Tag: Dead

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World News

Hissène Habré, Ex-President of Chad, Lifeless at 79

Hissène Habré, Ex-President of Chad, Dead at 79

Hissène Habré, former President of Chad, was sentenced to life imprisonment during his reign in the 1980s for crimes against humanity, including murder, torture and sex crimes. He was 79.

Mr Habré’s death was announced on Tuesday by the Ministry of Justice in Senegal, the West African country where, according to news agencies, he was convicted. The former president’s wife also confirmed his death to news media outlets in Senegal, several of which reported that he died of an infection with the coronavirus.

Mr Habré was released from prison for 60 days in April because a judge said he was particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus. His wife had long asked the Senegalese authorities to release him on health grounds.

When Mr Habré was convicted in 2016, he was the first former head of state to be convicted of crimes against humanity by another country. His victims celebrated their hard-won victory in the Dakar courtroom after decades of fighting for justice. But five years later, the victims are still waiting for the compensation they have been awarded.

“Habré will go down in history as one of the most ruthless dictators in the world, a man who slaughtered his own people to seize and maintain power, who burned entire villages, sent women as sex slaves for his troops and built secret dungeons, to inflict medieval torture on his enemies, ”said Reed Brody, who has worked with Hissène Habré’s victims for over two decades.

A Chad truth commission found that during his reign from 1982 to 1990, Mr Habré’s government killed more than 40,000 people believed to be enemies of the state, including those who were merely suspected.

Mr Habré took power during a coup with the help of the United States and received arms and aid from France, Israel and the United States to keep Libya, Chad’s northern neighbor, in check.

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Politics

Pentagon police officer dies in stabbing, assailant shot useless

Pentagon police officer dies in stabbing, assailant shot dead

Virginia Sate Troopers patrol near the Pentagon after Sept.

Olivier Douliery | AFP | Getty Images

A Pentagon police officer has died after being stabbed multiple times in the neck outside the Pentagon Tuesday, officials familiar with the incident told NBC News.

The official opened fire on the attacker after the attack began outside the entrance to the Pentagon’s metro, according to NBC News. The attacker was shot dead by the police, but it is not yet clear which officer killed the attacker.

“I am incredibly sad to hear of the death of a Pentagon police officer who was killed this morning in senseless violence outside the Pentagon,” wrote Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, on Twitter Tuesday afternoon.

“My heart goes out to the policeman’s family and friends and the entire Pentagon police force,” said Warner, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The Pentagon was locked down Tuesday morning after multiple shots were fired near the building, but reopened after more than an hour.

The exact details and the course of events remain in the dark. Woodrow Kusse, the chief of police for the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, said at a news conference that “the incident resulted in multiple injuries” but did not confirm the death of the officer.

However, Fairfax County Police also offered condolences on the death of a Pentagon police officer.

Kusse said authorities are not actively looking for another suspect: “The incident is over, the scene is safe and most importantly, there is no ongoing threat to our community,” he said.

The FBI is investigating the incident as the reasons are still unknown.

“At this point it would be premature to speculate about motives, and in order to protect the integrity of the investigation, we cannot provide any further details at this time,” said a statement from the FBI’s Washington Field Office. “There is no ongoing threat to the public.”

The incident took place on a subway bus platform that is part of the Pentagon Transit Center, steps from the Pentagon building in Arlington County, Virginia.

“The Pentagon metro station is probably one of the busiest on the transportation system. It is a hub for commuters and building users, ”said Kusse at the press conference.

While the lockdown was being lifted, the Pentagon Force Protection Agency tweeted that the public should stay away from the subway entrance and bus platform as it is “still an active crime scene.”

Transportation in the Pentagon will now be diverted to Pentagon City, the agency added.

At the time of the shooting, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were at the White House to meet President Joe Biden.

The last time a significant incident occurred at the Pentagon Metro Center was in 2010, according to Kusse.

A gunman opened fire at the entrance to the Pentagon in March 2010 and wounded two officers from the Pentagon Force Protection Agency. The officers who survived fatally shot the man shortly afterwards.

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World News

Tons of Lacking and Scores Useless as Raging Floods Strike Western Europe

Hundreds Missing and Scores Dead as Raging Floods Strike Western Europe

BERLIN – After a day of frantic rescue efforts and orders to evacuate cities that were quickly filling with water released from violent storms, German authorities said late Thursday that after confirming numerous deaths, they were unable, at least 1,300 people to explain.

That staggering number was announced after rapidly flowing water from swollen rivers poured through towns and villages in two western German states, where news outlets said more than 80 people had died and other fatalities were expected in the hardest-hit regions.

