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Monday, June 12, 2017

Trump-like Julius Caesar play boycotted by US firms

Two major US corporations have ended their sponsorship of a production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in which the Roman leader mimics Donald Trump.

In the New York-based production, Julius Caesar is depicted as a blond-haired businessman in a blue suit.

The production company, Public Theater, said the character was a contemporary Caesar "bent on absolute power".

One of the sponsors, Delta Air Lines, said the producers had "crossed the line on the standards of good taste".

In the Shakespearean tragedy, which is staged in New York's Central Park, Caesar is assassinated in a lengthy scene in which he fights off his attackers before succumbing to multiple stab wounds.

The lead character's wife in the play, Calpurnia, is depicted wearing designer outfits and speaking with an apparent Slavic accent - suggesting that she is based on First Lady Melania Trump, who is Slovenian.
Trump impersonators compete in LA

In announcing the production earlier this year, Public Theater described its portrayal of the Roman leader as "magnetic, populist and irreverent".

On its website, the company states that the play is about "how fragile democracy is," adding that it highlights how the "institutions that we have grown up with can be swept away in no time at all".

Delta said on Monday that the "graphic staging of Julius Caesar" at the Free Shakespeare in the Park event "does not reflect" the airline's values.

President Trump's son, Donald Junior, criticised the production, asking whether boundaries had been crossed in what he described as art becoming political speech.

"I wonder how much of this 'art' is funded by taxpayers?" he tweeted, adding: "Serious question, when does 'art' become political speech & does that change things?"

The play opened with previews on 23 May and the production is due to run until 18 June.

Delta and the other sponsor to withdraw, Bank of America, have both supported the Shakespeare season in Central Park for several years.

In a 2012 production of Julius Caesar by New York-based The Acting Company, the Roman leader was modelled on then-President Barack Obama.

Commenting on the row, Gregory Doran, the artistic director of the UK's Royal Shakespeare Company, said that Shakespeare could often surprise modern audiences with how "relevant" he is.

"Though he often set his plays in periods and places that were remote from his own, by doing so he could talk freely about his own society," he said.

"We constantly reapply that metaphor to our own times. Shakespeare is like a magnet that attracts all the iron filings of what is happening in the world."

Pope warns Nigerian priests


Pope Francis had unusually harsh words for Nigerian clerics

Pope Francis has given Nigerian priests 30 days to pledge obedience to him and accept a bishop appointed for their diocese - or risk being suspended, the Associated Press news agency reports.

The pontiff met on 8 June a delegation from the Ahiara diocese in south-eastern Nigeria, where priests have been refusing to accept the 2012 appointment by then pontiff, Benedict XVI, of the local bishop, Peter Okpaleke.

Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano reported yesterday that Pope Francis was acting "for the good of the people of God" by threatening to suspend the priests from the ministry if they did not pledge in a letter, by July 9, "total obedience" and accept Bishop Okpaleke's appointment.

The Vatican issued only a short statement on the 8 June meeting, describing the situation in the diocese as “unacceptable”, the Catholic Herald reported.

The protests were motivated by the fact that Bishop Okpaleke is not a local priest, it added.

The newspaper quoted the Pope as saying that every priest of the diocese must write a letter to him by 9 July asking for forgiveness and "must clearly manifest total obedience to the Pope” - or else he would be suspended and would lose his office.

Pope Francis said he was taking a tough line because "the people of God are scandalised. Jesus reminds us that whoever causes scandal must suffer the consequences”, the Catholic Herald quoted the Pope as saying.

Sunday, June 11, 2017

Ministers to demand softer Brexit as Cabinet meets for first time

Theresa May's new Cabinet is meeting for the first time since the election, with some ministers poised to demand a softer Brexit policy.

But the Cabinet Brexiteers have been boosted by the return of Michael Gove, in a move seen as a bid to protect the Prime Minister from a leadership challenge.

:: The reshuffle: Who's in, out and who's moved sideways

"I genuinely didn't expect this role," he told Sky News. "I am delighted to be part of the Government.

"I am delighted to be able to support Theresa May to ensure that we have a Government capable of delivering on the people's wishes.

The other major change is the promotion of Mrs May's close ally Damian Green to First Secretary of State, making him a Deputy Prime Minister in all but name.

Speaking after completing her reshuffle, Mrs May said: "What I've done today is seen people from across the party accepting the invitation to be in my Cabinet and crucially I have brought in talent from across the whole of the Conservative Party."

And on her own future, she said: "I said during the election campaign that if re-elected I would intend to serve a full term.

"But what I'm doing now is actually getting on with the immediate job. But I think that's what's important, I think that's what the public would expect."

Melania Trump finally moves into White House

The First Lady has officially moved to the White House after son Barron finished his school year in New York.

Melania Trump tweeted a message on Sunday evening after travelling to the White House with 11-year-old Barron.

In her tweet, she wrote: "Looking forward to the memories we'll make in our new home! #Movingday."

Image:The first lady and son Barron had been living at Trump Tower in New York

It was accompanied with a photograph of the Washington Monument seen from what was apparently the Red Room in the famous building.

Mrs Trump has been living in Trump Tower, New York, until the end of her son's school year. Barron will attend a private school in Maryland later this year.


President Trump spent the weekend at his private golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

It comes after the White House denied reports that Mr Trump told Theresa May he does not want to go ahead with his controversial state visit to the UK if he will be faced by large-scale demonstrations.

