safe and held by your caretakers. It’s a valuable message, even for adults. The last line of “Everything Grows,” an ode to the universality of the life cycle, is, “Mamas do and papas too / everything grows.” It’s a subtle reminder to parents that while we may be done with the physical part of our growth, emotional growth is a lifelong journey. But learning to live with dignity means learning about what it’s like to live without it and the nefarious forces that try to take it away. “Apathy is the enemy of democracy. And through apathy, tyrants can gain power,” Raffi said to me about why he’s been so vocal about Trump in a recent interview. But if you look closely, these messages have been in his music forever. “And I need some clean water for drinking / And I need some clean air for breathing / So that I can grow up strong,” he wrote in his 1979 hit “All I Really Need.” The lyrics resonate like an anthem for basic human rights, rights that are still unfortunately being fought for 40 years later. Like many of his songs, it is a blueprint for human kindness in its most pure, essential form. In recent months, the 70-year-old singer has gained a bit of attention for his active, politically engaged Twitter feed where many posts are accompanied with the dissenter’s slogan du jour: #Resist and #ResistFacism. Raffi’s outspokenness around Trump and his policies goes back to when he was elected. Just last week the singer called Trump unfit for office, racist, and misogynistic. In December he said we must “fight fascism with everything we’ve got.” Seemingly trite, the addition of Raffi’s voice to the American political landscape is actually invaluable — the singer-songwriter is the premier emissary for children and his positions carry with them an incredible weight. And the children, after all, are the future. Recently I spoke to him about the nexus between children’s music, politics, and human decency. Raffi is not quiet about his opinions. But, he rejects the label “political” being affixed either to his personal outspokenness or music, though he has songs that tackle issues like climate change, peace between Israelis and Palestinians , and most recently, his love of Bernie Sanders. (By the way, Bernie, if you’re reading this Raffi “wishes you well” this time around and said it’d be “interesting” if you asked him to sing his song “Wave of Democracy” at your upcoming rallies). Raffi entertains some children after a Los Angeles concert, September 10, 1989. Photo: Paul Harris/Getty Images He seems to view being political as artificial, an act of external performance: He’s as taken aback by the idea that he is political as he would be if I’d called him a politician. “Maybe just like the troubadour that I am, I seek creative ways of self-expression,” he told me. “I seek the right [to] expound about who I am the way that I feel that I am,” he said when pressed about his unwillingness to be labeled political. “It’s not a big deal to me. I don’t go around having debates in my head as to whether I’m political or not. I just have a way of speaking, I just have a way of presenting what I’m passionate about. That’s what I do” he said. But a few moments later he spoke about treating climate change as an emergency, saying, “Unless a rapid shift to a low-carbon economy happens like yesterday, you’re gonna face a very, very tough world.” It’s easy to dismiss the way Raffi couches his activism as a cop-out, as a way to insulate himself from accountability. But the singer doesn’t hide his beliefs; they’re always there in his music and on his social media profiles for everyone to see. Admittedly, I always thought identifying as “not political” seemed like a privilege. But there is something I’m finding in Raffi’s fine print: You can hold a unique space in the political landscape when you insist that your political positions aren’t political at all, but borne out of self-evident, universal values. Raffi has a way of both challenging an idea while simultaneously distilling it, as he does when we talk about climate change. “I detest the term ‘the environment,’ I think it’s barren and cold. I never use it. Never,” he said. “It’s different if you say, ‘our environment,’ perhaps. There can be many environments that you live in. There’s a learning environment, there’s a family environment and all of that. Mother Nature, or simply Nature, is that planetary community that we live in. It’s the basis of our lives. It’s what feeds us. We come from the womb and suddenly we’re in a womb with a view. Mother Nature.” On Twitter, he took a more political approach when he predicted World War III would be “climate change: humanity’s war on itself.” Raffi Cavoukian is an immigrant two times over. Born to Armenian parents who had escaped the genocide, the singer, 70, spent his first ten years in Egypt. At ten, his father moved their family to Toronto. Of immigrating to a new country he said, “You learn to forgive. You learn to be strong in your identity. And even while you’re learning a whole new culture; so quite the transition.” In early March Raffi tweeted, “blame the inciter in chief…how’s that for false patriotism,” in response to an article posted by Chelsea Clinton with the headline, “Counties that hosted a 2016 Trump rally saw a 226 percent increase in hate crimes.” With me he took his big-stick approach. “Children are people,” he said about child separation. “The reason we don’t want corporeal punishment, let alone separation from their families, is that you don’t hit people. It’s not okay to hit people. Children are people, so we don’t hit them. By the same token, you know, if you respect children as people, you don’t separate them from your families.” It’s a simple statement, a seemingly unremarkable one. But if you were to put Raffi’s words to a tune, it’d be a heartfelt children’s song, there to teach us how to treat each other. And it reveals more yet about Raffi’s belief that children should be considered as whole and serious human beings. Sign Up for the Intelligencer Newsletter Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world. Email By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us. Raffi’s attempt to have it both ways — be political, yet be thought of as apolitical — is working for him. The singer, whose first album came out in 1975, says he has no plans to retire. He will continue to tour with his children’s music but is also focused on his foundation, the Raffi Foundation, which promotes a group of principles he came up with about how to advance children’s rights, called “Child Honouring.” “It’s one thing to be loved but it’s another thing entirely to feel respected for who you feel you are, and that is why the first word of the nine principles of Child Honouring is respectful so that principle — respectful love — that’s why that word is there,” he said. “It can’t be any kind of love. Sure, the Beatles sang ‘All You Need Is Love,’ but it can’t be a coercive love, it can’t be an overbearing love.” At the end of our conversation I ask him what words he has to impart to youth living under Trump’s policies. Unsurprisingly, he brings it back to the spirit of his music. “Well it’s advice I’ve given many times in songs,” he said. “I suppose I can say, love is the greatest power you hold. Come to know that power, don’t let anyone take it away from you, hatred is not who human beings are, it’s not who we are. It’s an aberration; power of human spirit is a loving, caring spirit. That’s what it means to be human, so anybody’s task is to grow strong and to be rooted in that human capacity to love.” When you’re fighting your way through the sludgiest sociopolitical turmoil of your lifetime, it can be hard to remember your values, or even what you’re fighting for. Raffi reminded me, over and over again, that care for the earth, for democracy, for human decency is pretty much paramount if we want to even have a future. I guess sometimes you need a children’s singer to remind you what’s important.

