Major League Baseball last week opened its sharply curtailed season nearly four months late because of the coronavirus pandemic. Now one team, the Miami Marlins, has been hit with an outbreak of infections. The Marlins played a three-game weekend series in the eastern city of Philadelphia but canceled its Monday night home opener in Miami against the Baltimore Orioles when eight more players and two coaches tested positive for the coronavirus. The new infections brought the total on the Marlins team to least 14 in recent days. The team stayed in Philadelphia Sunday night as it weighed health precautions. In addition, the Phillies, the Philadelphia team that played the Marlins, called off their Monday night game at home against the New York Yankees. Major League Baseball cut its normal 162-game regular season schedule to 60 games and started the season with empty stadiums in hopes of averting a widespread health disaster. Some reserve players have been sitting in the stands to give their teammates ample room to socially distance in the dugouts. Even so, several star players have contracted the coronavirus, including Freddie Freeman of the Atlanta Braves and Juan Soto of the Washington Nationals, the 2019 World Series champions. Some coaches, players and on-field umpires have been wearing face masks during the opening games. The Toronto Blue Jays were banned by Canadian authorities from playing at its home field. The Canadian government balked at allowing U.S.-based teams from repeatedly crossing the border when it has already blocked U.S. tourists from entering the country. Toronto Blue Jays’ Brandon Drury celebrates with Danny Jansenafter scoring on a two run single by Bo Bichette off Tampa Bay Rays relief pitcher Andrew Kittredge during the sixth inning of a baseball game, July 26, 2020, in Petersburg, Fla.Two other U.S.-dominated professional sports leagues, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League, have opened training camps and hope to restart their seasons in the next few days after halting play for four months. All basketball games are being played in Orlando, Florida, rather than at the normal home arenas of each team, while all hockey games are all being played at arenas in two Canadian cities, Toronto and Edmonton. The National Football League is opening training camps this week but has already canceled the usual four exhibition games each team plays in August in advance of the start of the regular season in September.
   
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Bollywood star and former Miss World Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and her 8-year-old daughter have been discharged from a hospital after testing negative for COVID-19, Aishwarya’s husband Abhishek wrote on Twitter.  
 
Abhishek also wrote that he and his father, legendary actor Amitabh Bachchan, remained in the hospital over two weeks after they first tested positive.Thank you all for your continued prayers and good wishes. Indebted forever. 🙏🏽 Aishwarya and Aaradhya have thankfully tested negative and have been discharged from the hospital. They will now be at home. My father and I remain in hospital under the care of the medical staff.— Abhishek Bachchan (@juniorbachchan) July 27, 2020Amitabh Bachchan, who has starred in over 200 Indian films since the early 1970s, tweeted July 11 that he had tested positive for the coronavirus.   
 
He has been a prominent figure in India’s campaign to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus, filming ads about wearing masks and appealing to citizens to stay home.  
 
Still, despite enforcing one of the strictest lockdowns in the world earlier this year, India’s case numbers of COVID-19 are rising.   
 
India has reported over 1,435,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the third highest case number in the world following the United States and Brazil.
 
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A lawyer for British tabloid The Sun said Monday that Johnny Depp abused Amber Heard during their relationship, committing acts of violence fueled by misogyny and unleashed by addiction to alcohol and drugs.
Attorney Sasha Wass was summing up at Depp’s libel case against the newspaper over an article alleging he physically abused ex-wife Heard — a high-stakes celebrity trial in which the reputations of both former spouses are at stake.
Depp is suing News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun, and the newspaper’s executive editor, Dan Wootton, at the High Court in London over an April 2018 article, which called him a “wife-beater.” He strongly denies being violent to Heard.
The case is due to end Tuesday, but judge Andrew Nicol is not expected to deliver his ruling for several weeks.
In closing arguments, Wass said the newspaper’s defense “is one of truth — namely that Mr. Depp did indeed beat his wife.”
Wass said there was “overwhelming evidence of domestic violence or wife-beating behavior, cataloged over a three-year period.”
She said Depp was “a hopeless addict who repeatedly lost his self-control and all ability to restrain his anger.”
“Permeating all of the evidence in this case is the character of Mr. Depp himself — his well-documented evidence of violence and destruction over his adult life which have occurred when he was under the influence of drink and drugs.”
She said Depp “was subject to irrational mood swings and abnormal behavioral patterns, which would not have been present when Mr. Depp was clean and sober, and Mr. Depp has a name for this metamorphosed entity — namely, The Monster.”
Depp, 57, and Heard, 34, met on the set of the 2011 comedy “The Rum Diary” and married in Los Angeles in February 2015. Heard filed for divorce the following year, and the divorce was finalized in 2017.
The former spouses have both been in court throughout three weeks of testimony at the grand neo-Gothic court building, though Depp did not attend on Monday morning. His lawyer is due to sum up on Tuesday.
Lawyers, journalists and members of the public have heard lurid details of the couple’s tempestuous relationship, including prodigious drinking and drug consumption, furious arguments, hurled objects and a deposit of excrement left in a bed — whether by dog or human is disputed.
The Sun’s defense relies on 14 allegations made by Heard of Depp’s violence between 2013 and 2016, in settings including his private island in the Bahamas, a rented house in Australia — where Depp’s finger was severed in contested circumstances — and the couple’s downtown Los Angeles penthouse, which was trashed during the couple’s altercations.
Wass said that the first year of the couple’s relationship, during which Depp was sober, was “idyllic,” but that the violence started in 2013 after he relapsed.
During four days in the witness box last week, Heard claimed Depp flew into jealous rages and turned into violent alter ego the “Monster” under the influence of alcohol and drugs. She accused him of slapping and hitting her and throwing bottles at her “like grenades,” and claimed that she often feared for her life during their relationship.
Heard’s evidence was backed by witnesses including her sister Whitney Henriquez, who said she had seen Depp hit Heard “multiple times” during a fracas at the couple’s Los Angeles apartment in March 2015.
Depp, who gave evidence for almost five days, denies all the allegations and claims Heard was the aggressor during their volatile relationship, which he has likened to “a crime scene waiting to happen.” Several current or former employees gave evidence backing his version of events, and former romantic partners Vanessa Paradis and Winona Ryder said in written witness statements that he had never been violent to them.
He acknowledged using a wide variety of drugs including marijuana, cocaine and opioid painkillers, but denied drugs made him violent.
Summarizing the defense case, Wass said that “a deep misogyny … lay at the root of Mr. Depp’s anger.”
“He created a misogynistic persona of (Heard) as the stereotype of a nagging woman,” Wass said. She said Depp branded Heard “a gold-digger, a shrew and an adulterer” in order to discredit
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President Donald Trump won’t be throwing out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium next month after all.Trump tweeted Sunday that he won’t be able to make the trip because of his “strong focus” on the coronavirus, vaccines and the economy. Trump said in the tweet: “We will make it later in the season!”  He had announced at a briefing Thursday on Major League Baseball’s opening day that he’d be at Yankee Stadium on Aug. 15 to throw out the first pitch.Trump has been trying to show voters that he is taking the virus seriously by holding briefings and canceling Republican convention events set for Jacksonville, Florida. Florida is among several states where the virus is raging. 
