A decade after the “Hunger Games” series had apparently ended, readers were clearly ready for more.
Suzanne Collins’ “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” sold more 500,000 copies last week, even as many of the country’s bookstores were closed or offering limited service because of the coronavirus pandemic. The total includes print, e-books and audiobooks, according to Collins’ publisher, Scholastic.  
NPD BookScan, which tracks around 85 percent of the print market, reported Wednesday that “Songbirds and Snakes” topped last week’s list with 270,000 copies sold. Collins’ book, a prequel to her previous “Hunger Games” novels, came 10 years after the author seemingly wrapped up the Dystopian series with “Mockingjay.” The Associated Press in a review  praised the new novel, released May 19, as “mesmerizing” and called Collins “a master of building a fascinating world around complex characters.”
The opening for “Songbirds and Snakes” was slightly higher than the numbers reported for “Mockingjay” in 2010, when Scholastic announced first week sales of more than 450,000. Collins’ novels, which also include “The Hunger Games” and “Catching Fire,” have sold more than 100 million copies worldwide and are the basis for a billion dollar movie franchise.
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Apple Music is launching its first radio show in Africa.The streaming platform announced Thursday that “Africa Now Radio with Cuppy” will debut Sunday and will feature a mix of contemporary and traditional popular African sounds, including genres like Afrobeat, rap, house, kuduro and more.  Cuppy, the Nigerian-born DJ and music producer, will host the weekly one-hour show, which will be available at 9 a.m. EDT.”The show represents a journey from West to East and North to South, but importantly a narrative of Africa then to Africa now,” Cuppy in a statement.African music and artists have found success outside of the continent and onto the pop charts in both the U.S. and U.K. in recent years. Acts like Drake and Beyoncé have borrowed the sound for their own songs, while performers like South African DJ Black Coffee as well as Davido, Burna Boy, Tiwa Savage, Wizkid and Mr Eazi — all with roots in Nigeria — continue to gain attention and have become household names.Apple Music’s announcement comes the same week Universal Music Group said it was launching Def Jam Africa, a new division of the label focused on representing hip-hop, Afrobeat and trap talent in Africa. The label said it will be based in Johannesburg and Lagos but plans to sign talent from all over the continent. 
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Olympic chief Thomas Bach on Wednesday held talks with International Olympic Committee members on the potential consequences of the coronavirus pandemic that has seen the Tokyo Games pushed back a year to 2021, sources said.Bach was to address the 100 IOC members in three different sessions decided by language and local time zone.Bach’s aim is to canvas the members for their view on “how to handle the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic,” a source told AFP.The IOC president wants to hear “thoughts, ideas and experiences of all members across the globe,” the source said.While Bach addressed all Olympic actors on March 24 when announcing the postponement of the Tokyo Games, it was the first time since the COVID-19 outbreak that he had specifically consulted IOC members.Bach was backed up by Olympic Games executive director Christophe Dubi, IOC sports director Kit McConnell, IOC director general Christophe De Kepper and chief operating officer Lana Haddad.The IOC’s medical and scientific director, Richard Budgett, also took to the floor to discuss “the issue of a vaccine,” according to a second source.’Last option’Bach warned last week that 2021 was the “last option” for holding the delayed Tokyo Games, stressing that postponement could not go on forever.He said he backed Japan’s stance that the games would have to be canceled if the coronavirus pandemic wasn’t under control by next year.The German wouldn’t say whether a vaccine was a prerequisite for going ahead with the Olympics, but he was lukewarm on the idea of holding them without fans.In March, the Tokyo 2020 Olympics were postponed to July 23, 2021, over the coronavirus, which has killed hundreds of thousands around the world and halted international sport and travel. It was the first peacetime postponement of the Olympics.The IOC has already set aside $800 million to help organizers and sports federations meet the extra costs of a postponed Olympics.According to the latest budget, the games were due to cost $12.6 billion, shared among the organizing committee, the government of Japan and Tokyo city.
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The founder of the Knights of Colombus, the influential U.S.-based lay Catholic organization, is moving a step closer to possible sainthood.
Pope Francis has approved a miracle attributed to the intercession of the Rev. Michael McGivney, a Connecticut priest who died at age 38 of pneumonia in 1890 during a pandemic similar to the current coronavirus outbreak.
He would be the first U.S. parish priest to be beatified, the first major step before canonization.
The Vatican said Wednesday that Francis had signed off on the miracle required. The Knights said it concerned the medically inexplicable cure of a baby with a life-threatening condition who was healed in utero in 2015 “after prayers by his family to Father McGivney.”
McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus in 1882 in New Haven, Connecticut, to encourage greater, active participation of lay Catholics in their faith and to care for families when the breadwinner died. Today the Knights are one of the biggest Catholic organizations in the world, known for their charitable efforts and counting about 2 million members in the Americas, Caribbean, Asia and Europe.
The organization is also an insurer, boasting more than $100 billion in financial protection for members and their families.  
No date has been set for the beatification, which the Knights said would be held in Connecticut.
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— Larry Kramer, the playwright whose angry voice and pen raised theatergoers’ consciousness about AIDS and roused thousands to militant protests in the early years of the epidemic, has died at 84.
Bill Goldstein, a writer who was working on a biography of Kramer, confirmed the news to The Associated Press. Kramer’s husband, David Webster, told The New York Times that Kramer died Wednesday of pneumonia.
“We have lost a giant of a man who stood up for gay rights like a warrior. His anger was needed at a time when gay men’s deaths to AIDS were being ignored by the American government,” said Elton John in a statement.
Kramer, who wrote “The Normal Heart” and founded the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, lost his lover to acquired immune deficiency syndrome in 1984 and was himself infected with the virus. He also suffered from hepatitis B and received a liver transplant in 2001 because the virus had caused liver failure.
He was nominated for an Academy Award for his screenplay for “Women in Love,” the 1969 adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s novel. It starred Glenda Jackson, who won her first Oscar for her performance.
He also wrote the 1972 screenplay “Lost Horizon,” a novel, “Faggots,” and the plays “Sissies’ Scrapbook,” “The Furniture of Home,” “Just Say No” and “The Destiny of Me,” which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1993.
But for many years he was best known for his public fight to secure medical treatment, acceptance and civil rights for people with AIDS. He loudly told everyone that the gay community was grappling with a plague.
Tributes from the arts community flooded in Wednesday, with Lin-Manuel Miranda on Twitter saying “What an extraordinary writer, what a life.” Dan Savage wrote: “He ordered us to love ourselves and each other and to fight for our lives. He was a hero.”
In 1981, when AIDS had not yet acquired its name and only a few dozen people had been diagnosed with it, Kramer and a group of his friends in New York City founded Gay Men’s Health Crisis, one of the first groups in the country to address the epidemic.
He tried to rouse the gay community with speeches and articles such as “1,112 and Counting,” published in gay newspapers in 1983.
“Our continued existence as gay men upon the face of this earth is at stake,” he wrote. “Unless we fight for our lives, we shall die.”
The late journalist Randy Shilts, in his best selling account of the AIDS epidemic “And the Band Played On,” called that article “inarguably one of the most influential works of advocacy journalism of the decade” and credited it with “crystallizing the epidemic into a political movement for the gay community.”
Kramer lived to see gay marriage a reality — and married himself in 2013 — but never rested. “I’m married,” he told The AP. “But that’s only part of where we are. AIDS is still decimating us and we still don’t have protection under the law.”
Kramer split with GMHC in 1983 after other board members decided to concentrate on providing support services to people with AIDS. It remains one of the largest AIDS-service groups in the country.
After leaving GMHC, Kramer wrote “The Normal Heart,” in which a furious young writer — not unlike Kramer himself — battles politicians, society, the media and other gay leaders to bring attention to the crisis.
The play premiered at The Public Theater in April 1985. Associated Press drama critic Michael Kuchwara called it an “angry but compelling indictment of a society as well as a subculture for failing to respond adequately to the tragedy.”
A revival in 2011 was almost universally praised by critics and earned the best revival Tony. Two actors from it — Ellen Barkin and John Benjamin Hickey — also won Tonys. Joe Mantello played the main character of Ned Weeks, the alter ego of Kramer.
“I’m very moved that it moved so many people,” he said at the time. Kramer often stood outside the theater passing out fliers asking the world to take action against HIV/AIDS. “Please know that AIDS is a worldwide plague. Please know there is no cure,” it said.