With communication severely hampered, the authorities hoped the missing people would be safe, if out of reach. But the storms and floods have already proven deadly.

At least 11 other people are believed to have died in Belgium, according to the authorities, who also ordered residents of downtown Liege to evacuate when the Meuse, which flows through the center, overflowed.

The storms and the resulting floods have also struck the neighboring countries of Switzerland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, as a slowly moving weather system threatened to bring even more rain to the flooded region overnight and until Friday.

The devastation caused by the storm came just days after the European Union announced an ambitious plan to move away from fossil fuels over the next nine years in order to make the 27-country bloc climate-neutral by 2050. Early on, politicians drew parallels between floods and the effects of climate change.

But the immediate focus on Thursday remained the rescue effort, with hundreds of firefighters, rescue workers and soldiers working to rescue people from the upper floors and roofs of their homes, filling sandbags to contain rising waters and looking for missing people.

One of the hardest hit regions was the German district of Ahrweiler, where flash floods flooded the village of Schuld, washed away six houses and left several more shortly before the collapse. At least 50 people died in the Ahrweiler district, the police said.

With so many missing, the district authority said late Thursday that the death toll is expected to rise. “In view of the complexity of the amount of damage, a final assessment of the situation is currently not possible,” it said in a press release.

“We do not have exact death numbers, but we can say that we have many people who fell victim to this flood,” said Armin Laschet, the governor of North Rhine-Westphalia, one of the most severely affected federal states in Germany.

“Many people lost everything they owned after the mud flowed into their homes,” said Laschet, who will replace Angela Merkel as Chancellor in the federal elections on September 26th.

The floods in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate were among the worst in decades, after days of continuous rain sank more water than the soil and sewer system could absorb.

Police asked people to upload pictures of the floods to help them find it.

The police in North Rhine-Westphalia reported at least 30 deaths, with at least 15 people being known in the Euskirchen district south of Düsseldorf. Many others were still saved, although some villages remained inaccessible.

Ms. Merkel, who was visiting Washington on Thursday, expressed her condolences to the missing and thanked the thousands of helpers. She has promised the federal government to support the affected regions.

“Whatever is possible, we will do wherever we can,” she said, adding that Germany had received offers of help from its European partners.

Hundreds of firefighters worked all night to evacuate the stranded people. In Altena, North Rhine-Westphalia, two firefighters were killed while rescuing people, the police said.

“The water still flows knee-high through the streets, parked cars are thrown to the side, garbage and rubble pile up on the sides,” said Alexander Bange, the district spokesman for the Märkisches Land North Rhine-Westphalia news agency DPA

Today’s Best Reader Comments

    • Floods in Germany and other parts of Western Europe cause at least 40 deaths: “I live in the upper Meuse valley in Belgium. After the rains yesterday and tonight, this morning masses of water tumbled down the hills in many parts of the valley. Roads were impassable. I had never seen that before; and we are not among the hardest hit places. ”Yves C., Belgium.
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“It’s really very depressing here,” he said.

Dozens of communities remained without electricity, while some villages were completely cut off, the police said. Telephone and cellular networks were also down, making it difficult for the authorities to track down the missing persons.

Belgium and the Netherlands also saw significant flooding when the weather system took hold in the region. According to the public broadcaster RTBF, at least two people were killed in the floods in the province of Liège in Belgium.

As the Meuse continued to reach dangerous proportions, the regional authorities asked the people of the city to evacuate and, if this was not possible, to take shelter on the upper floors of the buildings. All shops were closed and tourists were advised to leave.

The Belgian Defense Force said it was using helicopters and personnel to help with rescue and salvage work, while reports say the river is expected to rise several meters and endanger a dam.

In the Netherlands, according to the Dutch news agency NU.nl, soldiers were sent to the province of Limburg for evacuation, where at least one nursing home had to be evacuated.

Intense rain in Switzerland caused the country’s weather service to warn on Thursday that the floods would worsen in the coming days. On Lake Biel, Lake Thun and Lake Lucerne there is a high risk of flooding and the potential for landslides has been pointed out.

The chairman of Friends of the Earth Germany in North Rhine-Westphalia combined the severe flooding in the region with a failed policy of the state legislature. The effects of climate change are one of the issues that were hotly debated in Germany ahead of the September elections, in which the Greens are running for second place behind the conservative Christian Democrats led by Mr Laschet.

“The catastrophic consequences of the heavy rainfalls of the last few days are mostly homemade,” said Holger Sticht, who heads the regional chapter and made lawmakers and industry responsible for building in floodplains and forests. “We urgently need to change course.”