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Olivia de Havilland, the doe-eyed actress beloved to millions as the sainted Melanie Wilkes of “Gone With the Wind,” but also a two-time Oscar winner and an off-screen fighter who challenged and unchained Hollywood’s contract system, died Sunday at her home in Paris. She was 104.  Havilland, the sister of fellow Oscar winner Joan Fontaine, died peacefully of natural causes, said New York-based publicist Lisa Goldberg.De Havilland was among the last of the top screen performers from the studio era, and the last surviving lead from “Gone With the Wind,” an irony, she once noted, since the fragile, self-sacrificing Wilkes was the only major character to die in the film. The 1939 epic, based on Margaret Mitchell’s best-selling Civil War novel and winner of 10 Academy Awards, is often ranked as Hollywood’s box office champion (adjusting for inflation), although it is now widely condemned for its glorified portrait of slavery and antebellum life.The pinnacle of producer David O. Selznick’s career, the movie had a troubled off-screen story.  Three directors worked on the film, stars Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable were far more connected on screen than off and the fourth featured performer, Leslie Howard, was openly indifferent to the role of Ashley Wilkes, Melanie’s husband. But de Havilland remembered the movie as “one of the happiest experiences I’ve ever had in my life. It was doing something I wanted to do, playing a character I loved and liked.”During a career that spanned six decades, de Havilland also took on roles ranging from an unwed mother to a psychiatric inmate in “The Snake Pit,” a personal favorite. The dark-haired De Havilland projected both a gentle, glowing warmth and a sense of resilience and mischief that made her uncommonly appealing, leading critic James Agee to confess he was “vulnerable to Olivia de Havilland in every part of my being except the ulnar nerve.”She was Errol Flynn’s co-star in a series of dramas, Westerns and period pieces, most memorably as Maid Marian in “The Adventures of Robin Hood.” But De Havilland also was a prototype for an actress too beautiful for her own good, typecast in sweet and romantic roles while desiring greater challenges.  Her frustration finally led her to sue Warner Bros. in 1943 when the studio tried to keep her under contract after it had expired, claiming she owed six more months because she had been suspended for refusing roles. Her friend Bette Davis was among those who had failed to get out of her contract under similar conditions in the 1930s, but de Havilland prevailed, with the California Court of Appeals ruling that no studio could extend an agreement without the performer’s consent.  The decision is still unofficially called the “De Havilland law.”De Havilland went on to earn her own Academy Award in 1946 for her performance in “To Each His Own,” a melodrama about out-of-wedlock birth. A second Oscar came three years later for “The Heiress,” in which she portrayed a plain young homebody (as plain as it was possible to make de Havilland) opposite Montgomery Clift and Sir Ralph Richardson in an adaptation of Henry James’ “Washington Square.” In 2008, de Havilland received a National Medal of Arts and was awarded France’s Legion of Honor two years later.She was also famous, not always for the better, as the sister of Fontaine, with whom she had a troubled relationship. In a 2016 interview, de Havilland referred to her late sister as “Dragon Lady” and said her memories of Fontaine, who died in 2013, were “multi-faceted, varying from endearing to alienating.””On my part, it was always loving, but sometimes estranged and, in the later years, severed,” she said. “Dragon Lady, as I eventually decided to call her, was a brilliant, multi-talented person, but with an astigmatism in her perception of people and events which often caused her to react in an unfair and even injurious way.”De Havilland once observed that Melanie Wilkes’ happiness was sustained by a loving, secure family, a blessing that eluded the actress even in childhood.  She was born in Tokyo on July 1, 1916, the daughter of a British patent attorney. Her parents separated when she was 3, and her mother brought her and her younger sister Joan, to Saratoga, California. De Havilland’s own two marriages, to Marcus Goodrich and Pierre Galante, ended in divorce.Her acting ambitions dated back to stage performing at Mills College in Oakland, California. While preparing for a school production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” she went to Hollywood to see Max Reinhardt’s rehearsals of the same comedy. She was asked by to read for Hermia’s understudy, stayed with the production through her summer vacation and was given the role in the fall.Warner Bros. wanted stage actors for their lavish 1935 production and chose de Havilland to co-star with Mickey Rooney, who played Puck.”II wanted to be a stage actress,” she recalled. “Life sort of made the decision for me.”She signed a five-year contract with the studio and went on to make “Captain Blood,” “Dodge City” and other films with Flynn, a hopeless womanizer even by Hollywood standards.”Oh, Errol had such magnetism! There was nobody who did what he did better than he did,” said de Havilland, whose bond with the dashing actor remained, she would insist, improbably platonic. As she once explained, “We were lovers together so often on the screen that people could not accept that nothing had happened between us.”She did date Howard Hughes and James Stewart and had an intense affair in the early ’40s with John Huston. Their relationship led to conflict with Davis, her co-star for the Huston-directed “In This Our Life”; Davis would complain that de Havilland, a supporting actress in the film, was getting greater and more flattering time on camera.De Havilland allegedly never got along with Fontaine, a feud magnified by the 1941 Oscar race that placed her against her sister for best actress honors. Fontaine was nominated for the Hitchcock thriller “Suspicion” while de Havilland was cited for “Hold Back the Dawn, a drama co-written by Billy Wilder and starring de Havilland as a school teacher wooed by the unscrupulous Charles Boyer.Asked by a gossip columnist if they ever fought, de Havilland responded, “Of course, we fight. What two sisters don’t battle?” Like a good Warner Bros soap opera, their relationship was a juicy narrative of supposed slights and snubs, from de Havilland reportedly refusing to congratulate Fontaine for winning the Oscar to Fontaine making a cutting crack about de Havilland’s poor choice of agents and husbands.Though she once filmed as many as three pictures a year, her career slowed in middle age. She made several movies for television, including “Roots” and “Charles and Diana,” in which she portrayed the Queen Mother. She also co-starred with Davis in the macabre camp classic “Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte” and was menaced by a young James Caan in the 1964 chiller “Lady in a Cage,” condemning her tormenter as “one of the many bits of offal produced by the welfare state.”  In 2009, she narrated a documentary about Alzheimer’s, “I Remember Better When I Paint.” Catherine Zeta-Jones played de Havilland in the 2017 FX miniseries about Davis and Joan Crawford, but de Havilland objected to being portrayed as a gossip and sued FX. The case was dismissed.Despite her chronic stage fright, she did summer stock in Westport, Connecticut, and Easthampton, New York. Moviemaking, she said, produced a different kind of anxiety: “The first day of making a film I feel, `Why did I ever get mixed up in this profession? I have no talent; this time they’ll find out.'” 
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Britain’s Prince Harry took offence at what he thought was Prince William’s “snobbishness” when he advised his brother to “take as much time as you need to get to know this girl” when he was dating Meghan Markle, a new book says.Harry and his wife, Meghan, have distanced themselves from the book called “Finding Freedom,” saying they were not interviewed for the biography being serialized by The Times and The Sunday Times newspapers and made no contributions to it.The book documents, citing sources, a time when Harry and Meghan were dating and William wanted to make sure the American actress had the right intentions, The Sunday Times said.”Don’t feel you need to rush this,” William told Harry, according to sources cited by the book. “Take as much time as you need to get to know this girl.”The Sunday Times said Harry heard a tone of snobbishness in the last two words, “this girl”, and that Harry no longer felt he needed looking after.The couple and their son, Archie, now live in Los Angeles after they stepped down from their royal roles in March to forge new careers. In January they announced plans to lead a more independent life and to finance it themselves. Harry and Meghan married in May 2018 in a wedding heralded at the time as infusing a blast of Hollywood glamour and modernity into the British monarchy and which made them one of the world’s biggest celebrity couples. 