The play was turned into a TV film for HBO in 2014 starring Mark Ruffalo, Jonathan Groff, Matt Bomer, Taylor Kitsch, Jim Parsons, Alfred Molina, Joe Mantello and Julia Roberts. It won the Emmy for best movie. Kramer stood onstage in heavy winter clothing as the statuette was presented to director Ryan Murphy.
The 1992 play “The Destiny of Me,” continues the story of Weeks from “The Normal Heart.” Weeks, in the hospital for an experimental AIDS treatment, reflects on the past, particularly his relationship with his family. His parents and brother appear to act out what happened in the past, as does the young Ned, who confronts his older self.
In 1987, Kramer founded ACT UP, the group that became famous for staging civil disobedience at places like the Food and Drug Administration, the New York Stock Exchange and Burroughs-Wellcome Corp., the maker of the chief anti-AIDS drug, AZT.
ACT UP’s protests helped persuade the FDA to speed the approval of new drugs and Burroughs-Wellcome to lower its price for AZT. He also battled — and later reconciled — with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has been leading the national response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Kramer soon relinquished a leadership role in ACT UP, and as support for AIDS research increased, he found some common ground with health officials whom ACT UP had bitterly criticized.  
Kramer never softened the urgency of his demands. In 2011, he helped the American Foundation for Equal Rights mount their play “8” on Broadway about the legal battle over same-sex marriage in California.
“The one nice thing that I seem to have acquired, accidentally, is this reputation of everyone afraid of my voice,” he told The AP in 2015. “So I get heard, whether it changes anything or not.”
One of his last projects was the massive two-volume “The American People,” which chronicled the history of gay people in America and took decades to write.  
“I just think it’s so important that we know our history — the history of how badly we’re treated and how hard we have to fight to get what we deserve, which is equality,” he told The AP.  
At the 2013 Tonys, he was honored with the Isabelle Stevenson Award, given to a member of the theater community for philanthropic or civic efforts.  
A few months later, Kramer married his longtime partner, architect David Webster, in the intensive care unit of NYU Langone Medical Center, where Kramer was recovering from surgery for a bowel obstruction. 
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If you add garlic to your guacamole, we have bad news: You’re not doing it right. Do you mince the onion? That’s also a no-no. And, please, leave the avocado lumpy.So says 97-year-old Diana Kennedy, a foremost authority on traditional Mexican cuisine. Over many decades, she has mastered, documented and become fiercely protective of the culinary styles of each region.  This summer, a portrait as zesty as her dishes comes in the form of the documentary ” Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy,” which marks director Elizabeth Carroll’s feature film debut.The documentary traces the unlikely rise of an Englishwoman who became one of the most respected authorities on Mexican food. She’s been called “the Julia Child of Mexico,” “the Mick Jagger of Mexican Cuisine” and even the “Indiana Jones of food.”Carroll’s camera follows Kennedy as she navigates Mexico in her trusty Nissan truck, walks through her remarkable garden, teaches professional chefs in a harrowing class in her home, and meticulously makes coffee — toasting her beans in an antique toaster.”It’s some of the best coffee I’ve ever had. I know that sounds like what I’m supposed to say, but it’s true,” said Carroll, laughing.The film includes various TV appearances by Kennedy during her career as well as interviews with notable chefs, including Alice Waters, José Andrés, Rick Bayless, Pati Jinich and Gabriela Cámara. It’s less a cooking lesson than a beautifully drawn character study.”I just felt really drawn to her and very comfortable with her, like there was some kind of unspoken understanding between us when we would look at each other,” said Carroll. “I think she’s somebody who operates a lot on instinct and I think that there was just an instinct of trust between us.”Kennedy, a culinary purist, arrived in Mexico in the late 1950s and has traveled thousands of miles throughout the country, often alone, seeking out regional foods.  She’s written nine cookbooks, faithfully acknowledging where and from whom the recipes were obtained. Kennedy has received the Order of the Aztec Eagle from the Mexican government — the highest award given to foreigners for service to Mexico.”She saw a need for recording recipes that were potentially being lost by industrialization,” said Carroll. “Nobody was recording those recipes in an official way. She saw an opening there to take on a responsibility like that and she obviously devoted her life to it.”When Kennedy makes guacamole, she uses serrano peppers (“Keep your hands off the jalapeno, por favor!” she says in the film). Add salt, finely chopped tomatoes, but no lime. There is cilantro, and if some guests don’t like it she has this advice — “Don’t invite them.””She sees it as her responsibility to share and perfect the original way that things have been done. And that if other people want to deviate from that, they have to know the rules first,” said Carroll.Jinich, host and co-producer of PBS’ two-time James Beard award-winning “Pati’s Mexican Table,” said Kennedy’s outsider perspective helped as she documented the pillars of the cuisine.  “It’s no coincidence that this British woman had to come and see and recognize and be fascinated with everything that for us Mexicans was just our Mexican food,” Jinich said. “I feel like the entire country of Mexico is indebted to Diana Kennedy.”Kennedy and Carroll met in a serendipitous way in 2013. The filmmaker was in Austin, Texas, and beginning to research a film about how recipes and traditions are passed down. She soon realized she’d have to talk to Kennedy.But how? Kennedy lived in the mountains of western Mexico. Carroll looked around online for an hour, gave up and went to a bookstore. She pulled into the parking lot and looked up to see the marquee: “Book signing with Diana Kennedy tomorrow.””It was confusing and exciting and wild and special all at the same time,” said Carroll. “I was like, ‘OK. There’s some divine games happening here.'”  The film took more than six years to make and it captures a woman confronting her own mortality but still insistent that her work continue. “What are you going to do when I’m gone?” she asks in the film. “Who else is going to start screaming?”
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It may have been plagued with controversy after Oprah Winfrey pulled out as executive producer, but “On the Record” has moved on. The the new #MeToo documentary about rape accusations against hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons is a powerful look at one woman’s agonizing decision to go public, and an exploration of misogyny and sexual harassment in the music industry. Most importantly, though, it shines a light on the unique burden faced by women of color, who are often not believed or accused of being traitors to their own community if they come forward with accusations. The film premieres Wednesday on the new streaming service HBO Max.  There’s an elegant, almost poetic silence to one of the most compelling scenes of “On the Record,” a powerful new documentary about sexual violence that knows just when to dial down to a hushed quiet.In the early morning darkness of Dec. 13, 2017, former music executive Drew Dixon walks to a coffee shop and buys the New York Times. On the front page is the story in which she and two others accuse the powerful hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, her former boss, of rape. Dixon examines the article, carefully folds the paper back up, puts on a wool cap as if for protection — and crumples into silent tears.They are tears of fear, surely, about the ramifications of going public — but also, clearly, relief. It feels as if the poison of a decades-old toxic secret is literally seeping out of her.  “It saved my life,” she now says of that decision.”On the Record,” by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, provides a searingly intimate portrayal of the agonizing process of calculating whether to go public. Beyond that, it shines an overdue light on the music industry, where sexual harassment is “just baked into the culture,” in the words of Sil Lai Abrams, another Simmons accuser featured in the film.Most importantly, it puts a spotlight on women of color, and the unique and painful burden they often face in coming forward.The project also has been associated with controversy, of course, due to Oprah Winfrey’s well-documented withdrawal as executive producer just before the Sundance Film Festival, scuttling a distribution deal with Apple. Winfrey later acknowledged Simmons had called her and waged a pressure campaign, but said that wasn’t why she bailed.But the film has moved on. It opened at Sundance anyway to cheers and two emotional standing ovations, and was soon picked up by HBO Max, where it premieres Wednesday.For Dixon, vindication at Sundance was sweet.”Just standing there, on our own, and realizing that we were enough,” she said in an interview last week along with Abrams and accuser Sherri Hines, of the premiere. “That our courage was enough. That none of us waffled. None of us buckled. That we were strong enough to defend ourselves and each other.”Less than two years earlier, Dixon had been plagued by doubt. She’d expected that the film, which began shooting before she decided to go public, would be a general look at #MeToo and the music industry. But then the directors wanted to focus more on her journey.”The idea of being blackballed by the black community was really scary,” she says. “But I also felt this pressure, this responsibility to be brave, to highlight the experience of black women as survivors. The opportunity might never come again.”Dixon was in her 20s when she got her dream job at Simmons’ Def Jam Recordings. The daughter of two Washington, D.C. politicians — her mother, Sharon Pratt, was mayor — she attended Stanford University, then moved to New York to join the exciting world of hip-hop.As her star rose at Def Jam, she assumed that would immunize her from what she describes as Simmons’ constant harassment. He would come into her office, lock the door and expose himself.  