Megan Specia contributed to the coverage.

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Entertainment

Paul Huntley, Hair Grasp of Broadway and Hollywood, Is Lifeless at 88

Paul Huntley, Hair Master of Broadway and Hollywood, Is Dead at 88

For the show “Diana” – a version shot without an audience during the pandemic and due to premiere on Netflix on October 1st – he created four wigs for actress Jeanna de Waal to portray the style of the Princess of Wales has changed over time, from lousy naivete to windswept sophistication.

Paul Huntley was born on July 2, 1933 in Greater London, one of five children of a military man and a housewife. From an early age he was fascinated by his mother’s film magazines. After school, he tried to find an apprenticeship in the film industry, but the flooded job market after World War II did not offer a place for him, so he enrolled at an acting school in London.

He eventually helped design hair for school productions and in the 1950s, after two years of military service, became an apprentice at Wig Creations, a major London theater company. He became the main designer and worked with Vivien Leigh, Marlene Dietrich and Laurence Olivier.

Mr. Huntley helped construct the signature braids that Elizabeth Taylor wore in the 1963 film “Cleopatra”. Ms. Taylor introduced him to director Mike Nichols, who a decade later hired Mr. Huntley to do hair for his Broadway production of “Uncle Vanya” in Circle in the Square. He eventually became a designer for plays and musicals, including “The Real Thing”, “The Heidi Chronicles” and “Crazy for You”.

Join The Times theater reporter Michael Paulson in conversation with Lin-Manuel Miranda, see a performance of Shakespeare in the Park, and more as we explore the signs of hope in a transformed city. For a year now, the “Offstage” series has accompanied the theater through a shutdown. Now let’s look at his recovery.

Mr. Huntley returned to a show on a regular basis to make sure standards were being met. He referred to himself as “the hair police”.

Tony Awards are not given for hair design, but Mr. Huntley was given a special Tony in 2003.

“Everyone says, ‘I want Paul Huntley,'” Broadway producer Emanuel Azenberg once told the Times. “He does the hair organically for the show. It’s not about him. “

Mr. Huntley saw hair not just as a decorative element, but as an expression of an era or a change in society and an integral part of character development. For “Thoroughly Modern Millie” he tried to remember New York City in 1922, his pony, his spit curls and finger waves were marked by a feeling of liberation after the First World War.

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Entertainment

Robert Downey Sr., Filmmaker and Provocateur, Is Useless at 85

Robert Downey Sr., Filmmaker and Provocateur, Is Dead at 85

Robert Downey Sr., who made provocative movies like “Putney Swope” that avoided mainstream success but were often critical favorites and were always attention getting, died on Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 85.

The cause was Parkinson’s disease, his wife, Rosemary Rogers, said.

“Putney Swope,” a 1969 comedy about a Black man who is accidentally elected chairman of a Madison Avenue advertising agency, was perhaps Mr. Downey’s best-known film.

“To be as precise as is possible about such a movie,” Vincent Canby wrote in a rave review in The New York Times, “it is funny, sophomoric, brilliant, obscene, disjointed, marvelous, unintelligible and relevant.”

The film, though probably a financial success by Mr. Downey’s standards, made only about $2.7 million. (By comparison, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” that same year made more than $100 million.) Yet its reputation was such that in 2016 the Library of Congress selected it for the National Film Registry, an exclusive group of movies deemed to have cultural or historical significance.

Also much admired in some circles was “Greaser’s Palace” (1972), in which a Christlike figure in a zoot suit arrives in the Wild West by parachute. Younger filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson (who gave Mr. Downey a small part in his 1997 hit, “Boogie Nights”) cited it as an influence.

None other than Joseph Papp, the theater impresario, in a letter to The New York Times after Mr. Canby’s unenthusiastic review, wrote that “Robert Downey has fearlessly descended into the netherworld and come up with a laughing nightmare.” (Mr. Papp’s assessment may not have been entirely objective; at the time he was producing one of Mr. Downey’s few mainstream efforts, a television version of the David Rabe play “Sticks and Bones,” which had been a hit at Mr. Papp’s Public Theater in 1971.)

Between “Putney Swope” and “Greaser’s Palace” there was “Pound” (1970), a political satire in which actors portrayed stray dogs. Among those actors, playing a puppy, was Robert Downey Jr., the future star of the “Iron Man” movies and many others, and Mr. Downey’s son. He was 5 and making his film debut.

That movie, the senior Mr. Downey told The Times Union of Albany, N.Y., in 2000, was something of a surprise to the studio.