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Regis Philbin, the genial host who shared his life with television viewers over morning coffee for decades and helped himself and some fans strike it rich with the game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” has died at 88, People magazine reported.Philbin died Friday, just more than a month before his 89th birthday. He died of natural causes, according to a family statement to the magazine.Celebrities routinely stopped by Philbin’s eponymous syndicated morning show, but its heart was in the first 15 minutes, when he and co-host Kathie Lee Gifford — on “Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee” from 1985 to 2000 — or Kelly Ripa — on “Live! with Regis and Kelly” from 2001 until his 2011 retirement — bantered about the events of the day. Viewers laughed at Philbin’s mock indignation over not getting the best seat at a restaurant the night before or being henpecked by his partner.FILE – Co-hosts Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford share a champagne toast at the end of her last appearance on their morning talk show, in New York, July 28, 2000.”Even I have a little trepidation,” he told The Associated Press in 2008, when asked how he does a show every day. “You wake up in the morning and you say, ‘What did I do last night that I can talk about? What’s new in the paper? How are we gonna fill that 20 minutes?’ “”I’m not gonna say it always works out brilliantly, but somehow we connect more often than we don’t,” he added.After hustling into an entertainment career by parking cars at a Los Angeles TV station, Philbin logged more than 15,000 hours on the air, earning him recognition in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most broadcast hours logged by a TV personality, a record previously held by Hugh Downs.”Every day, you see the record shattered, pal!” Philbin would tell viewers. “One more hour!”He was host of the prime-time game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” briefly television’s most popular show at the turn of the century. ABC aired the family-friendly program as often as five times a week. It generated around $1 billion in revenue in its first two years — ABC had said it was among the most profitable shows in TV history — and helped make Philbin himself a millionaire many times over.’Is that your final answer?’Philbin’s question to contestants, “Is that your final answer?” became a national catchphrase. Philbin was even a fashion trendsetter; he put out a line of monochromactic shirts and ties to match what he wore on the set.”You wait a lifetime for something like that and sometimes it never happens,” Philbin told the AP in 1999.In 2008, he returned briefly to the quiz show format with “Million Dollar Password.” He also picked up the Lifetime Achievement Award from the daytime Emmys.He was the type of TV personality easy to make fun of, and easy to love.When his son Danny first met his future wife, “we were talking about our families,” Danny told USA Today. “I said, ‘You know that show “Regis and Kathie Lee”?’ And she said, ‘I hate that show.’ And I said, ‘That’s my dad.’ “FILE – Regis and Joy Philbin attend a special screening of “The Hero” at the Whitby Hotel, June 7, 2017, in New York.Yet Philbin was a favorite of a younger generation’s ironic icon, David Letterman. When Letterman announced that he had to undergo heart surgery, it was on the air to Philbin, who was also there for Letterman’s first day back after his recovery.Letterman returned the favor, appearing on Philbin’s show when he went back on the air in April 2007 after undergoing heart bypass surgery.In the 2008 AP interview, Philbin said he saw “getting the best out of your guests” as “a specialty. … The time constraints mean you’ve got to get right to the point, you’ve got to make it pay off, go to commercial, start again. Play that clip. Say goodbye.” He gave his desktop a decisive rap.”And make it all conversational.”Regis Francis Xavier Philbin grew up in the New York borough of the Bronx, the son of Italian-Irish parents and named for the Roman Catholic boys high school his dad attended. He went to Notre Dame University, and was such an enthusiastic alum, he once said he wanted his ashes scattered there.After leaving the Navy in 1955, Philbin talked his way into a meeting with the stationmaster at KCOP-TV in Los Angeles. He got a job parking cars, then progressed into work as a stagehand, courier, newswriter and producer of a sports telecast. When its sportscaster didn’t show up one day, Philbin filled in.Program in San DiegoPhilbin got far more on-air experience in San Diego in the early 1960s, when KOGO-TV began producing “The Regis Philbin Show” for a national audience. The program of music and celebrity interviews was taped two weeks before each airing. It was canceled after four months.In 1967, Philbin was hired as the announcer and sidekick to comic Joey Bishop on his network show. When he heard that he was going to be fired because of poor ratings, Philbin tearfully announced he was leaving on July 12, 1968, walking off during a live broadcast. He returned three days later after letters of support poured in.He and Bishop had bad blood: Bishop called Philbin an “ingrate” for walking off during a salary dispute and later badmouthing him.Philbin’s second wife, Joy, was Bishop’s assistant.After three years of commuting to St. Louis each week for a local Saturday night show, Philbin became a star in local morning television — first in Los Angeles, then in New York. In 1985, he teamed with Kathie Lee Johnson, a year before she married former football star Frank Gifford, and the show went national in 1988.The gentle bickering and eye-rolling exasperation in Philbin and Gifford’s onscreen relationship was familiar to anyone in a long-lasting relationship.”No arguments, no harsh words in all this time,” Philbin told a theater audience in 2000. “Well, there was the time I didn’t talk to her for two weeks. Didn’t want to interrupt her.”FILE – Regis Philbin laughs with co-host Kelly Ripa during a broadcast of “Live! with Regis and Kelly,” Feb. 5, 2001, in New York.Gifford left the show in 2000. After a tryout period for a replacement, soap star Ripa (“All My Children”) filled the slot.The same hustler who parked cars in Hollywood worked just as hard to land the job on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”  “I begged my way on,” he told People magazine. “There was a short list, and I wasn’t on it. I called my agent, and we made a full assault on ABC in L.A.”The audience responded to Philbin’s warm, comic touch in the role. He later jokingly referred to himself as the man who saved ABC. It wasn’t complete hyperbole: ABC was suffering in the ratings before the game became a smash success. Forbes reported that two-thirds of ABC’s operating profit in 2000 was due to “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”Philbin appeared to love every minute of it. Even the ultimate arbiter of hip, the MTV Video Awards, asked him to make an appearance.’No more mountains'”It’s better to be hot,” he told the AP. “It’s fun. I know this business. I was perfectly content with my morning show. People would ask me, ‘What’s next?’ There is nothing next. There are no more mountains for me to climb. Believe me when I tell you, all I wanted when I started this show in 1961 was to be a success nationally.”The prime-time game burned out quickly because of overuse and ended in 2002.Philbin enjoyed a side career as a singer that began when he sang “Pennies from Heaven” to Bing Crosby on Bishop’s show. He said a record company called him the next day, and he made an album.Even though the series “Regis Philbin’s Health Styles,” on Lifetime in the 1980s, was part of his lengthy resume, Philbin had health issues. Doctors performed an angioplasty to relieve a blocked artery in 1993. He underwent bypass surgery in 2007 at age 75.He’s survived by his wife, Joy, and their daughters J.J. and Joanna Philbin, as well as his daughter Amy Philbin with his first wife, Catherine Faylen, according to People.
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Peter Green, the dexterous blues guitarist who led the first incarnation of Fleetwood Mac in a career shortened by psychedelic drugs and mental illness, has died at 73.A law firm representing his family, Swan Turton, announced the death in a statement Saturday. It said he died “peacefully in his sleep? this weekend. A further statement will be issued in the coming days.Green, to some listeners, was the best of the British blues guitarists of the 1960s. B.B. King once said Green “has the sweetest tone I ever heard. He was the only one who gave me the cold sweats.”Green also made a mark as a composer with “Albatross,” and as a songwriter with “Oh Well” and “Black Magic Woman.”  He crashed out of the band in 1971. Even so, Mick Fleetwood said in an interview with The Associated Press in 2017 that Green deserves the lion’s share of the credit for the band’s success.“Peter was asked why did he call the band Fleetwood Mac. He said, `Well, you know I thought maybe I’d move on at some point and I wanted Mick and John (McVie) to have a band.’ End of story, explaining how generous he was,” said Fleetwood, who described Green as a standout in an era of great guitar work.Indeed, Green was so fundamental to the band that in its early days it was called Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac.Peter Allen Greenbaum was born on Oct. 29, 1946, in London. The gift of a cheap guitar put the 10-year-old Green on a musical path.He was barely out of his teens when he got his first big break in 1966, replacing Eric Clapton in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers _ initially for just a week in 1965 after Clapton abruptly took off for a Greek holiday. Clapton quit for good soon after and Green was in.In the Bluesbreakers he was reunited with Mick Fleetwood, a former colleague in Peter B’s Looners. Mayall added bass player McVie soon after.The three departed the next year, forming the core of the band initially billed as “Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac featuring (guitarist) Jeremy Spencer.”Fleetwood Mac made its debut at the British Blues and Jazz festival in the summer of 1967, which led to a recording contract, then an eponymous first album in February 1968. The album, which included “Long Grey Mare” and three other songs by Green, stayed on the British charts for 13 months.  The band’s early albums were heavy blues-rock affairs marked by Green’s fluid, evocative guitar style and gravelly vocals. Notable singles included “Oh Well” and the Latin-flavored “Black Magic Woman,” later a hit for Carlos Santana.But as the band flourished, Green became increasingly erratic, even paranoid. Drugs played a part in his unraveling.On a tour in California, Green became acquainted with Augustus Owsley Stanley III, notorious supplier of powerful LSD to the The Grateful Dead and Ken Kesey, the anti-hero of Tom Wolfe’s book “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.”  “He was taking a lot of acid and mescaline around the same time his illness began manifesting itself more and more,” Fleetwood said in 2015. “We were oblivious as to what schizophrenia was back in those days but we knew something was amiss.”“Green Manalishi,” Green’s last single for the band, reflected his distress.In an interview with Johnny Black for Mojo magazine, Green said: “I was dreaming I was dead and I couldn’t move, so I fought my way back into my body. I woke up and looked around. It was very dark and I found myself writing a song. It was about money; `The Green Manalishi’ is money.”In some of his last appearances with the band, he wore a monk’s robe and a crucifix. Fearing that he had too much money, he tried to persuade other band members to give their earnings to charities.Green left Fleetwood Mac for good in 1971.In his absence, the band’s new line-up, including Christine McVie, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, gained enormous success with a more pop-tinged sound.  