But he wasn’t violent. Until the night in 1995 when, she says, he lured her to his apartment with the excuse of a demo CD she needed to hear. He told her to get it from the bedroom, she says, and then came in wearing only a condom, and raped her.Simmons has denied all allegations of nonconsensual sex.The film weaves together Dixon’s and multiple other accusations against Simmons with key voices of women of color like Tarana Burke, who founded the #MeToo movement, and law professor Kimberle Williams Crenshaw.”A lot of black women felt disconnected from #MeToo initially,” Burke says. “They felt, ‘that’s great that this sister is out there and we support her, but this movement is not for US.'”When black women do seek to come forward, they risk not only not being believed, but being called traitors to their community, both Burke and Dixon explain.”There’s this added layer in the black community that we have to contend with, like, ‘Oh you’re gonna put THIS before race?'” says Burke. “You let this thing happen to you, now we have to pay for it as a race? And we’re silenced even more.’Dick and Ziering, who’ve made several films about sexual assault, say they saw it as essential to go beyond the current #MeToo discussion and focus on the experience of black women.”Now you can come forward — but what about women of color? What do they face?” asks Ziering. “There are so many impediments.”For Dixon, coming forward was clearly worth it. It’s more complicated for Abrams. Even as the audience was applauding at Sundance, Abrams, who attempted suicide after her alleged rape by Simmons, was weeping next to her young adult son, worrying about him as he learned the full details for the first time, she says.  Abrams also says that “as a result of coming forward, my career has stalled. Everything just dried up.”Dixon says it remains to be seen whether she will be punished within the music industry. She says she recently was up for a job, things were going well, and suddenly all went quiet. “They must have Googled me,” she says.But she feels, most importantly, like she rescued a part of herself: her creativity, her drive, her very sense of who she is.For more than 20 years, she says, “I had banished the young woman who came to New York City prepared to work really hard in a man’s game, to prove she could do it, but not expecting that she would be raped.””In order to banish the pain I banished part of her light,” she says. “When I said it out loud, those parts of me lit up again.”Her message to any other survivors out there — and she hopes they will come forward: “Facing it frees parts of yourself that you don’t even know you’ve missed.”  
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J.K. Rowling is publishing a new story called The Ickabog, which will be free to read online to help entertain children and families stuck at home during the coronavirus pandemic. The Harry Potter author said Tuesday she wrote the fairy tale for her children as a bedtime story over a decade ago. Set in an imaginary land, it is a stand-alone story “about truth and the abuse of power” for children from 7 to 9 years old and is unrelated to Rowling’s other books. Rowling said the draft of the story had stayed in her attic while she focused on writing books for adults. She said her children, now teenagers, were “touchingly enthusiastic” when she recently suggested retrieving the story and publishing it for free.  “For the last few weeks I’ve been immersed in a fictional world I thought I’d never enter again. As I worked to finish the book, I started reading chapters nightly to the family again,” she said.  “‘The Ickabog’s first two readers told me what they remember from when they were tiny and demanded the reinstatement of bits they’d particularly liked (I obeyed).”The first two chapters were posted online Tuesday, with daily installments to follow until July 10.The book will be published in print later this year, and Rowling said she will pledge royalties from its sales to projects helping those particularly affected by the pandemic.  
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Stanley Ho, the man credited with transforming Macau from a sleepy former Portuguese colony into one of the world’s gambling meccas, has died at the age of 98. His daughter, Pansy, said Ho died Tuesday at a hospital in his native Hong Kong. The son of a once-influential and wealthy Hong Kong family who lost their fortune in the Great Depression of the 1930s, Stanley Ho escaped to Macau during World War Two when Japanese forces captured Hong Kong.  He built his fortune smuggling luxury goods from Macau to China, turning that into a successful trading company.  Ho’s gambling empire began when he successfully bid for a casino monopoly from Portuguese authorities in 1962.  He built a harbor to ferry high-stakes gamblers from Hong Kong to his casino, and also had stakes in numerous businesses in the enclave, including department stores, luxury hotels and horse racing tracks.   By the time China gained control of Macau and opened it to foreign competition in 2002, Ho had become notorious not only for his wealth but his flamboyant lifestyle, his love of ballroom dancing and the 17 children he fathered with four wives.  He was forced to restructure his business in 2012 after a legal battle broke out within the family. Ho was also dogged by allegations that he had ties to Chinese criminal gangs known as triads, which he denied.  
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Longtime broadcast news executive William J. Small, who led CBS News’ Washington coverage during the civil rights movement, Vietnam War and Watergate and was later president of NBC News and United Press International, died Sunday, CBS News said. He was 93. Small, whose career spanned from overseeing the news operation at a small radio station to testifying in Congress about press freedom, died in a New York hospital after a brief illness unrelated to the coronavirus, the network said. During a six-decade career, Small supervised, guided and in some cases hired generations of some of the best-known reporters and anchors in television news, among them: Dan Rather, Eric Sevareid, Daniel Schorr, Connie Chung, Diane Sawyer, “60 Minutes” correspondents Ed Bradley and Lesley Stahl and “Face the Nation” anchor Bob Schieffer. “He was heroic and steadfast, especially during Watergate, when it seemed we were getting angry calls from the White House every night,” Stahl said in a statement. “He made us want to be better — and nobody wanted to disappoint him.” Small hired the current CBS News president, Susan Zirinsky, to her first job at the network when she was 20. She remembered Small as a “hero to journalism” and said, “every one of us carries Bill Small’s legacy with us — it’s the core to who we are as journalists.” Picture showing the logo of the NBC Television in front of the Channel building in Burbank, Calif., Oct.11, 2006.Small, born in 1926 in Chicago, broke into broadcasting after fighting in the Army in World War II, including stints as news director at WLS-AM in Chicago and WHAS-TV in Louisville. Less than a year after he arrived, the Kentucky station was honored in 1957 as the nation’s top news operation by the organization that is now known as the Radio Television Digital News Association. Impressed by Small’s work in Louisville, CBS executives hired him in 1962 to be assistant news director of the network’s Washington bureau. He was promoted to bureau director within a year and “put together a TV News bureau the likes of which Washington had never known,” reporter Roger Mudd wrote in his 2009 book, “The Place to Be: Washington, CBS, and the Glory Days of Television News.” JFK assassinationEarly in his tenure, Small presided over the network’s coverage of the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, scrambling cameras to the White House and Capitol Hill and turning a station wagon into a makeshift broadcast truck so they could get live pictures from Vice President Lyndon Johnson’s home. Small didn’t leave the bureau for four days, “from the shooting to the burial,” he told The Associated Press in 2013. “When I finally got home, I asked my wife, `What was it like?’ She said, `There was no one on the streets. Everyone was watching television.'” Kennedy’s assassination marked a seminal moment for television, then still in its nascence, as a source of news and solace — from CBS anchor Walter Cronkite’s tearful announcement of the president’s death to live, wall-to-wall coverage of the funeral procession to Arlington National Cemetery. There would be others on Small’s watch, including clashes over civil rights legislation, bitter divides over the Vietnam War and the 1972 Watergate break-in that prompted myriad legal and journalistic inquiries into President Richard Nixon’s involvement and ultimately led to his resignation. “Backed by the mystique of Murrow’s CBS and his own uncanny judge of talent, Small helped attract a stream of reporters, analysts and producers whose learning, talent, skill and experience were without precedent in news broadcasting,” Mudd wrote, calling him a “sophisticated judge of journalistic horseflesh.” Small remained in charge of the Washington bureau until 1974, when CBS moved him to a senior position at its New York headquarters. Testified before Congress in 1978The promotion put him next in line to become president of CBS News, but after he testified before Congress in 1978 urging strong limits on police entering newsrooms, the network instead assigned him to be its chief lobbyist in Washington. Small defected to NBC in 1979, becoming president of the network’s news division and hiring away several CBS reporters, including Mudd and Marvin Kalb. In 1982, he became president of the UPI wire service. Small and his late wife, Gish, had two daughters and six grandchildren. He is the author of two books on the role of the media in politics and society, taught communications and media management at Fordham University and was on the sociology faculty at the University of Louisville. Small spent the last decade of his career as chairman of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which hands out Emmy Awards for television news and documentaries, retiring in 2010. In 2014, the organization honored Small with its lifetime achievement award. In its presentation, it recognizing him as a television news icon whose work in Washington was “paramount in the dramatic evolution of network news that continues today.”  