This content was originally published here.

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instatrack · 6 years ago

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"Crying Girl on the Border" by John Moore/ Getty Images, has been named World Press Photo of the Year. The winning image shows Honduran toddler Yanela Sanchez crying as she and her mother are taken into custody by US border officials in McAllen, Texas on June 12th 2018. This award honours the photographer whose visual creativity and skills made a picture that captures or represents an event or issue of great journalistic importance. Credit: John Moore/Getty Images/World Press Photo Foundation via AP #photography #borders #immigration #Texas #Honduras #UnitedStates #childhood #family http://bit.ly/2P6Kx0e

#Instagram #All #Pics #All Extra

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sheilacwall · 5 years ago

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Common: ‘I wanted to be the dopest. Then I found a higher purpose’ | Music

Common performing in Austin in August. Photograph: Gary Miller/Getty Images

Common: Resurrection – video

Common with Democratic party politician Stacey Abrams at a rally in 2018. Photograph: Lawrence Bryant/Reuters

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The post Common: ‘I wanted to be the dopest. Then I found a higher purpose’ | Music appeared first on Hip Hop World Music.

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fitnesshealthyoga-blog · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://fitnesshealthyoga.com/2019-gairdner-awards-winners-hailed-for-discoveries-on-dna-replication-and-power-of-stem-cells-to-fight-cancer/

2019 Gairdner Awards: Winners hailed for discoveries on DNA replication and power of stem cells to fight cancer

Replicating cells — both normal and cancerous — lie at the heart of discoveries made by four of this year’s seven Canada Gairdner Award winners.

vshivkova/iStockPhoto / Getty Images

Canada Gairdner International Awards

Makers, breakers and movers

For life to endure, cells must copy their DNA to pass on to new cells and new generations. It is a basic fact of biology that disguises a Herculean feat.