“When I turned it into United Artists,” he said, “after the screening one of the studio heads said to me, ‘I thought this was gonna be animated.’ They thought they were getting some cute little animated film.”

Robert John Elias Jr. was born on June 24, 1936, in Manhattan and grew up in Rockville Centre, on Long Island. His father was in restaurant management, and his mother, Betty (McLoughlin) Elias, was a model. Later, when enlisting in the Army as a teenager, he adopted the last name of his stepfather, Jim Downey, who worked in advertising.

Much of his time in the Army was spent in the stockade, he said later; he wrote a novel while doing his time, but it wasn’t published. He pitched semi-pro baseball for a year, then wrote some plays.

Among the people he met on the Off Off Broadway scene was William Waering, who owned a camera and suggested they try making movies. The result, which he began shooting when John F. Kennedy was still president and which was released in 1964, was “Babo 73,” in which Taylor Mead, an actor who would go on to appear in many Andy Warhol films, played the president of the United States. It was classic underground filmmaking.

“We just basically went down to the White House and started shooting, with no press passes, permits, anything like that,” Mr. Downey said in an interview included in the book “Film Voices: Interviews From Post Script” (2004). “Kennedy was in Europe, so nobody was too tight with the security, so we were outside the White House mainly, ran around; we actually threw Taylor in with some real generals.”

The budget, he said, was $3,000.

Mr. Downey’s “Chafed Elbows,” about a day in the life of a misfit, was released in 1966 and was a breakthrough of sorts, earning him grudging respect even from Bosley Crowther, The Times’s staid film critic.

“One of these days,” he wrote, “Robert Downey, who wrote, directed and produced the underground movie ‘Chafed Elbows,’ which opened at the downtown Gate Theater last night, is going to clean himself up a good bit, wash the dirty words out of his mouth and do something worth mature attention in the way of kooky, satiric comedy. He has the audacity for it. He also has the wit.”

The film enjoyed extended runs at the Gate and the Bleecker Street Cinema. “No More Excuses” followed in 1968, then “Putney Swope,” “Pound” and “Greaser’s Palace.” But by the early 1970s Mr. Downey had developed a cocaine habit.

“Ten years of cocaine around the clock,” he told The Associated Press in 1997. His marriage to Elsie Ford, who had been in several of his movies, faltered; they eventually divorced. He credited his second wife, Laura Ernst, with helping to pull him out of addiction. She died in 1994 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Mr. Downey drew on that experience for his last feature, “Hugo Pool” (1997).

In addition to his wife and son, he is survived by a daughter, Allyson Downey; a brother, Jim; a sister, Nancy Connor; and six grandchildren.

Mr. Downey’s movies have earned new appreciation in recent decades. In 2008 Anthology Film Archives in the East Village restored and preserved “Chafed Elbows,” “Babo 73″ and “No More Excuses” with the support of the Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation. At the time, Martin Scorsese, a member of the foundation’s board, called them “an essential part of that moment when a truly independent American cinema was born.”

“They’re alive in ways that few movies can claim to be,” Mr. Scorsese told The Times, “because it’s the excitement of possibility and discovery that brought them to life.”

Mr. Downey deflected such praise.

“They’re uneven,” he said of the films. “But I was uneven.”

Alex Traub contributed reporting.

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Entertainment

Jacques d’Amboise, Charismatic Star of Metropolis Ballet, Is Useless at 86

Jacques d’Amboise, an Early Male Star of City Ballet, Dies at 86

Jacques d’Amboise, who broke stereotypes about male dancers when he helped popularize ballet in America and became one of the most respected male stars in New York Ballet, died Sunday at his Manhattan home. He was 86 years old.

His daughter, actress and dancer Charlotte d’Amboise, said the cause was complications from a stroke.

Mr. d’Amboise embodied the ideal of a purely American style that combined the nonchalant elegance of Fred Astaire with the classicism of the Danseur nobleman. He was the first male star to emerge from the City Ballet’s School of American Ballet, joining the company’s corps in 1949 at the age of 15. Its extensive presence and versatility were central to the company’s identity in the first few decades.

He had choreographed 24 roles and became the lead interpreter of the title role in George Balanchine’s seminal “Apollo” before leaving the company in 1984, a few months before his 50th birthday. He has also choreographed 17 works for the city ballet, as well as many pieces for the students of the National Dance Institute, a program he founded and directed.

The energy, athleticism, infectious smile of Mr. d’Amboise (which critic Arlene Croce once likened to that of the Cheshire Cat), and the appeal of a boy next door made him popular with audiences and made ballet more attractive to boys in a world of tutus and pink toe shoes.