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Jimmy Cobb, a percussionist and the last surviving member of Miles Davis’ 1959 Kind of Blue groundbreaking jazz album that transformed the genre and sparked several careers, died Sunday. His wife, Eleana Tee Cobb, announced on Facebook that her husband died at his New York City home from lung cancer. He was 91. Born in Washington, D.C., Cobb told The Associated Press in 2019 he listened to jazz albums and stayed up late to hear disc jockey Symphony Sid play jazz in New York City before launching his professional career. He said it was saxophonist Cannonball Adderley who recommended him to Davis, and he ended up playing on several Davis recordings. Cobb’s role as a drummer on the Kind of Blue jam session headed by Davis would forever change his career. That album also featured Adderley and John Coltrane. FILE – The “Kind of Blue” album cover is on display at Bull Moose record store in Portland, Maine, August 17, 2019, the 60th anniversary of the album’s release.Kind of Blue, released on Aug. 17, 1959, captured a moment when jazz was transforming from bebop to something newer, cooler and less structured. The full takes of the songs were recorded only once, with one exception, Cobb said. Freddie Freeloader needed to be played twice because Davis didn’t like a chord change on the first attempt, he said. Davis, who died in 1991, had some notes jotted down, but there weren’t pages of sheet music. It was up to the improvisers to fill the pages. “He’d say, ‘this is a ballad. I want it to sound like it’s floating.’ And I’d say, ‘OK,’ and that’s what it was,” Cobb recalled. The album received plenty of acclaim at the time, yet the critics, the band and the studio couldn’t have known it would enjoy such longevity. Cobb and his bandmates knew the album would be a hit but didn’t realize at the time how iconic it would become. “We knew it was pretty damned good,” Cobb joked. Kind of Blue has sold more than 4 million copies and remains the best-selling jazz album of all time. It also served as a protest album for African American men who looked to Davis and the other jazz musicians to break stereotypes about jazz and black humanity.  Cobb would also work with such artists as Dinah Washington, Pearl Bailey, Clark Terry, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Wynton Kelly and Stan Getz. He’d also release a number of albums on his own. He performed well into his late 80s and played in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 2017, as part of the New Mexico Jazz Festival. Jazz fans from throughout the American Southwest came to pay their respects in what many felt was a goodbye.  Cobb released his last album, This I Dig of You, with Smoke Sessions Records in August 2019. 
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Country music singer Morgan Wallen apologized Sunday following his weekend arrest on public intoxication and disorderly conduct charges.
Wallen, 27, was arrested Saturday night after he was kicked out of Kid Rock’s bar in downtown Nashville, news outlets reported.
Wallen said on Twitter that he and some friends were “horse-playing” after a few bar stops.
“We didn’t mean any harm, and we want to say sorry to any bar staff or anyone that was affected,” Wallen tweeted. “Thank you to the local authorities for being so professional and doing their job with class. Love y’all.”
Wallen’s hits include “Whiskey Glasses” and “Chasin’ You.” He competed on “The Voice” in 2014 and co-wrote songs for Jason Aldean and Kane Brown.
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With no congregational prayers or family gatherings, Salsabiel Mujovic has been worried that this year’s Eid al-Fitr celebration will pale. Still, she’s determined to bring home holiday cheer amid the coronavirus gloom.  Her family can’t go to the mosque, but the 29-year-old New Jersey resident bought new outfits for herself and her daughters. They are praying at home and having a family photo session. The kids are decorating cookies in a virtual gathering and popping balloons with money or candy inside — a twist on a tradition of giving children cash gifts for the occasion.”We’re used to, just like, easily going and seeing family, but now it’s just like there’s so much fear and anxiety,” she said. “Growing up, I always loved Eid. … It’s like a Christmas for a Muslim.”Like Mujovic, many Muslims in America are navigating balancing religious and social rituals with concerns over the virus as they look for ways to capture the Eid spirit this weekend.  Eid al-Fitr — the feast of breaking the fast — marks the end of Ramadan, when Muslims abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset. Just like they did during Ramadan, many are resorting to at-home worship and relying on technology for online gatherings, sermons and, now, Eid entertainment.  This year, some Muslim-majority countries have tightened restrictions for the holiday which traditionally means family visits, group outings and worshippers flooding mosques or filling public spaces.  The Eid prayer normally attracts particularly large crowds. The Fiqh Council of North America, a body of Islamic scholars, encouraged Muslims to perform the Eid prayer at home.  “We don’t want to have gatherings and congregations,” Sheikh Yasir Qadhi, who prepared the council’s fatwa, or religious edict, said in an interview. “We should try to keep the spirit of Eid alive, even if it’s just in our houses, even if we just decorate our houses and wear our finest for each other.”Qadhi, resident scholar at East Plano Islamic Center in Texas, has been dreading delivering an Eid sermon broadcast online with no worshippers.”It’s going to be very strange to dress up in my Eid clothes and to walk to an empty place and to deliver a sermon to an empty facility,” he said before the start of the holiday. “It’s going to be very, very disheartening.”But, he said, it’s the wise decision.  Even as restrictions have eased, the mosque is still closed to worshippers, he said. Like a few others, it is holding a drive-by Eid ceremony to safely distribute thousands of bags of sweets and goodies to children in cars.  While some are eager for mosques to reopen, Qadhi said, “We don’t want to be a conduit for the situation exacerbating. We need to think rationally and not emotionally.”A woman accept treats during a drive-through Eid al-Fitr celebration outside a closed mosque in Plano, Texas, May 24, 2020.The North Texas Imams Council, of which he is a member, has recommended mosques remain closed. He said he expected the majority of mosques to stay closed to the public, though he worries about smaller mosques re-opening.In Florida, the Islamic Center of Osceola County, Masjid Taqwa is holding the Eid prayer outdoors in the parking lot with social distancing rules in place.  Guidelines posted online include worshippers bringing their own prayer rugs, wearing mandatory masks and praying next to their cars while staying at least six feet apart. Participants are told not to hug or shake hands and to listen to the sermon from their cars.  “Eid is important but more important is the health of the people,” said Maulana Abdulrahman Patel, the imam. “We’ve been taking a lot of precautions,” and not acting on “sentiments or emotional feelings,” he said, adding they have been consulting with health and other officials.  Major Jacob Ruiz, the major of administration at Osceola County Sheriff’s Office, said he and the sheriff met with Patel before the celebration.  “They wanted to have something, and they felt it was important, but they wanted to do it with pretty much the blessing and the guidance of the sheriff’s office and the sheriff,” he said. “Everybody was in agreement that it’s going to be something that’s gonna be successful for them.”  The Muslim community in the county “has been very receptive and proactive in ensuring that they keep safety guidelines,” he said.The Masjid Taqwa prayer is for men only, the mosque said, citing “constraints.” Plans for men-only prayers announced by at least one other mosque prompted objections by some about excluding women. For Masjid Taqwa, the decision to include just men was taken because having families together would make crowd control more difficult, Patel said.In Michigan, the Michigan Muslim Community Council is organizing a televised Eid ceremony. It will include the Eid sermon, greetings from local elected officials and members of Muslim communities. “People will be at home seeing each other instead of gathering in large numbers,” said council chairman Mahmoud Al-Hadidi.”It’s just to keep people connected,” he said, adding that “we’re trying to avoid any spread of the coronavirus.”Normally, Eid is an all-day celebration with large gatherings over meals and a carnival for kids, he said. “Eid is a huge thing here.”Back in New Jersey on the holiday’s eve, Mujovic and two of her daughters joined friends and others online to decorate cookies. Squeezing icing out and spreading it on cookies shaped like Ramadan lanterns or spelling out the word “EID,” the girls stopped to lick their fingers or munch on the treats.As children waved, squealed and showed off their creations, it started to feel like Eid for Mujovic. “It was nice seeing happy faces,” she said. 
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The drive-in movie, dismissed by many as a relic of an earlier time in America, is making a comeback as entertainment seemingly designed for the coronavirus era.
 