 
Green was confined in a mental hospital in 1977 after an incident with his manager. Testimony in court said Green had asked for money and then threatened to shoot out the windows of the manager’s office.  Green was released later in the year, and married Jane Samuels, a Canadian, in 1978. They had a daughter, Rosebud, and divorced the following year. Green also has a son, Liam Firlej.  Green returned to performing in the 1990s with the Peter Green Splinter Group.  In 1998, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with other past and present members of Fleetwood Mac.
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Ask a woman if she’s been called the B-word by a man — perhaps modified by the F-adjective — and chances are she’ll say, “You mean ever, or how many times?”Because most women will tell you it’s a pretty universal experience, especially if they’ve held a position of power in the workplace. “I’d say, maybe 25 times?” estimates Ellen Gerstein, who spent years in technology publishing, a fairly male-dominated field, before becoming a pharmaceutical executive. “And that’s just to my face.”In fact, Gerstein says, use of the word as a slur against women has come to feel so unfortunately routine that her own memories of it tend to blur together — unlike, say, the time 20 years ago when a male colleague asked her who she’d “lap danced” to push a project ahead. But she says she was filled with admiration when she heard Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez take to the floor of the House and call out a male colleague for vulgar words.”I thought, listening to her, ‘Wow, you’re 100% right,'” says Gerstein, now 52. “Why didn’t I apply those same standards to myself?”Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks on Thursday, widely shared online, amounted to a stunning indictment not only of the words of Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Florida, who she said called her a “f—————g bitch” in front of reporters, but a culture of abusive language against women that can lead to violence. Her speech resonated with many women — in politics and out, supportive of her politics or not — who said the language had been tacitly accepted for far too long.The moment was extraordinary, says Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, not because the language was new — as Ocasio-Cortez herself said, it was nothing she hadn’t heard waiting tables or riding the subway — but because of where it took place, and especially because the freshman congresswoman had the confidence and the support of her colleagues to call it out in such a public way.”This is all part of a shift,” Walsh says, attributing the change to the #MeToo movement, in large part. “Women are feeling empowered to speak up and believe they will be heard.” More than a dozen Democratic colleagues — but no Republicans — joined Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, in speaking out against sexist behavior, including from President Donald Trump.The moment led Gloria Steinem, the nation’s most visible feminist advocate, to reflect on her own struggles with the word Barbara Bush once famously said “rhymes with rich.””It took me years to learn what to do when someone calls you a bitch,” Steinem told The Associated Press in an email. “Just smile in a calm triumphant way, and say, ‘Thank you!'”Steinem, 86, said she hadn’t realized the strategy could be helpful to other women until it made it into the script of a recent off-Broadway play about her life, “and every night, women in the audience burst out in big relieved laughter.”Still, Steinem noted, “Refusing to be hurt may not really change the people who are trying to hurt you.” She called for both “cultural and workplace penalties for such behavior,” and, more profoundly, “raising our children to empathize and treat others as we want to be treated.”Gerstein, too, says she found it helpful to repurpose what was intended as a slur into a compliment. “I didn’t want to feel like a victim, so my theory was to own it,” she says. “As if to say, ‘What you’re really saying is I’m tough, I’m bossy, I’m determined and I’m damned good at what I’m doing.'”Ocasio-Cortez “owned” the word as well when she tweeted, in response to Yoho’s alleged remarks: “Bitches get stuff done.”  That itself was a throwback to a 2008 sketch on “Saturday Night Live,” in which Tina Fey and Amy Poehler discussed the slur as often applied to Hillary Clinton. “Yeah, she is. And so am I,” notes Fey on the “Weekend Update” segment. “You know what? Bitches get stuff done.”Feminist author Andi Zeisler, co-founder of the nonprofit Bitch Media, notes that the sketch marked the beginning of a long and evolving process of women “reclaiming” the word, much like the word “queer.””We don’t get to control who uses it and how,” explains Zeisler. “We can only control the way we conceive of it.”Of course, context is everything. When used as Yoho allegedly did, the word is intentionally gender-specific and heavy with implied power dynamics, says Walsh, of Rutgers.It “otherizes women, it dehumanizes them and tells women they don’t belong in these institutions and positions,” Walsh says. “It is about silencing women and keeping them out.”Jen Singer, a freelance writer in New Jersey, says that “when men call you a bitch, it’s a warning shot across your bow — a reminder that they have power and you had better not overstep your bounds.”It’s the feeling that Jennifer Bogar-Richardson, an educator also in New Jersey, felt when she learned that a superior had referred to her as a “ho” in a meeting with colleagues years ago, using words from a Chris Brown song to indicate she’d been disloyal.”I felt naked,” says Bogar-Richardson, 44, “because it obviously didn’t matter how smart I was, how intelligent or how well I did my job. I’m nothing more than that name.”Mila Stieglitz, a 22-year-old New Yorker who graduated college in May, found herself feeling conflicting emotions as she watched Ocasio-Cortez’s speech.  On the one hand, she was disheartened to learn of the sexist language experienced by the congresswoman — at 30, only eight years her senior — something she’d hoped was more an issue for an earlier generation. On the other, she said she was inspired by her outspokenness, and the support she received from colleagues.”As I enter the workforce, I recognize there’s been so much progress since my mother’s generation, for which I’m grateful,” Stieglitz said. “But these instances also highlight to me how much more needs to be done.” 
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Lights! Crickets. Birds. Bats. Action!  The ancient theater of Epidaurus, renowned for its acoustics, has reopened for a limited number of open-air performances, with organizers planning a live-streamed event Saturday for the first time in the Greek monument’s 2,300-year history.Live concerts and events have been mostly canceled in Greece this summer due to the coronavirus pandemic. But the Culture Ministry allowed the Epidaurus Theater in southern Greece and the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens to host performances under strict safety guidelines.  “Only 45% of the seats are occupied, the refreshments areas are closed, there is no intermission, and tickets are only issued electronically,” said Maria Panagiotopoulou, spokeswoman for the cultural organization which organized the events.  “We normally have 80 performances in the summer. This year, it’s just 17. … We kept changing the plans. We planned for a September start, and then we were concerned that all events might be canceled. We ended up with something in the middle. It would have been the first summer without a performance in 65 years.”  Acts from abroad were off-limits due to the pandemic, and the scheduled artists were instructed not to give encores. Stewards wearing surgical gloves and plastic visors keep spectators apart as they clamber up the steep stone amphitheater steps to find their seats.  Just 4,500 of the usual 10,000 seats are being made available at Epidaurus Theatre, a honeycomb-colored stone venue with a shallow, half-funnel shape that allows music and voices from the stage to be clearly heard all 55 rows up.  Surrounded by pine-covered mountains of the southern Peloponnese region, audiences also can clearly hear the sounds of birds and crickets along with the protests of people who were locked out of the theater for arriving too late. Christina Koutra, a musicologist from Athens, said she was happy to make the winding three-hour trip to Epidaurus to watch the season’s first event, a solo performance of Bach by acclaimed Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos. “There is a feeling of harmony here. It’s a sacred place,” Koutra said from behind a face mask as she left the theater with her parents.“Culture cannot stand still. We have to take part and keep it going,” she said.The National Theatre of Greece will be performing “The Persians” by ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus for Saturday’s live-streamed show. 