Consider that in order to maintain a healthy blood supply, the adult human body must produce about 500 million blood cells a minute. Each new cell carries two metres of tightly coiled DNA. Do the math and it works out to one-million kilometres of DNA every 60 seconds – enough to wrap around the equator 25 times over. And that’s just blood. There’s also gut, skin, liver and all the other cells that require regular replacement. In practice, a replicating cell can’t achieve this by starting at one end of a strand of DNA and copying until it gets to the other. Like a medieval monastery where the monks all work together, each reproducing one page of a sacred book, a cell must deploy many thousands of copiers all at once in order to duplicate its entire genome faithfully and swiftly.

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As a young scientist, Bruce Stillman long puzzled over how cells manage this trick, especially without some genes being copied twice. “Forty years ago, we really didn’t know how replication occurred,” said Dr. Stillman, who is director and president of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a renowned research centre on Long Island, N.Y.

Born in Melbourne, Australia, he grew up with dreams of becoming a medical doctor. But in university, it was the lab rather than the hospital that captured his imagination. When he first arrived in Cold Spring Harbor in 1979, he had a burning desire to tackle the mystery of DNA replication.

Within a few years, he was joined in his quest by another young researcher, John Diffley, a native of New York and now associate research director at the Francis Crick Institute in London. Working with yeast cells, which share the same form of DNA replication as humans and other animals, the two researchers developed new techniques to study the process. By 1992, they had identified an elegant structure made up of multiple proteins which they dubbed the origin recognition complex – ORC for short. The structure wraps around the DNA double helix at specific sites and serves as a starting point where the rest of the replication machinery is assembled. Key to the find was the discovery of how the protein complex is triggered to begin its work at the appropriate moment in the cell-division cycle.

“It was so beautiful and so clear that it had to be right,” Dr. Diffley said.

Further work has added detail to the picture. In 2015, Dr. Diffley’s team was able to reconstitute the process with purified proteins outside of living cells, making it easier to study. The results shed light on genetic diseases that impair DNA replication and also on how cancer can affect the process so that the DNA of cancer cells increasingly diverges from that of its host.

“It’s really one of the most impressive pieces of molecular biology in recent years,” said Adrian Bird, a professor of genetics at the University of Edinburgh and a previous Gairdner winner.

The mechanics of cell division also come into play in the work of Susan Band Horwitz, a professor of cancer research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

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Growing up near Boston in the 1940s, Dr. Horwitz never thought about a career in science but imagined, instead, of becoming a historian. All of that changed when she took a biology course in her first year at college.

“It was wonderful. It opened up a whole new world to me,” she said.

By 1963, she had earned her PhD in biochemistry at Brandeis University. By then, she was married and gave birth to twins five days after defending her thesis. But at a time when few women were working in her field, she was hard-pressed to find a position that would allow her to balance her scientific career with her family life. She eventually found part-time work teaching pharmacology students at Tufts University while pursuing her research on the side. The job had an unexpected benefit because “it introduced me to the idea of small molecules that can do great things.”

By the 1970s, she was at the Albert Einstein College, where her husband, a virologist, had accepted a position. She was also working full-time again with a growing track record of studying naturally derived products for cancer treatments. That was when the U.S. National Cancer Institute sought her out to examine a new drug candidate called Taxol, derived from the bark of the Pacific yew tree.

Working with a graduate student, Peter Schiff, Dr. Horwitz discovered that Taxol has an uncanny ability to latch onto tiny fibres inside cells known as microtubules. In normal cells, microtubules are assembled and disassembled continuously and they play a key role during cell division when they are used to pull apart duplicated sets of chromosomes just before a cell splits in two. But when Taxol was present, the microtubules could no longer be disassembled, and instead formed bundles that clogged up dividing cells, including those driving tumour growth.