Beth Wilson, who owns the Warwick Drive-in about an hour’s drive from Manhattan, says it has been sold out since May 15, the first day drive-ins were allowed to operate under New York’s reopening plan.
 
The drive-in has struck a chord with Americans who have been largely confined to their homes since March watching the death toll from COVID-19 accumulate on their TV screens.
 
Customers come “just to be out and for some form of entertainment that is not streaming on their TV,” said Wilson, adding she hopes the Warwick Drive-In can help people reconnect.
 
“I just want to see their happiness, their well-being.”
 
The drive-in experience is virtually tailor-made for the pandemic. Patrons control their close social interactions and any contact with other people happens outdoors, which is seen as lower risk for infection than indoors.
 
The Four Brothers Drive-In in Amenia, New York, which like Warwick has halved its capacity to put more distance between cars, is selling into next week after running out of tickets for the Memorial Day weekend.
 
“It’s a lot of first-time people that are inquiring and coming,” John Stefanopoulos, whose family owns the drive-in and an adjacent restaurant. “People want to get out of their house.”
 
Stefanopoulos sees a chance for the industry, which has shrunk by some 90% from a peak decades ago, to grow out of the crisis. He has received inquiries about developing drive-in theaters from England, Ireland and across the United States.
 
Some outsiders are looking to capitalize on the trend.
 
The Bel Aire Diner in the New York City borough of Queens propped up a screen in its parking lot and has been holding movie nights, serving food to customers in their cars while they watch classics like “The Princess Bride” and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
 
In perhaps the most ambitious plan, one businessman said he was organizing a “drive-in on steroids” event to be held almost nightly in a parking lot of Yankee Stadium after July 4th. Marco Shalma, co-owner of the MASC Hospitality Group, said the evenings would include food, performances and a feature film, and he sees them as a way to reinvigorate New York.
 
“We make something out of nothing in New York,” Shalma said.
 
“It’s going to be epic.”
 