He also helped bring the ballet to a wider audience, danced on Ed Sullivan’s show (then called “Toast of the Town”), played important roles in several film musicals from the 1950s, including “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” and ” Carousel “, and has appeared in appealing” Americana “ballets such as Lew Christensen’s” Gas Station “and Balanchine’s” Who Cares? ” In the early 1980s he directed, choreographed and wrote a number of dance films.

Although Mr. d’Amboise was never seen as a virtuoso dancer, his repertoire was demanding and extraordinarily broad, ranging from the princely “Apollo” to the daring head cowboy of Balanchine’s “Western Symphony”. He was one of the company’s best partners, including the cavalier of ballerinas Maria Tallchief, Melissa Hayden, Allegra Kent and Suzanne Farrell.

Mr. d’Amboise, Clive Barnes wrote in the New York Times in 1976, “is not just a dancer, he is an institution.”

Mr. d’Amboise was astonished when Balanchine invited him to the City Ballet in 1949, one year after the start of the first season. He was 15 years old. “I can’t do it, I have to finish school,” he recalled in his autobiography of “I was a dancer” (2011). His father advised him to become a stage worker, but his mother loved the idea and Mr d’Amboise left school to dance professionally, as did his sister Madeleine, who was known professionally as Ninette d’Amboise.

Although Balanchine was generally more interested in creating roles for his female dancers than for his male performers, Mr. d’Amboise identified with many of the key roles Balanchine played in ballets such as “Western Symphony” (1954), “Stars and Stripes” ( 1958), “Jewels” (1967), “Who Cares” (1970) and “Robert Schumanns Davidsbundlertanze” (1980). Early in his career, he also created roles in ballets by John Cranko and Frederick Ashton, and received praise for this. (“Balanchine was upset” with the Cranko Commission, he wrote in his autobiography.)

In a 2018 interview, urban ballet dancer Adrian Danchig-Waring described the qualities that Mr. d’Amboise embodied as a dancer: “There is this machismo that is sometimes needed on stage – this bravery, this boasting, this self-confidence and us all I have to learn to cultivate this and yet it is a huge canon of work. There are poets and dreamers and animals in it. Jacques reminds us that all of this can be contained in one body. “

Mr. d’Amboise was born Joseph Jacques Ahearn on July 28, 1934 in Dedham, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, to Andrew and Georgiana (d’Amboise) Ahearn. His father’s parents were immigrants from Galway, Ireland; his mother was French-Canadian. In search of work, his parents moved the family to New York City, where his father found a job as an elevator operator at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. The family settled in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan. To keep Jacques, as he was called, off the streets, when he was 7 years old, his mother and sister Madeleine enrolled him in Madam Seda’s ballet class on 181st Street.

After six months, the siblings moved to the School of American Ballet, founded in 1934 by Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Energetic and athletic, Jacques immediately faced the physical challenges of ballet. After less than a year he was selected by Balanchine for the role of Puck in a production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.

In his autobiography, he wrote of how his mother’s decision had changed his life: “What an extraordinary thing for a street boy with gang friends. Half grew up cops and half grew up gangsters – and I became a ballet dancer! “

In 1946 his mother persuaded his father to change the family name from Ahearn to d’Amboise. Her explanation, wrote Mr. d’Amboise in “I was a dancer”, was that the name was aristocratic and French and “sounds better for ballet”.

After joining City Ballet, Mr. d’Amboise soon danced solo roles, including starring in Lew Christensen’s “Filling Station,” which led to an invitation from film director Stanley Donen to join the cast of “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.” (1954).

In 1956 he married the soloist of the city ballet Carolyn George, who died in 2009. In addition to his daughter Charlotte, his two sons George and Christopher, a choreographer and former main dancer of the city ballet, survive. another daughter, Catherine d’Amboise (she and Charlotte are twins); and six grandchildren. Two brothers and his sister died before him.

Mr. d’Amboise starred in two films in 1956 – “Carousel” alongside Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones and Michael Curtiz’s “The Best Things In Life Are Free”. But he remained committed to ballet and balanchine.

“People said, ‘You could be the next Gene Kelly,” said Mr. d’Amboise in a 2011 interview with the Los Angeles Times. “I didn’t know if I could act, but I knew I was a great ballet dancer could be, and Balanchine laid the carpet for me. “

His faith was rewarded when Balanchine revived his ballet “Apollo” in 1957, originally a collaboration with Igor Stravinsky in 1928, and cast Mr. d’Amboise in the title role. For this production, Balanchine took off the original, elaborate costumes and dressed Mr. d’Amboise in tights and a simple scarf over one shoulder.