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Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prayed with hundreds of worshippers Friday inside the Hagia Sophia, the first prayers since the sixth-century Byzantine landmark was redesignated a mosque two weeks ago.The president was joined by other officials, including his son-in-law and finance minister. Only 500 people were allowed inside the mosque because of coronavirus restrictions, while thousands more prayed outside in Sultanahmet Square.Initially an Orthodox Christian cathedral, the mosque’s mosaics depicting Christian figures were covered during the Friday prayers.Erdogan read verses from the Quran, while wearing a white prayer cap. Ali Erbas, head of Turkey’s religious authority, addressed worshippers afterward.“The longing of our nation, which has turned into a heartbreak, is coming to an end today,” Erbas said from the pulpit.“Hagia Sophia will continue to serve all believers as a mosque and will remain a place of cultural heritage for all humanity,” the Turkish president said.Erdogan’s enthusiasm was matched by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan, who spoke with Erdogan over the phone.President @RTErdogan spoke by phone with President Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan. pic.twitter.com/uzusJahlyh
— Turkish Presidency (@trpresidency) July 24, 2020 Mirziyoyev expressed his “pleasure” over the mosque’s reopening and “wished for the historic development to have auspicious results for the Turkish nation and the Islamic world.”Not all have voiced similar sentiments over the Hagia Sophia’s renewed status as a mosque.The 1,500-year-old UNESCO-listed site was initially an Orthodox Christian cathedral that became a mosque following the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul in 1453. In 1934, modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, converted it to a museum — a status Erdogan overturned July 10.Christian church leaders and officials from the United States, Russia and Greece have voiced their consternation, and UNESCO has questioned Erdogan’s decision.“Hagia Sophia is an architectural masterpiece and a unique testimony to interactions between Europe and Asia over the centuries,” said Audrey Azoulay, director-general of UNESCO.“This decision … raises the issue of the impact of this change of status on the property’s universal value,” the organization said in a statement July 10.
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Surprise! Taylor Swift’s got an album out.“Folklore” premiered overnight, less than a year after Swift released her “Lover” album. Swift writes on Instagram she wrote and recorded the album in isolation. It features Bon Iver, Aaron Dessner of The National and Jack Antonoff.Swift says before this year, she would have waited to release it at the perfect time, but the current times remind her “nothing is guaranteed.”
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Flamenco, the plaintive music of Spain, faces the worst crisis since the Civil War. The thundering stomp of the dancers – called zapateando – has been silenced across the nation, another casualty of the pandemic. Although Spain has been open for tourists since June, only a trickle of foreign visitors have arrived during what is normally the busiest season.  Their absence is a death knell for flamenco halls – called tablaos – which depend on holidaymakers who provide 90% of their income. The tablaos, which take their name from the raised wooden floor on which dancers stamp their feet, remain closed. FILE – A street artist wearing a flamenco dress performs in front of the Royal Palace in Madrid, Sept. 8, 2017.Calls for help The owners of flamenco halls across Spain have begged the government for money but are still waiting. “Since March 13, we have not had any income at all and every day it is tougher to pay bills that we have with the tablaos,” Federico Escudero, president of the national association of flamenco halls, told VOA.  “We have received some financial help to pay the rent from local councils in Madrid, Andalusia and there is a possibility of this in Barcelona. But the central government has not given us anything,” he said.  Escudero added: “If they do not support us, the flamenco tablaos will disappear. It seems they have forgotten what flamenco means for Spain. It is not just an art form but part of our national identity.” Even a plea from Rosalía, the singer who has become an international star, appears to have fallen on deaf ears. “The tablaos are sacred places which help flamenco to stay alive. I give all my support to all the artists and support to the people who want flamenco to remain alive,” she said in a post on Facebook. Rosalía, who took flamenco and fused it with reggae, became a huge star who has toured the world. Until the COVID-19 epidemic, the spectacle of flamenco dancing, singing and guitar playing, which developed over centuries and was popularized by the gypsies of the southern region of Andalusia, was staged at more than 100 halls across Spain. FILE – Martin Guerrero, general director of tavern-restaurant and flamenco tablao Casa Patas, climbs a ladder to change a light bulb at Casa Patas, which is closed due to the coronavirus lockdown, in Madrid, Spain, June 2, 2020.Death of an art The first to close was Casa Patas in Madrid, which for over 40 years had hosted star performers including Diego el Cigala, Sara Baras and Tomatito. Martin Guerrero, the owner, said: “We have no international clients and without that and with earnings amounting to between 10 and 20 percent of normal levels, it makes it impossible to open.” He said he had been forced to lay off his 25 workers, some of whom had been employed at the hall for more than two decades. As Spain emerged from one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe last month, there has been a surge in the number of coronavirus cases. The number of outbreaks tripled in the past three weeks as young people partying in discos or drinking in groups were linked to over 200 outbreaks.  More than 2,000 COVID-19 cases were diagnosed on Thursday, as Spain once again struggled to contain the spread of the coronavirus. These figures have done nothing to encourage tourists to return. The halls, which usually pack tables and chairs close together near the artists, will struggle to open under restrictions that demand 1.5 meters between guests. The sector is asking for the extension of furloughs and subsidies. The pandemic has also affected performers. El Yiyo, a flamenco dancer from Barcelona whose real name is Miguel Fernández Ribas, has worked around the world for the past seven years. “I am going to appear in Italy on television this month and it is the first time that I have worked since the coronavirus epidemic started,” he told VOA in an interview. “All the other artists that I know have been affected in the same way. It is desperate. Without the tourists all is lost.” UNESCO declared flamenco a world treasure by adding it to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2010. Since the epidemic, it has been declared an item of national heritage in Spain, which means it is entitled to special government grants. Nevertheless, for Escudero, this is not enough. He said that if the government does not help the tablaos, which employ 90% of the country’s 3,500 professional performers, the entire tradition of flamenco may be in danger. “We have no income,” he said. “If we disappear, part of flamenco will die with us.” FILE – Mariana Collado, dancer at tavern-restaurant and flamenco tablao Casa Patas, performs at Casa Patas, which is closed due to the COVID-19 lockdown in Madrid, Spain, June 2, 2020.Government’s role  “Of course we want to help flamenco,” said a spokeswoman for the Spanish culture ministry, who asked not to be named as per the ministry’s policy.  She said the ministry plans to hold a meeting of leading artists; however, the official said the central government’s ability to help is limited. “Financial aid for the sector is mainly the responsibility of local councils,” she said, adding that many of the tablao employees technically count as tourism sector workers.  The Spanish government is considering extending temporary unemployment assistance for many workers in the tourism industry until later in the year. 
 
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A visual artist in Nigeria’s conservative northern region is on a mission to challenge some stereotypes about women. These include the notion that certain trades are for men only and that women who venture into them are bound to fail. The 25-year-old artist, Maryam Umar Maigida, told VOA Hausa she also uses her paintings to demand justice for victims of sexual violence. Haruna Shehu reports.