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President Donald Trump is calling on the nation’s governors to immediately reopen churches, synagogues, mosques and other houses of worship, characterizing them as “essential places that provide essential services” during the pandemic. “At my direction, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is issuing guidance for communities of faith,” Trump said Friday. Trump admonished governors who have “deemed liquor stores and abortion clinics as essential but have left out churches and other houses of worship” and threatened to override any governors who continue to keep houses of worship closed for safety reasons. “Ministers, pastors, rabbis, imams and others faith leaders will make sure that their congregations are safe as they gather and pray,” Trump said. The sign for First Presbyterian Church of Annapolis, Md., displays information for online services, May 22, 2020.Cool reception While Trump claimed that Americans are “demanding to go to church and synagogue or their mosque,” religious communities are reacting cautiously to the president’s announcement. The In this March 24, 2020, photo, a man walks past the First Baptist Church in America in Providence, R.I.The survey also shows that readiness to return to houses of worship differs across religious traditions and race. Of the white evangelical Protestants who attended services before the pandemic, 63% say they would likely return to the pews if public health officials advised lifting those restrictions, compared with 50% of Muslims, 47% of white Catholics, 46% of white mainline Protestants, 46% of black Protestants, 38% of Hispanic Catholics and 33% of Jews. The decision to return to worship collectively may also be partisan. A recent poll by ABC News/Ipsos shows 73% of Republicans are likely to start attending church, compared with 20% of Democrats. The Trump administration has consulted with religious leaders, mostly evangelical Christians to draft the guidelines. Earlier this month White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx listens during an event in the Oval Office of the White House, May 6, 2020, in Washington.Discretion of religious leaders Speaking after Trump in the same briefing Friday, White House Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said that the decision to reopen houses of worship is at the discretion of governors and religious leaders. “I think each one of the leaders in the faith community should be in touch with their local health department so they can communicate to their congregants. Certainly people that have significant comorbidities, we want them protected. I know those houses of worship want to protect them,” Birx said.  It is not immediately clear how Trump plans to enforce his call or override governors’ orders limiting public gatherings that, under the U.S. federalist system, fall under the jurisdiction of the country’s 50 states.  When asked what legal basis Trump has to implement a nationwide push to reopen houses of worship, Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the president will “strongly encourage every governor to allow their churches to reopen.” 
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In April, as the coronavirus was ravaging New York, Susan Jones learned her older brother had been diagnosed with a blood cancer.
His supervisor at work launched a GoFundMe page to help with costs, and Jones shared it on Facebook. What happened next stunned her.  
While Jones, who works as principal ballet mistress at American Ballet Theatre, was confident her closest friends would help, she was stunned to see scores of colleagues — some she didn’t even know that well, and didn’t even know she had a brother — donating, despite their own economic challenges in a struggling dance community.  
Jones found herself asking: Would the response have been the same just two months earlier, before the pandemic? She’s fairly certain it wouldn’t. Instead, she thinks the instinct to help shows, along with simple kindness, how people are striving to make a difference. At a time of helplessness, she says, helping others makes a mark on a world that seems to be overwhelming all of us.
“People everywhere are trying to keep control of their lives, grasping at anything to preserve who they are,” Jones says.  
That helping others can feel good is not just an anecdotal truth but an idea backed by research, says Laurie Santos, psychology professor at Yale University and teacher of the school’s most popular course to date: “Psychology and the Good Life.”
“The intuition that helping others is the key to our well-being right now fits with science,” Santos says. “There’s lots of research showing that spending our time and money on other people can often make us happier than spending that same time or money on ourselves.”
“Taking time to do something nice for someone else,” she says, “is a powerful strategy for improving our well-being.”
One recent day, Damien Escobar, a contemporary violinist based in New York whose touring gigs have been halted by the pandemic, was heading into a neighborhood chain drugstore when he saw a homeless man begging outside.  
Escobar rifled through his pockets and found a dollar or two before he realized what the man was really seeking: a mask, so he could enter the store and buy water and essentials.
“That blew my mind,” says Escobar, 33, who himself was homeless less than a decade ago, sleeping on the subways. He also found that employees at a nearby parking garage were asking for spare masks.  
“There was a huge need here,” he says. He’d already been getting protective equipment to first responders, raising $50,000 from a charity concert, but pivoted to a new campaign,  “Masks for the Masses,” to get masks to the homeless and low-income families.  
Escobar is clear about the benefits not only to those on the receiving end, but to himself.  
“I’m essentially unemployed. I make my money on the road. If I weren’t doing this I’d probably be stuck at home battling a bout of depression,” he says. “They say once you get out of the world and into the world of someone else, your problems don’t really exist anymore.”
In her practice, psychologist Catherine Lewis has often found people are happier when they can take action.  
“In the work of trauma, we know that people who have good outcomes are the people who are doing something — mobilizing, fighting back,” she says. “The hardest piece is when you are stuck, confined, frozen.”
When the pandemic struck, Blake Ross, a 37-year-old mother of a toddler in New York, was testing the waters to re-enter the job market — in the field of event programming, as it happens. During her break, she’d been enjoying the company of other young mothers. Like many Manhattanites, it was the very density of the city that had led to her greatest pleasures there.  
Suddenly “all that was taken away, very swiftly.” Ross wondered how she could remain connected with the world — not just with friends and family, but also people she didn’t know, those random, fortuitous encounters that make city life appealing for many. She hit on the idea of a website to connect people who wanted to help with those who need it.
Taking a cue from her theater-industry background, she called her site “Kindness of Strangers” after the line in Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Some 500 people from New York and around the world have signed on.
“It’s been everything from ‘I just want a friendly face to laugh with’ to offering one-on-one yoga instruction, to an energy healer, offers to buy groceries, job-search coaching, tutoring children and reading stories,” Ross says. The service connected a choir teacher who wanted to keep the music going with a singer, and a librarian in Michigan with a librarian in Alaska.
Ross has partnered with Enlivant, which runs senior homes in 20 states, and has set up an adopt-a-grandparent program.
“The essence of volunteering is that you feel wonderful after giving of yourself,” Ross says. “You certainly get as much as you give.”
There are many such initiatives, from more organized ones to simple scrawled signs in apartment elevator banks, from younger residents offering to go shopping for older ones. That doesn’t mean, however, that traditional philanthropy is in good shape.
“Sure, individuals and some nonprofits are stepping forward to help,” says Marcia Stepanek, a professor in Columbia University’s Nonprofit Management Program. But for the most part, she says, recent surveys of nonprofits show that donations are dropping precipitously because donors are “skittish about the economy as well as the job market.”
“COVID-19 is upending the sector,” she says.
Be that as it may, many individuals are finding, in the process of reaching out to others, not only satisfaction and purpose but also perhaps a means of asserting their identity. That’s how Jones, the ballet mistress, sees it. Friends and colleagues have contributed nearly $6,000 to her brother’s care.
“This virus has robbed us of our identities,” she says. Giving, she says, “makes one feel included, not alone, and lends us a sort of new identity.”
She adds: “I’m feeling deeply touched to be on the receiving end of that.”
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Just before Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of the Islamic observance of Ramadan, customers in Pakistan rushed to finish shopping in bazaars that opened after a nearly two-month lockdown because of the coronavirus.In many places, crowds simply ignored warnings and guidelines to protect against the pandemic.”I don’t think it’s such a big deal,” said Rozeena Abbasi, who roamed around in an overcrowded market in Islamabad without wearing a face mask. “I want people to continue with their lives and routines as usual. Whatever is fated to happen will happen.”Despite her nonchalance, she acknowledged that Eid is going to be different this year.Women buy jewelry at the Baghbanpura Bazaar ahead of the Muslim Eid al-Fitr festival in Lahore, Pakistan, May 21, 2020.Eid al-Fitr, the most festive Muslim holiday, is marked with celebrations, friends and family reunions, and a lot of feasting. This year, the coronavirus is threatening to dampen that spirit.”This Eid is not just a little different, it’s entirely different. We used to go to each other’s houses, everyone used to cook, the whole week used to be one long festival. Not this time,” said Sehrish Lodhi of Islamabad.Unlike Pakistan, shops and shopping malls in many other countries remain closed. Eid al-Fitr marks the biggest shopping season in most Muslim countries. But this year, many businesses will feel the pain of lost income.”Last year, there were clients, there was movement. We were able to work. There was a source of income. Now, there is no income, there is no season. We do not feel the season. We do not feel the Eid,” said Karem Mohamed, 19, a shoe salesman in Cairo.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
People travel by boat to their hometown in remote islands, ahead of Eid al-Fitr celebrations which mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, May 21, 2020.In Aceh, the only Indonesian province with Islamic sharia law, public Eid prayers will still be performed inside and outside mosques, with physical distancing protocol in place. But the public takbir and the province’s iconic parade of decorated vehicles will not occur this year.”We are so sad, because we can’t hold the takbir. It’s part of the tradition, just like meugang,” Muhammad Al Kausar told VOA.Meugang is the Acehnese tradition that is believed to have emerged with the spread of Islam in Aceh in the 14th century. Cattle are slaughtered, cooked and eaten in a meal that brings families together to feast on various meat dishes at the end of Ramadan.In Central Java, residents have erected barriers on village borders to stop out-of-towners from entering to control the spread of COVID-19.In Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, the government and clerics are urging people to pray at home. The kingdom has declared a 24-hour curfew from Saturday until Wednesday to stem the spread of the virus.Its rival nation, Iran, and some other countries, have taken a more relaxed approach and will allow Eid prayers, but only in open spaces with social distancing.Among all the restrictions, the Eid celebrations and outings that people have grown accustomed to will not be around this year.Creative alternatives”The normal ritual is that after the morning prayer on that day, people go out to visit friends and families. But this time, there will be minimal interaction,” said Hajiya Rukayat Usman, of the city of Jos in Nigeria.This has led many to think of creative ways to bring some normalcy to this abnormal situation. Technology is expected to play a big role.”This will be a kind of digital Eid,” said Lodhi in Islamabad. “People will wish each other [a happy Eid] on phone calls or video calls. I think everyone will get ready and make videos but won’t be able to do much else.”People wait outside a bakery and pastry shop named “The Baker” and known as “El Khabaz,” for traditional Eid al-Fitr festivities sweets and biscuits, amid concerns over the coronavirus disease, in the Cairo suburb of Maadi, Egypt, May 21, 2020.People with children are particularly concerned with creating a festive atmosphere at home, said Samy Mahmud in Cairo.”The most crucial thing is that we do not make our young children feel this catastrophe. They can put on their new clothes as usual. We can bring them balloons at home, create for them an atmosphere of joy and happiness of the Eid, so they don’t feel like we are in a catastrophe,” he said.In Teaneck, New Jersey, in the U.S. northeast, the first Muslim American to be elected mayor in Bergen County has come up with a unique plan.”For us in Teaneck, I’m going to have front yard parties,” said Mayor Mohammed Hameeduddin. “So basically, everyone can go out [in)] the front yard, set up your chairs and your table, and if you want to, people can drive by. And that’s the way we’re all going see each other.”One thing is certain — this year’s Eid al-Fitr will long be remembered as one of hardship and restrictions.Hamada Elrasam from Cairo; Saba Shah Khan from VOA’s Urdu service, Washington; Eva Mazrieva from VOA’s Indonesian service, Washington; and Ifiok Ettang from Jos, Nigeria, contributed to this report.