It was a turning point in his career; Dancing, wrote Mr d’Amboise, “became so much more interesting, an odyssey towards your Excellency.” The role, he felt, was also his story, as Balanchine had explained to him: “A wild, untamed youth learns nobility through art.”

For the next 27 years, Mr. d’Amboise continued to be a strong member of the city ballet, creating roles and appearing in some of Balanchine’s major ballets, including Concerto Barocco, Meditation, Violin Concerto and Movements for piano and violin . “

Encouraged by Balanchine, he also choreographed regularly for the company, although the reviews of his work have mostly been lukewarm. In his autobiography, he wrote that both Balanchine and Kirstein had assured him that one day he would lead the city ballet, but Peter Martins and Jerome Robbins took over the company after Balanchine’s death in 1983.

Mr d’Amboise appeared to have resigned himself to this result: he withdrew from the performance the next year and turned to the National Dance Institute, which brings dance to public schools, which he founded in 1976.

The institute grew out of the Saturday morning ballet class for boys that Mr d’Amboise began to teach in 1964, motivated by the desire that his two sons learn to dance without being the only boys in the class. The classes were expanded to include girls and moved to numerous public schools.

Now the goal is to offer free courses to everyone, regardless of the child’s background or ability. Today the institute teaches thousands of New York City children ages 9-14 and is affiliated with 13 dance institutes around the world. The Harlem-based institute where Mr d’Amboise lived was featured in Emile Ardolino’s 1983 Oscar winning documentary “He Makes Me Feel Like a Dancer”.

“That second chapter brought something more fulfilling than my career as an individual artist,” wrote Mr d’Amboise in his autobiography. He told the story of a little boy who, after trying hard to master a dance sequence, wrote: “He was on the way to discovering that he could take control of his body and learn from it, control of his own to take over life. “

For his contribution to arts education, Mr. d’Amboise has received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1990, a Kennedy Honors Award in 1995, and a New York Governor’s Award, among others.

He saw himself as a dancer all his life, but was also a passionate New Yorker. When asked in a 2018 article in The Times that he wanted his ashes scattered, he replied, “Spread me out in Times Square or the Belasco Theater.”

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Business

Ed Ward, Rock Critic and Historian, Is Useless at 72

Ed Ward, Rock Critic and Historian, Is Dead at 72

After his years in Austin, Mr. Ward moved to Berlin in the mid-1990s to work for a planned magazine that had passed away before it was published, and then to Montpellier, France. During his years in Europe he wrote freelance articles, continued to contribute to Fresh Air (where he has been since 1987) and worked as a bartender.

He returned to Austin in 2013 and began work on The History of Rock & Roll, Volume 1: 1920-1963, which was published in 2016. A second volume covering the history of music up to 1977 was published in 2019. However, his publisher declined to publish a third because the sales of the second book had not been as good as the first.

Although well-known names like Elvis and the Beatles are in the first book, there are also those of black artists like Earl Palmer, the drummer of Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” and many other classic New Orleans records, and Lowman Pauling, the guitarist and Haupt -Songwriter of the R&B group the “5” Royales.

“There’s this misconception that one day in 1954 Elvis invented it all at once, and that’s not only wrong, it’s really simple and unfair,” he told The American-Stateman Black Music of the 30s, 40s and 40s in 2016 early 50s and the extent to which this shaped the sound from which Elvis emerged. “

The book was in some ways a result of Mr. Ward’s “Fresh Air” work. In sections that lasted only seven or eight minutes, he told compelling, detailed stories about famous and obscure musicians and groups.

“I think this is Ed’s most outstanding work,” said Marcus in a telephone interview. “They were so interesting and well produced and so sharp. I am not ignorant of this, but from time to time he would present a snippet of something I had never heard of. He was a great explorer, a great digger. “

When Fresh Air refused to interview him about his book in 2017, he resigned.

“Leaving ‘fresh air’ was a dangerous thing,” said Patoski, “and it hurt him because people knew him like that.”

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World News

Extra Than 100 Migrants Are Feared Lifeless as Boat Capsizes in Mediterranean

More Than 100 Migrants Are Feared Dead as Boat Capsizes in Mediterranean

CAIRO – More than 100 migrants traveling to Europe are feared dead in a shipwreck off Libya, according to independent rescue groups.

The Libyan Coast Guard searched for the boat but could not find it due to limited resources, a service official said.