Videographer: Auwal Salihu
 
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Global tourism revenues are expected to fall by up to $3.3 trillion due to COVID-19 restrictions, according to a U.N. study published on July 1st. When the coronavirus outbreak hit Japan, a tourism start-up built by an Indonesian man in Tokyo, was also hit hard. David John lost his main income in the blink of an eye. But as VOA’s Vina Mubtadi reports, he was able to get up… with a little bit of magic
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Amber Heard alleged in a British court on Wednesday that her ex-husband Johnny Depp threw “30 or so bottles” at her as if they were “grenades or bombs” while they were in Australia in March 2015 and that he accidentally severed part of his finger during the assault.Taking to the witness box for a third day at the High Court in London during Depp’s libel case against a British tabloid, the actress refuted his allegation that it was she who lost her temper and that she had injured him.Heard has described her stay in Australia with Depp as akin to a “three-day hostage situation,” during which Depp was “completely out of his mind and out of control.” She has said that she feared for her life while at the rented property on Australia’s Gold Coast.The incident is central to The Sun’s labeling of Depp in an April 2018 article as a “wife beater.” The Sun’s defense relies on 14 allegations made by Heard of violence by Depp between 2013 and 2016, in settings including the rented house in Australia, his private island in the Bahamas, and a private jet.He denies the charges and claims Heard was the aggressor during their relationship. He was present once again to hear Heard’s testimony. Depp, 57, is suing The Sun’s publisher, News Group Newspapers, and its executive editor, Dan Wootton, over the article.Depp’s lawyer, Eleanor Laws, said Heard had worked herself “into a rage” during her stay in Australia, where Depp was filming the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie.Heard, 34, said she got “angry at times but not into a rage that would cause me to throw anything at him.”She did concede that she did break one bottle in their second evening together in Australia as they argued about the scale of his drinking.”I regret I did that,” said Heard, who also claimed that Depp would often credit her for saving him by trying to get him clean and sober.After she smashed the bottle, Heard alleges that Depp, fueled by drink and drugs, started throwing bottles, full enough that they broke a window behind her.”He threw all the bottles that were in reach, all except for one which was a celebratory magnum-sized bottle of wine,” she said.Heard also denied severing the tip of Depp’s finger during the bottle-throwing frenzy and that she put out a cigarette on his cheek during the incident. She said it was something that Depp used to do to himself.”Johnny did it right in front of me, he often did things like that,” she said.In the first nine days of testimony at the High Court, judge Andrew Nicol heard from Depp and from several current or former employees who backed his version of events. In his testimony, Depp said he was the one being abused by Heard and that she had a history of being violent against him.In written testimony released to the court, Heard said that at various times during their relationship she endured “punching, slapping, kicking, head-butting and choking.” She said some incidents were “so severe” she was “afraid he was going to kill me, either intentionally or just by losing control and going too far.” She said he blamed his actions on “a self-created third party” that he referred to as “the monster.”Depp and Heard met on the set of the comedy “The Rum Diary,” released in 2011. They married in Los Angeles in February 2015. Heard filed for divorce the following year, and it was finalized in 2017.Heard’s testimony is expected to last for four days, through Thursday. 
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There’s an old saying in theater that the show must go on.  But when a global pandemic hits and the playbook on large gatherings is re-written, shows like the circus cannot go on.  As VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports, performers in Brazil took a page from drive-in movie theaters to save their circus.Produced by: Arash Arabasadi
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There’s an old saying in theater that the show must go on.  But when a global pandemic hits and the playbook on large gatherings is re-written, shows like the circus cannot go on.  As VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports, performers in Brazil took a page from drive-in movie theaters to save their circus.Produced by: Arash Arabasadi
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Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet,” which had hoped to herald Hollywood’s return to big theatrical releases, has yet again postponed its release due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Warner Bros. said Monday that “Tenet” will not make its August 12 release date. Unlike previous delays, the studio this time didn’t announce a new target for the release of Nolan’s much-anticipated $200 million thriller.
“Tenet” had already shifted from July 17, then July 31 and then Aug. 12. Nolan, a staunch advocate for the big-screen experience, has strenuously hoped that “Tenet” could lead the resumption of nationwide and global moviegoing.  
But the surge of the virus across much of the U.S. has upended the industry’s aims for even a late-August return. Last week, California ordered its cinemas closed.  
Warner Bros. Pictures Group chairman Toby Emmerich said the studio will soon share a new “2020 release date” for “Tenet.” It may be a much different rollout, with the film opening in staggered international release.
“We are not treating ‘Tenet’ like a traditional global day-and-date release, and our upcoming marketing and distribution plans will reflect that,” said Emmerich.
Emmerich said the pandemic’s spread has forced the studio to reevaluate its plans. Warner Bros. also shifted the horror sequel “The Conjuring 3” from Sept. 11 to June 4, 2021.  
“Our goals throughout this process have been to ensure the highest odds of success for our films while also being ready to support our theater partners with new content as soon as they could safely reopen,” said Emmerich. “We’re grateful for the support we’ve received from exhibitors and remain steadfast in our commitment to the theatrical experience around the world.”
Other films have planned their releases partially around the launch of “Tenet.” Walt Disney Co.’s “Mulan” remains scheduled for theatrical release on Aug. 21.
Movie theaters remain in a precarious limbo. Without new releases, U.S. indoor theaters and drive-ins that are open have played mostly older films and a smattering of smaller new releases.  
Before the recent spike in the coronavirus crisis, theater chains have sought to assure moviegoers with protocols like limiting theaters to 25-50% capacity and cleaning seats in between showings.  
But months of closed theaters and no new product has put enormous pressure on an already stressed business. AMC Theaters, the world’s largest chain, recently reached a debt deal to help itself remain solvent.  
AMC has been aiming to reopen most locations July 30. Cineworld, which owns Regal Cinemas, had set July 31 for its reopening.
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After a four-month delay due to the coronavirus pandemic, Major League Baseball kicks off its regular season Thursday with a 60-game schedule set to be played solely in U.S. stadiums. While many fans are anticipating the return of the game nicknamed the national pastime, there are widespread concerns about the safety of resuming a major sports league at a time when the United States is in the midst of a surge in coronavirus infections with several of the hotspots home to multiple teams. Among the top ten states with the highest per-capita increases in new cases in the past week are Florida, Arizona, Georgia, Texas and California, which together host 11 of the 30 MLB teams. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is set to throw out the ceremonial first pitch in Washington as the defending World Series champion Nationals host the New York Yankees in the league’s opening game.  Fauci has been seen often in recent weeks wearing a Nationals mask. “Dr. Fauci has been a true champion for our country during the COVID-19 pandemic and throughout his distinguished career, so it is only fitting that we honor him as we kick off the 2020 season and defend our World Series Championship title,” the Nationals said in a statement. The Nationals had to get a waiver from the District of Columbia in order to be allowed to host games because local coronavirus restrictions would otherwise not allow such an event to take place. There will be no fans in the stands, something that will be a common sight throughout the league.Washington Nationals’ Trea Turner tries to steal second base against the Baltimore Orioles during an exhibition baseball game, July 20, 2020, in Baltimore. Turner was caught stealing by catcher Bryan Holaday.Major League Baseball’s sole Canadian team, the Toronto Blue Jays, is not being allowed to play its games at home, forcing it to search for a U.S. stadium for those games instead. Canadian Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino cited the frequent cross-border travel that would be involved with the neighboring United States. “We understand professional sports are important to the economy and to Canadians,” he said Saturday.  “At the same time, our government will continue to take decisions at the border on the basis of the advice of our health experts in order to protect the health and safety of all Canadians.” The Pittsburgh Pirates said Monday they were in talks with the Blue Jays about Toronto playing its home games in Pittsburgh this season.  Blue Jays General Manager Ross Atkins has said if the team is unable to secure another Major League park for its games, the most likely backup would be playing at its minor league affiliate stadium in Buffalo, New York. Unlike the National Basketball Association, which is housing all of its teams in Orlando, Florida for the rest of its season with strict rules about outside contacts, MLB teams will still travel to other cities to play and players are only being cautioned to practice social distancing and avoid situations that may increase their risk of coronavirus exposure. Players will be administered coronavirus tests every other day and temperature checks twice a day.  On the field, they are banned from spitting, celebrating with high-fives or similar contact, and any players who are unlikely to take part in that day’s game will have to sit in the stands spaced at least six feet apart instead of hanging out in the dugout. The 60-game schedule does feature mostly games within a team’s division, with the rest scheduled to take place in its geographic region in order to reduce overall travel.  For example, Washington will play all of its road games in eastern cities Miami, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Tampa Bay and wherever Toronto ends up. Several high-profile players have chosen to use the opt-out rights in the agreement on return to play reached between team owners and the union that represents players. Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher David Price, San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey, St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Jordan Hicks, Washington Nationals first baseman Ryan Zimmerman, Atlanta Braves outfielder Nick Markakis and Colorado Rockies outfielder Ian Desmond are among those who will not be playing.  The agreement also institutes a few changes to the games themselves.  Teams in the National League that typically have pitchers also participate on offense will instead utilize the designated hitter position that is already standard for American League teams. Also, when any regular season games go into extra innings, each team will begin its turn on offense with a player already on second base. The regular concludes September 27, followed by the league’s usual playoff format. 