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A Hollywood actress and her fashion-designer husband have agreed to plead guilty in a university admissions scandal in which their daughters were falsely portrayed as a sports champion.Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli have agreed to plead guilty to charges of conspiracy to secure “fraudulent admission” of their two children to the University of Southern California (USC), according to the U.S. Department of Justice.The Justice Department stated that Loughlin agreed to two months in prison, a $150,000 fine and two years of supervised release with 100 hours of community service. Giannulli’s plea agreement includes five months in prison, a $250,000 fine and two years of supervised release with 250 hours of community service.Loughlin, 55, and Giannulli, 56, both of Los Angeles, have long fought the charges that they fabricated their daughters’ skill at rowing through an admissions’ fixer to gain her entry to the prestigious USC. Earlier this month, a federal judge refused to drop charges against the couple who had alleged that the Justice Department fabricated evidence.The couple was accused of paying $500,000 to William “Rick” Singer for his help securing them slots at USC through a sports recruiter. In a video on social media, their daughter, Olivia Jade, talked about being more interested in the social rather than scholastic aspects of attending USC.The Justice Department stated that Loughlin will “plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, while Giannulli will plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud and honest services wire and mail fraud.”Loughlin and Giannulli are the 23rd and 24th parents to plead guilty in the college admissions case.Prosecutors: College Scam Takes Cheating to Whole New LevelParents Spend Up to Millions to Boost Student ProfilesEarlier this week, a Chinese mother who lives in Canada was sentenced for bribing a fixer to get her son admitted to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as a soccer recruit.Xiaoning Sui, 48, of Surrey, British Columbia, was sentenced to five months’ time served during a videoconference hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Douglas Woodlock.She was ordered to pay a fine of $250,000 in addition to forfeiting the $400,000 she paid to Singer, according to Justice Department.The U.S. Department of Justice conducted a multilevel, years-long investigation it dubbed Operation Varsity Blues. 
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Next year’s Academy Awards telecast may be postponed because of the disruption to theatrical releases caused by the coronavirus pandemic. A story published Tuesday in the entertainment magazine Variety quotes an anonymous source who says it’s “likely” the annual awards ceremony, which is scheduled to air February 28 on ABC-TV, will be postponed. But the source also says the details have not been fully discussed or formally proposed. Under the rules of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which hands out the prestigious awards, films must be released in traditional theaters before December 31 to be eligible for Oscar nominations.  But with thousands of theaters across the country shut down because of the pandemic, many feature films slated for traditional release are now debuting on streaming digital services such as Netflix, which has prompted the Academy to change its rules to allow for those films to be nominated.  “It makes sense when we don’t really know what’s to come in terms of the availability of theatrical exhibition,” Academy president David Rubin told Variety when the new rules were announced. “We need to make allowances for this year only and during this time when theaters are not open so great film work can be seen and celebrated.” 
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A song took aim at an alleged abuse of power by Poland’s ruling party leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski. It rose to the top of the chart of a public radio station. Then it disappeared.The public broadcaster is now accused of censorship. The scandal, which has been a top issue of public debate in recent days, has prompted several resignations from the station, Radio Trojka, and left some musicians vowing to boycott it.The affair has created new worries about media freedom in Poland. Since Kaczynski’s party won power in 2015, it has used public media as a propaganda tool in violation of its mandate to be neutral. In the past five years, Poland has fallen in the World Press Freedom Index from 18th to 62nd place.  Kaczynski isn’t himself accused of ordering the removal of the song from a listener-voted chart, and members of the government have also been critical of what happened. Instead, the song’s removal is seen as the kind of self-censorship that happens by overzealous underlings in a system where democratic standards are under threat.Wojciech Mann, a journalist who left Radio Trojka in March, said the story played out at the bottom of a “a ladder of fear” where Kaczynski sits at the top.The song, “My Pain is Better Than Yours,” is by singer and songwriter Kazik Staszewski, known better as just Kazik.The lyrics of the folk rock song describe an April 10 visit by Kaczynski to Warsaw’s Powazki Cemetery that infuriated many Poles because cemeteries in the country were closed to the public because of the coronavirus pandemic.  It was the 10th anniversary of the plane crash in Russia that killed his twin brother, President Lech Kaczynski, and 95 others. Kaczynski was driven in a limousine and protected by bodyguards as he entered the closed cemetery to visit his mother’s grave and a memorial to his brother and other crash victims.The song doesn’t mention Kaczynski’s name, but it speaks of limousines, bodyguards and a visit by one person alone to a closed cemetery.”You alone can soothe the pain, everyone else slid into poverty,” the song says.The song was voted the No. 1 song of the week on Friday by listeners. But the next day it disappeared from the website. Station director Tomasz Kowalczewski said it was removed because of irregularities in voting.  But a Trojka journalist this week said that management ordered him to stop airing the song.The station has been in operation since 1962. Under communism it played rock music geared at the youth and was given some leeway to be more independent than other censored media. One of the journalists who quit in protest over the the weekend, Marcin Kydrynski, said he couldn’t recognize the station anymore.Kazik’s song is now in fourth place on the chart.Culture Minister Piotr Glinski said he disapproved of the song, but also its removal. But Glinski also said he believed the whole scandal could be a “provocation,” suggesting that people against the government were setting it up to look bad. 
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On Monday, International Museum Day, two new studies show that museums are another sector of the world economy that has been significantly weakened by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. According to the studies conducted by UNESCO and the International Council of Museums (ICOM), 90% of museums worldwide were forced to close their doors and stop in-person operations during the crisis. Of the more than 85,000 museums that have closed, an estimated 13% are at risk of never reopening because of the heavy financial losses incurred during this time. The two studies looked to determine the impact of COVID-19 on museums worldwide and explain how institutions have adapted to the pandemic. UNESCO and ICOM say that they will use this information to find ways to support institutions in the wake of the virus. They also found that only 5% of the museums in Africa and the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) were able to offer online content to their visitors. Even museums with digital capabilities will face a substantial decrease in income if they are not able to host visitors in person, debilitating their ability to support their employees and continue operations and outreach. “Museums play a fundamental role in the resilience of societies. We must help them cope with this crisis and keep them in touch with their audiences,” said UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay in a press release. “This pandemic also reminds us that half of humanity does not have access to digital technologies. We must work to promote access to culture for everyone, especially the most vulnerable and isolated.” In the U.S. alone, museums are estimated to be losing $33 million a day, according to the American Alliance of Museums. The U.S. arts and culture industry had lost more than $4.5 billion nationally by early April, according to a survey by Americans for the Arts.  In mid-May, UNESCO plans to begin discussions among international professionals about how to address problems facing museums as part of its ResiliArt movement, which was initially established to support artists affected by the COVID-19 crisis. The first three will center around the situation in the Ibero-American region and will discuss ways to support museums and their staff, according to a UNESCO press release.  “We are fully aware of and confident in the tenacity of museum professionals to meet the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic,” said ICOM President Suay Aksoy in a statement. “However, the museum field cannot survive on its own without the support of the public and private sectors. It is imperative to raise emergency relief funds and to put in place policies to protect professionals and self-employed workers on precarious contracts.” In response to the UNESCO study, officials say their response plan includes the social protection of museum staff and the digitization and inventorying of collections. Substantial funds and resources will be required to achieve these goals, UNESCO said.   
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Actor Ken Osmond, who played the legendary slimy but likable Eddie Haskell on TV’s “Leave It to Beaver,” has died in Los Angeles at 76.His family did not give a cause of death, but his partner at the Los Angeles police department with whom Osmond worked after show business, said he had suffered from respiratory problems.FILE – Ken Osmond, Dec. 1, 2013.”Leave It to Beaver” was a sitcom about a young boy nicknamed Beaver, and his older brother, Wally. It ran from 1957 until 1963 and it stood out from most early TV comedies for its realism and avoiding outlandish situations – the kids talked like real kids and their parents sometimes lost their patience over poor schoolwork and bad behavior.Osmond portrayed Wally’s friend Eddie Haskell – a curly-haired wise guy who was overly polite and deferential to adults, but the moment they turned away, he was insulting, inconsiderate and egocentric. He bullied Beaver and tried to drag Wally into schemes. But he was ultimately harmless and always wound up the loser. Audiences loved the character because everyone knew an Eddie Haskell in real life.Osmond tried to continue his acting career after “Leave It to Beaver” ended, but was frustrated at being typecast as a bad guy and eventually gave up show business.He became a Los Angeles police officer in 1970 and made headlines when he was shot in the chest during a chase in 1980 and survived thanks to a bulletproof vest.Osmond retired in 1988, but he occasionally returned to television as an older but still oily Eddie Haskell in a revived “Beaver” series.    
 