The humanitarian group SOS Méditerranée, which operates the rescue ship Ocean Viking, announced late Thursday that the capsized rubber boat, which originally carried around 130 people, had been sighted in the Mediterranean northeast of the Libyan capital Tripoli. The ship did not find any survivors, but the helpers were able to see at least 10 bodies near the wreck.

“We think of the life that has been lost and the families who may never be sure what happened to their loved ones,” the group said in a statement.

Migrant traffic has raised questions in the countries of the European Union and in Libya as to who is responsible for rescuing those at risk at sea.

SOS Méditerranée said the missing were expected to have died, adding to the 350 people who have drowned in the sea so far this year. She accused the governments of failing to conduct search and rescue operations.

In the years since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising, in which longtime Libyan leader Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi was overthrown and killed, the war-torn country has become the dominant transit point for migrants escaping war and poverty in Africa and flee in the Middle East. Smugglers often pack desperate families on poorly equipped rubber boats that stop and sink on the dangerous Mediterranean route.

Eugenio Ambrosi, chief of staff of the International Organization for Migration, said in a tweet: “These are the human consequences of policies that fail to respect international law and the most basic humanitarian requirements.”

AlarmPhone, which provides a crisis hotline for migrants in need in the Mediterranean, said it had close contact with the distressed boat for almost 10 hours before it capsized.

A Libyan Coast Guard spokesman, Cmdr. Masoud Ibrahim Masoud said the service searched the sea for more than 24 hours, adding, “The waves were very rough.”

Mr Masoud said the Coast Guard received rescue alerts around noon on Wednesday from two different rubber boats in distress east of Tripoli. A patrol ship was dispatched immediately and rescued 106 migrants, including women and children, who had been on board one of the two boats.

Two bodies were also pulled out of the water near the capsized vessel. He said the coast guard ship finally returned to port so that rescued migrants could receive medical assistance.

In the meantime, the Libyan authorities have asked three merchant ships and the Ocean Viking to search for the other missing boat until the Libyan patrol ship can join them again.

In recent years the European Union has teamed up with the Libyan Coast Guard and other local groups to contain such dangerous crossings. However, right-wing groups say these guidelines are at the mercy of migrants to armed groups or imprisoned in miserable prisons where abuse occurs.

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Entertainment

Rusty Younger, Nation-Rock Pioneer, Is Lifeless at 75

Rusty Young, Country-Rock Pioneer, Is Dead at 75

Rusty Young, a founding member of popular country rock group Poco and a key figure in establishing the pedal steel guitar as an integral voice in West Coast rock of the late 1960s and 1970s, died Wednesday at his Davisville home. Mo. He was 75 years old.

His publicist Mike Farley said the cause was a heart attack.

Mr. Young played steel guitar with Poco for more than half a century. Along with other Los Angeles-based rock bands such as the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers, Poco was one of the architects of the country rock movement of the late 1960s, which incorporated traditional country instruments into predominantly rock arrangements. The Eagles and dozens of other bands would follow suit.

Formed in 1968, Poco originally included singers and guitarists Jim Messina and Richie Furay – both formerly Buffalo Springfield, another groundbreaking Los Angeles country rock band – plus Mr. Young, drummer George Grantham and bassist Randy Meisner, a future member of the Eagles. (Timothy B. Schmit, another future eagle, replaced Mr. Meisner after he left the band in 1969.)

Poco first got together for a high profile show at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, not long after Mr. Furay invited Mr. Young to play pedal steel guitar on his composition “Kind Woman,” the final track of Buffalo Springfield’s farewell album. “The last time.” The music that Poco made generally used a Twangier production and was more populist-oriented than that of Buffalo Springfield, a band that had at times gravitated towards experimentalism and obfuscation.

Mr. Furay’s song “Pickin ‘Up the Pieces”, the title track of Poco’s 1969 debut album, served as a letter of intent:

Well there is just a little bit of magic
In country music we sing
So let’s start.
We’ll bring you back home where people are happy
Sittin ‘pickin’ and a-grinnin ‘
You and me
We’ll pick up the pieces, um.

Sharp and lyrical at the same time, Mr. Young’s pedal steel work shaped the group’s music with its rustic signature sound and helped create a prominent place for the steel guitar among roots-conscious California rock bands.

“I put color in Richie’s country rock songs, and that was the whole idea of ​​using instruments with a country sound,” Young explained in a 2014 interview with Goldmine magazine, referring to the compositions of Mr. Furay.

But Mr. Young, who also played the banjo, dobro, and mandolin, was not averse to musical experiments. “I slipped the envelope onto the steel guitar and played it with a fuzz tone because nobody did that,” he told Goldmine. He also played the pedal steel through a Leslie speaker, much like a Hammond B3 organist would, leading some listeners to believe that he was actually playing an organ.