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Pakistani authorities said Monday that archeologists have begun searching for the remains of a third-century, life-size Buddha statue that was found and destroyed by a group of religiously conservative laborers in the northwestern town of Mardan.The destruction of the rare idol occurred in a village near Takht-i-Bahi (Throne of Origins), which is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for being an icon of the ancient Buddhist civilization.Police in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where the site is located arrested four men Saturday after a video showing them vandalizing a Buddha statue with a hammer went viral on social media.“This design or art of sculpting the Buddha dates back to the second or third century A.D., so, it is around 1,700 years old,” Bakht Muhammad, a research officer at the provincial Directorate of Archeology and Museums, told VOA.  Muhammad said the provincial government has directed a team of archeological experts to also conduct a comprehensive survey starting Tuesday into whether more antiquities are in and around the village. He stressed that the area previously has not been listed as a conserved site.It will take about a month before the team is able to share the findings, Muhammad added.“It is not a big deal for us, provided our team is able to recover all parts of the destroyed Buddha. The pieces taken into possession are not enough, and that’s why our team of experts has been tasked to locate the remaining parts,” he said when asked if his department would be able to restore the rare statue. He noted that prosecutors are working to institute a court case against the four men under an antiquities law, saying they could each be sentenced to a five-year jail term, along with a financial penalty of about $12,000 if found guilty.Legal experts note, however, that court cases of this nature usually can take years before a final verdict is issued.Muhammad said the statue was discovered during the construction of a water drain in a privately owned mango orchard, about 12 kilometers from Takht-i-Bahi.“These are illiterate local people who went for the destruction of the Buddha, believing that they would be rewarded by Allah. Their contractor did not even bother to inform the owner of the orchard about the discovery and instead participated in the illegal action,” Muhammad said.Heart breaking.
A life sized statue of Buddha was discovered in a construction site in Takhtbhai, Mardan recently.
However, before the Archaeology dept was informed about it, the contractor had already broken it into pieces as the local molvi warned him that he would lose.. pic.twitter.com/nWHHzkOxe7
— Ahsan Hamid Durrani (@Ahsan_H_Durrani) July 18, 2020The accused could be heard in the video discussing the size of the statue, with one of them saying, “It’s a standing doll. It’s a female. … Look, she is wearing earrings.”“Her name is carved here. This is the shirt,” said an old man sitting on the statue and removing the dirt from its belly.“Is this a Hindu or Westerner (statue)?” another man asked.“Hindu. This is Gautam Buddha,” replied his partner before all of them congratulated each other.Foreign tourists, particularly from Japan, Korea and Sri Lanka, routinely visit Takht-i-Bahi and other Buddhist sites to pay homage.Founded in early first century, the Buddhist monastic complex of Takht-i-Bahi is exceptionally well-preserved and is located on high hills, typical of Buddhist sites, according to UNESCO. 
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Nicki Minaj has a new release coming soon: her first child.
The rapper took to Instagram on Monday to announce she is pregnant, posting photos of herself with a baby bump. One caption simply read: “#Preggers.”
She also wrote on another post, “Love. Marriage. Baby carriage. Overflowing with excitement & gratitude. Thank you all for the well wishes.”
Minaj married Kenneth Petty last year. They first dated as teenagers and reunited in 2018.
Musically, Minaj has also had a winning year, topping the Billboard Hot 100 chart twice. Her remix of Doja Cat’s “Say So” helped Minaj achieve her first-ever No. 1 on the Hot 100, despite releasing multiple hits throughout her career. She also reached the top spot with “Trollz,” her collaboration with 6ix9ine.
 
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Amber Heard began giving testimony at Britain’s High Court on Monday against ex-husband Johnny Depp, who she has accused of abusing her both physically and verbally during their tempestuous relationship.
Depp, 57, is suing News Group Newspapers, publisher of the Sun, and the paper’s executive editor, Dan Wootton, at the court in London over an April 2018 article that called him a “wife-beater.” The Hollywood star strongly denies abusing Heard. He was at the court to hear Heard’s evidence.
In the first session of her testimony that is expected to last for three days, Heard denied accusations that she was a heavy drug-taker and drinker as well as being controlling and abusive herself.  
She also described an incident in January 2015 in a hotel room in Tokyo over a prenuptial agreement between herself and Depp, and suggested there was an argument about it.
“There was an argument in a hotel room in Tokyo that resulted in Johnny kneeling on my back and hitting me on the back of the head,” she said.
In written testimony released as she took to the witness box, Heard said she worried Depp would kill her at various times during their relationship that saw her enduring “punching, slapping, kicking, head-butting and choking.” She also said “some incidents were so severe that I was afraid he was going to kill me, either intentionally or just by losing control and going too far.”  
According to the 34-year-old Heard, Depp “explicitly threatened to kill me many times, especially later in our relationship” and that he blamed his actions on “a self-created third party” that he referred to as “the monster.”  
Heard has been present throughout the trial, watching the proceedings as her ex-husband gave evidence over five days.  
She is facing questioning over 14 allegations of domestic violence that The Sun’s publisher News Group Newspapers is relying on in its defense of the April 2018 article.
Depp and Heard met in 2009 on the set of the film “The Rum Diary,” which was released two years later. They married in Los Angeles in February 2015. Heard filed for divorce the following year, and the divorce was finalized in 2017.
The Sun’s defense relies on the 14 allegations made by Heard of violence by Depp between 2013 and 2016, in settings including his private island in the Bahamas, a rented house in Australia and the couple’s downtown Los Angeles penthouse.
Depp claims Heard was the aggressor during their volatile relationship, which he has likened to “a crime scene waiting to happen.”
In nine days of testimony at the High Court, judge Andrew Nicol has heard from Depp and from several current or former employees who have backed his version of events.