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Michelle Obama was joined by a famous fellow reader Monday on her popular online series “Mondays With Michelle Obama.” The former first lady first read “The Giraffe Problem,” by Jory John and Lane Smith. Then she was joined by Barack Obama, seen over the weekend addressing the country’s high school graduating class, as they took turns — the former president even barked at one point — on Julia Sarcone-Roach’s “A Bear Ate Your Sandwich.”  Michelle Obama has been reading midday Monday for the past several weeks in support of families with small children at home during the coronavirus pandemic. Books she has featured include Julia Donaldson’s “The Gruffalo” and Eric Carle’s “The Hungry Caterpillar.”  Next Monday, she will bring on a pair of non-readers — the family’s dogs, Bo and Sunny — for the canine-appropriate “Can I Be Your Dog?”, by Troy Cummings. The series can be viewed on the Facebook and YouTube pages of PBS Kids and on the Facebook page of the Obamas’ publisher, Penguin Random House. 
 
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French actor Michel Piccoli, a prolific screen star who appeared in landmark films by directors such as Luis Bunuel – including in his Academy Award winning “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” —and Jean-Luc Godard, has died. He was 94.His family confirmed to French media Monday that he died last week, but they did not give a cause of death.Though less famous in the English-speaking world, in continental Europe and his native France Paris-born Piccoli was a stalwart of art house cinema.French movie star Michel Piccoli (L) stands next to prominent Egyptian movie critic Youssef Cherif Rizkallah at a press conference in Cairo, Egypt, Nov. 1987. (Photo: Diaa Bekheet)Beginning his career in the 1940s, he went on to make over 170 movies, working into his late eighties.His most memorable appearance came arguably during the French New Wave – starring opposite Brigitte Bardot in Godard’s 1963 masterpiece “Contempt,” with his dark hat and signature bushy eyebrows.But Piccoli’s performances for Europe’s most iconic directors will also be remembered, including for France’s Jean Renoir, Jacques Rivette and Jean-Pierre Melville, Britain’s Alfred Hitchcock and Spain’s Bunuel. For the Spanish director, Piccioli starred alongside Catherine Deneuve in the 1967 masterpiece “Belle de Jour” and in 1972’s “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,” which won the Best Foreign Film award at the Oscars in 1973.FILE – French actor Michel Piccoli talks with Swedish actress Liv Ullmann at the Cannes Film Festival, southern France, May 20, 1974.Despite starring in Hitchcock’s 1969 English-language espionage thriller “Topaz,” Piccoli’s career in Hollywood didn’t take off.In Europe, Piccoli won a host of accolades, including Best Actor in Cannes in 1980 for “A Leap In The Dark” by Marco Bellochio and a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 1982 for “Strange Affair” by Pierre Granier-Deferre.The actor’s last major role was in 2011’s Nanni Moretti’s “We Have a Pope,” which premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.Piccoli was married three times, to Éléonore Hirt, the singer Juliette Greco and finally to Ludivine Clerc. He had one daughter from his first marriage, Anne-Cordélia. Piccoli stayed with Clerc, whom he married in 1978, until his death. 
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Before the pandemic, Shalinder Singh spent Sundays at his gurdwara, helping serve a community meal for 300 people or more at the Sikh place of worship in suburban Detroit.
Now, he’s all about pizza.
Singh and his family have paid for and delivered hundreds of pies to hospitals, police stations and fire departments since the gurdwara suspended in-person services.  
They wanted to carry on a tenet of their faith: helping others through langar, the communal meal shared by all who come.
“It just popped up in my mind, this is the time to take care of the heroes in the front,” said Singh, the 40-year-old owner of a pet products company. “I spoke to a couple of doctors and they said pizza is the best because they’re working 12 to 16 hours and they don’t have time to sit and eat.”
The Singhs, including 12-year-old Arjun and 14-year-old Baani, have delivered more than 1,000 pizzas since early April, with no plans to slow down. They drive as much as an hour to spread their pizza love once a week, as Singh continues to run his business, which is classified as essential.
“We’re trying to go to areas that aren’t getting much food,” Singh said.  In this April 10, 2020, handout photo, Japneet Singh, center, and two other volunteers deliver pizza to health care workers at Kings County Hospital in the Brooklyn borough of New York.In New York, 25-year-old Japneet Singh, a fellow Sikh, also thought of pizza for under-resourced hospitals and overworked, minimum wage employees in the crosshairs of the virus.
After college graduation and some time in corporate life, he most recently worked as a field supervisor for the U.S. Census Bureau and drove an Uber on the side while searching for his passion.
Then the virus struck, shutting down his work. In the South Ozone Park neighborhood of Queens, Singh’s heart went out to the desperate staff at Elmhurst Hospital Center and other hospitals overwhelmed by COVID-19.
“I figured you know what, I’m sitting home,” he said. “Food always makes things better, so I asked one of my friends who works at Elmhurst Hospital, what can we do? He was like, pizza would be great. Ever since then, we haven’t looked back.”
Japneet Singh began delivering in late March; he too estimates he’s distributed 1,000 pies or more. He makes two or three runs a week to hospitals throughout the city, and to the others in the struggle.
“There’s other people on the front line, like grocery workers. We’ve been to a Walmart, police precincts, FDNY stations. We recently started feeding the homeless,” he said.In this April 1, 2020 photo provided by Paramjyoti Kaur Singh, Singh family members Baani, Shalinder, Arjun and Jasveen Kaur pose for a photo before delivering pizzas to health care workers.Singh has enlisted a couple of friends willing to help deliver the food, but he’s most in need of donations; he’s paid for pizzas out of his own pocket, but it’s not enough.
“We started putting out little clips on social media and that’s how people have found us to donate,” he said. Social media has been so great. I make a post and ask, `Where should we go next?'”
He’s raised nearly $2,000. He’s been working with the owner of two Papa John’s pizzerias in Queens and Brooklyn who’s been discounting pies and donating some as well.
Store workers have been especially grateful.
“These are minimum-wage workers,” Singh said. “If we can put a smile on their faces with just a slice of pizza, why can’t we do just one small act of kindness, you know?”
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Elvis Presley’s Graceland says it will reopen Thursday after it shut down tours and exhibits due to the new coronavirus outbreak.The tourist attraction in Memphis, Tennessee, said Sunday that it has adjusted its tours, and restaurant and retail operations, since it closed in March.  The Memphis tourist attraction is centered on the life and career of the late rock n’ roll icon. It annually attracts about 500,000 visitors, including international travelers.Graceland said in a news release that it is reducing tours of Presley’s former home-turned-museum to 25% capacity, requiring employees and encouraging visitors to wear face masks, and limiting restaurant capacities to 50%.  Temperature checks for guests and employees will be implemented and hand sanitizing stations are being installed, Graceland said.”We are helping Memphis and Tennessee to get back to some sense of normality,” said Joel Weinshanker, managing partner of Graceland Holdings, in a statement. 
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Phyllis George, the former Miss America who became a female sportscasting pioneer on CBS’s “The NFL Today,” has died. She was 70.A family spokesperson said George died Thursday at a Lexington hospital after a long fight with a blood disorder.Her children, Lincoln Tyler George Brown and CNN White House correspondent Pamela Ashley Brown, released a joint statement, saying:”For many, Mom was known by her incredible accomplishments as the pioneering female sportscaster, 50th Miss America and first lady. But this was all before we were born and never how we viewed Mom. To us, she was the most incredible mother we could ever ask for, and it is all of the defining qualities the public never saw, especially against the winds of adversity, that symbolize how extraordinary she is more than anything else. The beauty so many recognized on the outside was a mere fraction of her internal beauty, only to be outdone by an unwavering spirit that allowed her to persevere against all the odds.”Miss America in 1971, George got into television in 1974 at CBS on “Candid Camera” and joined Brent Musburger and Irv Cross in 1975 on “The NFL Today.” Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder later was added to the cast.”Phyllis George was special. Her smile lit up millions of homes for the NFL Today,” Musburger tweeted. “Phyllis didn’t receive nearly enough credit for opening the sports broadcasting door for the dozens of talented women who took her lead and soared.”George worked on “The NFL Today” until 1984 and also covered horse racing. She hosted the entertainment show “People” and later co-anchored the “CBS Morning News.”George was briefly married to Hollywood producer Robert Evans in the mid-1970s and to John Y. Brown Jr. from 1979-98. Brown owned Kentucky Fried Chicken and the NBA’s Boston Celtics and served as the governor of Kentucky.”Phyllis was a great asset to Kentucky,” Brown told the Louisville Courier-Journal. “We had a great partnership. I think we enjoyed every single day.”From Denton, Texas, George attended the University of North Texas for three years, then went to Texas Christian University after earning a scholarship as Miss Texas in 1970.”A true pioneer who approached her job with enthusiasm, empathy and humor,” ESPN broadcaster Hannah Storm tweeted. “She was herself-charming and funny .. helped her audiences connect with some of the great sports figures of the day.” 
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The coronavirus pandemic lockdowns forced many bars and nightclubs across the United States to stand empty with their doors locked and chairs upside down on tables.One hundred years ago, taverns in the U.S. were also locked down and desolate when the Volstead Act, better known as Prohibition, in 1920 became the law of the land, making it a crime to manufacture, sell or transport alcohol.The drive to outlaw demon rum in the U.S. began in the 1850s. Churchwomen howled that whiskey was turning men into drunkards and barflies. Drink leads to violence and poverty and destroys families, they said.   Temperance movements, anti-saloon leagues and ladies storming into taverns to destroy bottles of whiskey grew from being an annoyance for the bartender into a legitimate political movement.“Prohibition was largely driven by a feeling among certain portions of the population, although no evidence that it was ever nearly a majority, that alcohol was a bad thing and should be eradicated from American life,” said Daniel Okrent, The New York Times best-selling author of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.Okrent said brewers and distillers campaigned hard to defeat anti-alcohol politicians, popularly known as “drys,” even to the point of rigging elections. But, he said, the two industries were actually bitter enemies.  “The brewers say distillers are the ones who should be stopped distributing whiskey … beer, they said, was healthy. It was liquid bread. The distillers despised the brewers for making that separation. So, they really could not coordinate their activities together,” Okrent said.FILE – In this May 15, 1929, photo, authorities unload cases of whiskey crates labeled as green tomatoes from a refrigerator car in Washington, D.C.Drinking did drop in the United States in the first years of prohibition, but flouting the law soon became a way of life in the 1920s.  Saloons known as speakeasies cropped up by the hundreds in large cities.  Bathtubs were used for other purposes than to scrub off grime and became huge mixing bowls for home brews – sometimes using gasoline and wood alcohol with fatal results.   Big overcoats and high boots suddenly became fashionable because they could easily conceal flasks, giving birth to the term “bootlegger.” People started walking with canes because the hollow ones could be filled with whiskey.Anyone caught taking a drink immediately claimed the liquid was for “medicinal purposes.”  Many of the bootleggers who owned speakeasies and bought and sold whiskey were deeply involved in organized crime. Al Capone, Bugs Moran and Dutch Schultz became household names and legends, and extremely rich. The number of criminals involved in bootlegging outnumbered the federal agents who gamely tried to enforce the law.Okrent said it wasn’t long before Prohibition became a huge joke.  “Anybody could get a drink any time of the day,” he said. “You could walk in at 10 in the morning get a drink. A 15-year-old could buy a drink. There was no regulatory environment. H.L. Mencken said to get a drink in Baltimore was very difficult unless you knew a judge or a cop.”FILE – This June 12, 1924, photo shows bottles of Scotch whiskey smuggled in hollowed-out loaves of bread; location unknown.And foreign visitors to the United States regarded Prohibition as absurd.“Winston Churchill — and you can imagine what he thought of Prohibition — came to the U.S. and toured the West in the mid- to late 1920s. He entered in Washington state, and the first person who gave him illegal liquor when he got into the U.S. was a Customs official. He traveled down the coast with his son, Randolph, and had no trouble finding alcohol,” Okrent said.He said the Great Depression is what eventually killed Prohibition.  “The government was running on fumes, and people said, ‘One way we can get some revenue back is to bring back the tax on legal alcohol.’”When President Herbert Hoover was introduced at baseball’s 1931 World Series, the thirsty fans welcomed him with loud boos and chants of “We want beer.”Hoover was a dry. Franklin Roosevelt was a wet, and when he won the 1932 presidential election over Hoover, it was only a matter of time before Prohibition was finished.  The 21st Amendment overturned the 18th, and drinking became legal again in the U.S. in December 1933.Today’s regulatory regime on alcohol sales and consumption is a hangover from Prohibition, including taxes, age limits, mandatory closing hours for bars and restrictions against opening a tavern near a church or school.Okrent said the irony is that it is harder to get a drink these days, when it is legal, than it was in the 1920s when it was not. 
 
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