Mr. Young was not one of Poco’s original singers or songwriters. After the departure of Mr. Messina in 1971 and Mr. Furay in 1973, he appeared alongside newcomer Paul Cotton as one of the group’s front men. Mr. Young wrote and sang the lead vocals for “Crazy Love,” the band’s biggest hit, which reached # 1 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary Charts in 1979 (and # 17 on the Pop Charts).

He also wrote and sang the lead role on “Rose of Cimarron,” another of Poco’s more enduring recordings from the 1970s, and orchestrated the reunion of the group’s original members in 1989 for the album “Legacy,” which like the 1978 platinum Legend “, resulted in a pair of top 40 singles.

Norman Russell Young was born on February 23, 1946 in Long Beach, California, the eldest of three children of Norman John and Ruth (Stephenson) Young. His father, an electrician, and his mother, a typist, took him to country bars where he was fascinated by the steel guitarists as a child.

He grew up in Denver where he started playing lap steel guitar at the age of 6. As a teenager, he worked with local psychedelic and country bands.

After moving to Los Angeles but before joining Poco, he declined an invitation to become a member of the Flying Burrito Brothers, which at the time included Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman, formerly Byrds.

After Mr. Cotton left Poco in 2010 because of a financial dispute, Mr. Young became the group’s only front man. The band made their last album, All Fired Up, in 2013, the same year Mr. Young was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame in St. Louis. In 2017 he released his first solo album “Waitin ‘for the Sun” and performed sporadically with the latest version of Poco until the coronavirus pandemic hit in March 2020.

Mr. Young is survived by his wife of 17 years, Mary Brennan Young; a daughter, Sara; a son, Will; a sister, Corine Pietrovich; and three grandchildren. His brother Ron died in 2002.

Mr. Young’s rise as a singer and songwriter in Poco in the late 1970s after nearly a decade as a supporting instrumentalist was as propitious as it was accidental.

“The band didn’t need another singer-songwriter when Richie and Jim were in the band,” he explained in his 2014 Goldmine interview, referring to Mr. Furay and Mr. Messina. “My job was to play the steel guitar and bring the music to it. When my job changed, a lot of opportunities opened up for me. So I liked the way things went. “

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Business

Bernard Madoff, Architect of Largest Ponzi Scheme in Historical past, Is Useless at 82

Bernard Madoff, Architect of Largest Ponzi Scheme in History, Is Dead at 82

More than money was lost. At least two people, desperate over their losses, committed suicide. A major Madoff investor suffered a fatal heart attack after months of litigation over his role in the system. Some investors have lost their homes. Others lost the trust and friendship of relatives and friends who had inadvertently put them at risk.

Mr. Madoff was not spared these tragic aftershocks. His older son Mark committed suicide at his Manhattan apartment early in the morning on December 11, 2010, the second anniversary of his father’s arrest. He has been characterized by his lawyer Martin Flumenbaum as an “innocent victim of his father’s monstrous crime who succumbed to two years of relentless pressure from false accusations and innuendos”. One of the last messages from Mark Madoff to Mr. Flumenbaum before his death was: “Nobody wants to believe the truth. Please take care of my family. “

In June 2012, Bernard Madoff’s brother Peter, a lawyer by training, pleaded guilty to tax and securities fraud charges related to his role as Chief Compliance Officer at his older brother’s company. However, he was not accused of knowingly participating in the Ponzi scheme. In December 2012, he forfeited all of his personal property to the government to compensate his brother’s victims and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. And on September 3, 2014, Andrew, Mr Madoff’s younger son, died of cancer at the age of 48. He had blamed the stress of the scandal for the return of the cancer he fought in 2003.

In addition to the number of people, professional reputations were also destroyed. More than a dozen prominent hedge funds and money managers, including J. Ezra Merkin and the Fairfield Greenwich Group, had to admit that they turned their clients’ money on to Mr Madoff and lost it all. Swiss private bankers, global commercial banks, and large accounting firms have all been dragged to court by clients who have relied on them to monitor their Madoff investments.

Securities Investor Protection Corporation, the industry-funded organization founded in 1970 to provide limited protection for broker clients, spent more on Madoff’s bankruptcy than on all previous liquidations combined – and was heavily attacked by victims who did the Felt they had been wrongly refused remuneration.

And for the Securities and Exchange Commission, which since at least 1992 has unsuccessfully investigated more than half a dozen credible tips about Mr. Madoff’s fraud program, it was the most humiliating failure in its 75-year history.