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Rapper Kanye West, in his first event since declaring himself a presidential candidate, ranted against historical figure Harriet Tubman on Sunday, saying the Underground Railroad conductor “never actually freed the slaves, she just had them work for other white people,” comments that drew shouts of opposition from some in the crowd.West delivered a lengthy monologue, touching on topics from abortion and religion to international trade and licensing deals, before a crowd in North Charleston, South Carolina. Whether he is actually seeking the nation’s highest office remains a question.Tubman is one of the most respected figures of 19th century America. An African American who escaped slavery, she helped enslaved Black men and women travel north to freedom and fought for the Union during the Civil War. She later became a supporter of women’s suffrage.  On abortion, West said that while he believes it should be legal, financial incentives to help struggling mothers could be a way to discourage the practice.”Everybody that has a baby gets a million dollars,” he said as an example.Wearing a protective vest and with “2020” shaved into his head, the entertainer appeared on a livestream of the event. Several hundred people gathered in a venue, where gospel music played before West’s appearance.The event was reportedly for registered guests only, although a campaign website had no registration or RSVP information.Speaking without a microphone, West became tearful at one point while talking about his mother, who died following plastic surgery complications in 2007.West missed the deadline to qualify for the ballot in several states, and it was unclear if he was willing or able to collect enough signatures required to qualify in others. Last week, he qualified to appear on Oklahoma’s presidential ballot, the first state where he met the requirements before the filing deadline.West needed to collect 10,000 signatures by noon Monday to appear on the South Carolina ballot, according to state law. The entertainer tweeted out a list of locations around the Charleston area where petitions could be signed. Email to an address purportedly associated with the campaign was not returned Sunday afternoon.West, who is married to reality television star Kim Kardashian West, initially announced his candidacy on July 4. 
 
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A new report by Human Rights Watch has outlined physical, verbal and even sexual abuses allegedly suffered by child athletes in Japan. Investigators say they uncovered numerous incidents of young athletes being punched, kicked, slapped, choked or struck with various objects and deprived of food and water, along with sexual abuse and harassment. They say the abuses led to victims suffering from depression, physical disabilities, lifelong trauma, and in a handful of cases, suicides.   There was no comment from Japan’s Olympic Committee. The report, titled, “I Was Hit So Many Times I Can’t Count,” says one instance of suicide involved a 17-year-old high school basketball player in Osaka who suffered repeated physical abuse at the hands of his coach.   The report from HRW comes seven years after Japanese sports authorities vowed to end the practice of corporal punishment in youth sports known as “taibatsu,” after allegations surfaced amid Tokyo’s successful bid for the 2020 Summer Olympics.   The report was based on interviews with 50 athletes from across several sports, as well as more than 700 athletes who participated in an online survey, including Olympians and Paralympians. The report was released the day the 2020 Tokyo Olympics — which have been postponed a year due to the coronavirus pandemic — were due to begin.  “As Japan prepares to host the Olympics and Paralympics in Tokyo in July 2021,” said Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch, “the global spotlight brings a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change laws and policies in Japan and around the world to protect millions of child athletes.”   
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The Tokyo Olympics next year will use the same venues and follow an almost identical competition schedule as the one originally planned for this year before the event was postponed because of the novel coronavirus pandemic, organizers said Friday.However, organizers told an IOC session held by videoconference that it was too early to give details on coronavirus prevention measures during the games or on whether events would be in full or partly full stadiums, or behind closed doors.The International Olympic Committee and Japanese government decided in March to postpone the games until 2021 and organizers have been working to rearrange an event almost a decade in the making.The Olympics had been set to begin on July 24 this year.FILE – Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee CEO Toshiro Muto attends a news conference after a Tokyo 2020 executive board meeting in Tokyo, March 30, 2020.”Today, we are able to report that we have confirmed both the competition schedule and the use of all venues originally planned for this year, including the venue for the athletes village and the main press center,” said Tokyo 2020 CEO Toshiro Muto.The new schedule means women’s softball will get competition underway at 9 a.m. (0000 GMT) in Fukushima on July 21, two days before the games officially open, with all events taking place a day earlier than the 2020 schedule.There have also been some minor changes to session times.Biggest everThe games are set to be the biggest ever in terms of events, with a record 339 medals available before the closing ceremony on August 8, although organizers say they will be simplified.Muto said all of the 42 venues have been secured, overcoming one of the biggest hurdles for organizers as many had already been booked for 2021.This means the marathon and race walking events will remain in the northern city of Sapporo after being controversially moved out of Tokyo because of anticipated scorching summer heat.One of the biggest questions concerns how many people will be able to travel to the games and watch the events.”This is of course one of the scenarios we have to look into, because this has to do with travel restrictions and quarantine, and it’s too early to tell,” said IOC President Thomas Bach, speaking from the organization’s headquarters in Lausanne.”We would like to see stadiums full of enthusiastic fans to give them all the opportunity to live the Olympic experience, support the athletes, and this is what we are working for,” added Bach, who earlier said he was prepared to stand for reelection next year.”We cannot address the details yet. … There cannot be a solution today. This is asking too much,” he said.Massive taskJohn Coates, the head of the IOC’s coordination commission, said that securing the venues had been a “massive task.””We are talking about venues in different ownership,” he told the session.”We are talking also of securing the Olympic village, which has been constructed by a consortium of 11 different companies, who have agreed to put back the date when they will be able to hand over the apartments to the public.”The next challenge for Tokyo organizers is developing measures to help prevent a COVID-19 outbreak during the games and how much the delay will cost Japanese taxpayers.Muto said decisions would be made on these issues in the autumn. “We will be having a full-fledged discussion over COVID-19 countermeasures,” he said.”But, as an example, the topics and themes we may discuss are immigration control, enhanced testing structures and the establishment of treatment systems and measures against COVID-19 in the areas of accommodation and transport.”
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Nigeria’s aspiring young filmmakers have been gaining international attention while the Nigeria’s film industry, known as Nollywood, has been coping with the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Adjusting the world’s second most productive film business to social distancing has been costly but it’s also sparking more creativity.  Ifiok Ettang reports from Jos, Nigeria.
Camera: Ifiok Ettang
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Nigerian comedy siblings the Ikorudu Boiz went viral in June for their online parody the Hollywood action thriller “Extraction,” using household items and toys as props and their environment in Ikorodu, Lagos for sets.  The video has so far been viewed more than 11 million times on Twitter. Nigeria’s own film industry — Nollywood — has also had to get creative with staying productive and safe during the COVID-19 pandemic.    Actor Bashir Datti rehearses his lines as 10 others, including a camera crew,  set up a scene in an open field on the outskirts of Jos, Nigeria.  Datti said the coronavirus has cost him a lot of work.   “This is my first set since this corona of a thing started and what I experienced today is that it is not an easy task,” Datti said. “We’ll just learn to live with the virus, life goes on, we need to adjust ourselves and keep on going, because if you say that because of the fear of the virus, you will not come on set, you have nothing to do apart from film making.”  Movie audiences sit in their parked cars as they watch “Living in Bondage” at a drive-in cinema, following the relaxation of lockdown, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Abuja, Nigeria, May 20, 2020.Nollywood produces the second largest number of films in the world each year, after India’s Bollywood, and employs over one million people.    But the coronavirus shut down cinemas globally and forced many filmmakers to delay productions. Award winning Nollywood filmmaker, Kenneth Gyang says the pandemic is creating new challenges.  “Recently there has been this whole conversation about what is going to happen.  What are filmmakers supposed to do?” Gyang said.  “And we have been having the conversation that right now before you get on set, you have to test your cast and crew, you have to isolate them in a particular place, for maybe 14 days, before you get on set.  So, there has been a lot of spike in the budget that filmmakers will normally spend.”  The added costs have forced some Nollywood directors to cut back on the quantity of films.  But aspiring filmmaker William Chidube said he sees it as an opportunity to work smarter.  “We can always all multitask,“ Chidube said. “You know we can do a lot of things!  Especially now you don’t have the luxury to deal with a large crew, you can begin to do more than one thing, that you know you are strong in and are good at. You are good at editing and good at shooting, so you do the both of them.”  Creatively scripting scenes for social distancing is key to coping with the realities of COVID-19, says writer-director Umar Turaki.     “So, what is it to stop a group of young people writing a story maybe around a particular piece of scenery, around a particular hill, around a particular tree and producing that,” Turaki said. “But really I feel like the most important thing is to be able to challenge ourselves in terms of the writing and conceptualization in a way that allow us to produce work that doesn’t expose us to the dangers of COVID-19.”   While Nollywood has taken a hit from the pandemic, Nigerian filmmakers are confident that if they use their creative energies, the industry will recover and thrive. 
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