It would be another 15 years of clinical trials and scientific hurdles before Taxol was approved for use as a cancer drug in 1992, but it was the work done in Dr. Horwitz’s lab that set the wheels in motion. Today Taxol has been administered to millions around the world.

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“I never give a lecture when someone doesn’t come over to me afterwards and say thank you,” Dr. Horwitz said.

In addition to roping DNA, microtubules serve as the tracks for an elaborate transportation system found within many cells. Incredibly, those tracks are traversed by a class of proteins called kinesins that amble along like microscopic ants, dragging cargo from production sites near the nucleus and making deliveries to the cell’s outer reaches.

Ronald Vale, a professor of cellular molecular pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco, has played a key role in uncovering this remarkable system. Born in Los Angeles, Dr. Vale’s childhood fascination with science was sparked by museum and planetarium visits. In graduate school, he studied nerve cells, which require the transportation of neurotransmitters and other chemicals down long extensions, called axons.

Working with the cell biologist Michael Sheetz, Dr. Vale turned to the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass., where the researcher could work with giant-squid axons that are many times larger than those found in the human nervous system. By squeezing out the contents of the squid axons they were able to painstakingly identify and reassemble the pieces of the cellular transportation system.

“It’s a tribute to human creativity that one can actually probe the natural world at these levels,” Dr. Vale said.

Their initial breakthrough discoveries came in 1983-84, but it would take another 15 years of work before Dr. Vale pinned down precisely how the tiny walkers perform their task and how the transport system, when disrupted, can be linked to certain forms of neurodegenerative disease.

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“It’s been my observation that if you make a fundamental discovery there will be practical applications. In this case there’s no question that’s true,” said Randy Schekman, a Nobel Prize-winning researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who is on the Gairdner Foundation’s medical advisory board.

The same sentiment applies to the work of Timothy Springer, a professor at Harvard University medical school. A gifted researcher, Dr. Springer became disillusioned as an undergraduate in the 1960s because of the use of scientifically developed chemicals such as Agent Orange and napalm during the Vietnam War. But after a period of volunteer work, he decided to return to his studies, earning a PhD and eventually landing at Harvard in 1977.

It was then that Dr. Springer began making key discoveries about the mechanisms cells deploy to securely latch onto neighbouring cells or to brace themselves against their surroundings so that they can shift location. This ability is particularly important for immune cells, which must leave the blood stream and penetrate into infected tissue in order to do their work. Dr. Springer showed how the molecules involved in the latching operate, and found drugs that can selectively disable them in cases where the immune system is overactive, such as in inflammatory bowel disease.

“Scientists can be like Columbus discovering a new world,” Dr. Springer said. “I very often feel that, if I was born in a different era, I would have wanted to be an explorer. But instead of exploring the Earth I’m exploring the inner workings of cells.”

Each Gairdner Award winner will receive a $100,000 cash prize. In the weeks leading up to the award ceremony this fall, winners will also be sent across Canada to speak to students about their work as a way to inspire the next generation of biomedical researchers. – Ivan Semeniuk

Canada Gairdner Wightman Award

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A stem-cell trailblazer and mentor

In 1961, when Connie Eaves was one of only 10 female students in a pre-med class of 100 at Queen’s University in Kingston, she knew that being a woman meant having to be better than everyone else simply to be considered for an academic opportunity.

“For me, that wasn’t a big deal,” said Dr. Eaves, the daughter of a mathematician and a schoolteacher whose four children all became professors or doctors. “We were brought up to adhere to the principle of always being the best we could, no matter what we did.”

The drive to succeed and to make discoveries led her to England’s University of Manchester, where she found an ideal role model: Alma Howard, a Montreal-born scientist who was known for her work on the biological effects of radiation and who had risen to a position of leadership at one of the most prominent cancer laboratories in the U.K. It was also her entry into an exciting new field in which researchers were striving to understand how blood cells develop from less specialized precursors known as stem cells. After earning her PhD, Dr. Eaves moved to the Ontario Cancer Institute, where she was a postdoctoral researcher with stem-cell pioneers James Till and Ernest McCulloch.

Back in Canada, she found a research community that had not yet learned to accept female researchers as equal the way she had seen in Manchester. “I was just floored,” Dr. Eaves said. “It became clear that a future career in science for me in Canada was going to be an extra challenge.”

But the research was exciting, and in 1973 it led to an appointment in Vancouver with the British Columbia Cancer Agency and the University of British Columbia. She was joined there by her husband, physician-scientist Allen Eaves, and together the two collaborated to build a research powerhouse on Canada’s West Coast that would eventually become the Terry Fox Laboratory and also spawn Stemcell Technologies Inc., the largest biotech company in Canada.

Throughout this time, Dr. Eaves’s research led to key discoveries in blood stem cells, including the development of a technique for separating cancerous from normal blood stem cells in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia. She later moved into breast cancer and was among the first, in parallel with an Australian team, to demonstrate the existence of mammary-gland stem cells in mice, before moving on to study the equivalent cells in humans. The finding, published in 2006, set the stage for thinking about how an entire tissue could be generated from a single cell other than in blood. More recently, her team has been perturbing the genes of normal stem cells to reproduce and study the transition to cancerous growth.

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Along the way, Dr. Eaves has mentored more than 100 graduate student and postdoctoral researchers, many of them women, creating a growing worldwide network of scientists working in related areas of stem-cell and cancer biology. Her focus on developing a research community and her determined advocacy for women in science are included in her citation for the Canada Gairdner Wightman Award, which recognizes both scientific excellence and extraordinary leadership in Canadian health research.

“Critical mass is essential in science, and Connie created that when she went out to Vancouver,” said Alan Bernstein, president of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and a former Wightman Award winner. “She is a true builder.”

Dr. Eaves said that the challenges and rewards of a life in research helped underscore for her the importance of opening doors for all those who have the motivation and the ability to contribute to scientific breakthroughs.

“I was extremely lucky … in the people that I met and the opportunities I was given,” Dr. Eaves said. “That is not true for everyone.” – Ivan Semeniuk

John Dirks Canada Gairdner Global Health Award

Mental health for all

When Vikram Patel was a medical student, he says he was drawn to psychiatry “because it was the only field of medicine that was interested in the whole person as opposed to simply where it hurts.”

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It is fitting, then, that the groundbreaking research he’s done on mental health has, in a very real way, improved the lives of millions of people in the developing world.

Dr. Patel is the 2019 recipient of the prestigious John Dirks Canada Gairdner Global Health Award, which recognizes “his world-leading research in global mental health, providing greater knowledge on the burden and the determinants of mental disorders in low- and middle-income countries and pioneering approach for the treatment of mental health in low-resource settings.”

Dr. Patel, a professor of global health at Harvard University, said, modestly, that his greatest achievement is “having generated knowledge to change hearts and minds about the importance of mental health everywhere in the world.”

But what he did, over more than two decades, is debunk the commonly held belief that mental illness was a Western phenomenon, and that poor people had more important things to worry about than their mental health, such as poverty, malaria and AIDS.

“It’s a Faustian bargain to say people shouldn’t get mental-health care because they’re in a socially or medically difficult situation. Mental illness can devastate lives as surely as any other condition,” Dr. Patel says.

His research demonstrated not only that mental illness is as common in low- and middle-income countries as in high-income ones, but showed how care could be delivered effectively and cheaply, in even the most challenging circumstances. For example, his research demonstrated the benefits of lay health counsellors being trained to offer brief psychological treatments for depression and anxiety in clinics, and task-sharing to support caregivers of people with dementia, interventions that have been adopted in more than 60 countries.

Dr. Patel said receiving the Gairdner Award, the pre-eminent prize in global health, is flattering and humbling but, more importantly, it sends the message that mental health is being taken seriously in international health circles.

He noted that, early in his career, his research plans were often greeted with mockery and skepticism but he was lucky to have a few mentors and funders who took “enormous gambles” on him, including the Wellcome Trust in the U.K. and Grand Challenges Canada. – Andr�� Picard

Illustrations by Murat Yükselir

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