The Guardian newspaper reported that the US President wanted to be sure he had the support of the British public before travelling.

His comments were said to have been made in a telephone call in "recent weeks".

Image:The First Family arrive at Joint Base Andrews before travelling on to the White House

A White House spokesman said: "The president has tremendous respect for Prime Minister May. That subject never came up on the call."

Downing Street has refused to comment, saying that the invitation - given by Mrs May on behalf of the Queen - remains unchanged.


US-backed forces seize second Raqqa district from Islamic State

US-backed forces have seized a western district of Raqqa, Islamic State's stronghold in Syria, following two days of fighting.

In a statement, Syrian Democratic Forces said their fighters had "liberated the neighbourhood of al Romaniya on the western front of Raqqa, after two days of continued clashes".

It follows the capture of an eastern part of the city two days ago.

Islamic State has held Raqqa since 2014 - and the city is considered the group's 'capital'.

The fighting - backed by bombing from the US-led coalition - left at least 12 IS jihadists dead in al Romaniya, the SDF said.

Image:Female members of the Syrian Democratic Forces stand just outside of Raqqa ahead of their advance on the city

The alliance captured the eastern neighbourhood of al Mishlab within a day of first entering Raqqa.

The SDF, a group of Kurdish and Arab militias supported aerially from allies including the UK, spent seven months surrounding the city before finally entering it last Tuesday.

The coalition believes the city in central northern Syria is defended by 3,000 to 4,000 jihadists.

Fighters from the US-backed alliance, meanwhile, continued to battle to dislodge jihadists from a key military base north of Raqqa.

TURNING PAIN INTO HOPE

Angel was 11 the last time her mother tried to kill her. She remembers the handful of rat poison pellets, the urging: Take this. She screamed until a neighbor rushed over and pulled her away.

That was a decade ago, before the counseling, and now Angel’s mother is bending over her shoulder, pouring her a cup of black tea. They share a bed, a concrete house without electricity and a history that horrified the world.

Over a hundred days in 1994, genocide devastated Rwanda, an East African country the size of Maryland. The assailants claimed roughly 800,000 lives and raped an estimated 250,000 women, which, according to one charity’s count, produced up to 20,000 babies.

Angel is part of this generation in the shadows. These young people are now stepping into adulthood, coming to terms with an identity no parent would wish on a child. Yet they are defying expectations that tragedy would define their lives.

Historically, such children often met an early death. Thousands of Chinese women endured sexual violence during the Rape of Nanking in 1937, for example, but none publicly acknowledged raising a Japanese soldier’s child, as far as historians can tell. Reports from the time suggest that victims who became pregnant widely committed infanticide.

A UNICEF study on the “war babies” of Bosnia’s 1992-1995 conflict, meanwhile, concluded that many were probably abandoned or killed by their mothers. The number of survivors remains unknown.

In Rwanda, data from support groups provide a clearer picture. The “children of killers,” as they are often disparaged, tend to live in poverty, facing higher rates of HIV and domestic abuse than their peers.

But that’s not the whole story.

“We hear everyone’s lives are destroyed, that they’re the walking dead,” said Dara Kay Cohen, a Harvard University professor who studies sexual assault in conflict. “Then you talk to people and hear there’s this hopeful underbelly.”

Researchers are just starting to explore how children overcome such trauma. The Rwandan government, tasked with rebuilding a shattered nation, laid out no formal policy to help those conceived in the mass rape.

Ingvill Mochmann, founder of the International Network for Interdisciplinary Research on Children Born of War, recently published a report summarizing a decade of studies on the effects of war on children.

“Many have coped fairly well with their lives,” Mochmann wrote. “The interesting question is — what makes the difference?”

Interviews with three families, just before the massacre’s 23rd anniversary, offer a clue.
Angel and Jacqueline

Sunlight streams through Angel’s window, catching her metallic hoop earrings. She sits at a wooden table next to her mother, Jacqueline. They split a loaf of bread for breakfast and wash it down with tea. Jacqueline sprinkles brown sugar into their cups.

“Murakoze,” Angel tells her in Kinyarwanda. Thank you.

They live together under a tin roof in a rural village, where a Catholic church pays their monthly rent, the equivalent of $5. The cracked walls are painted turquoise. A mosquito net dangles above their full-size bed. A rooster outside crows.

Angel is 22 now, with a quick grin and braids down her back. She was born HIV positive, so she takes free pills from the government to stay healthy. She has just finished high school and is waiting for the test score that will shape her future.

High marks would net her a scholarship. The results will appear online in a couple of weeks. Angel and her mother will pray before heading to the Internet cafe.

Tourism is her dream career. Her backup plan is selling tomatoes.

“We don’t have money,” she explains.

Angel learned early how she came to be. Jacqueline would tell her: You’re not my real daughter.

“Whenever she would go somewhere, and if I asked her to let me come with her, she always refused and locked me inside,” Angel says softly through an interpreter. “She would also not permit me to play with other kids.”

Jacqueline tears up when she thinks of this.

Before the genocide, she was someone else’s mom. They were in fourth and sixth grade, her girls. They complained about bullies hounding them for being Tutsis, a minority ethnic group. Jacqueline was on her way to Kigali, the nation’s capital, to secure spots for them in a new school when the violence started. Rwandan government leaders had commanded the majority population, the Hutus, to exterminate the Tutsis. Neighbors slaughtered neighbors. Colleagues murdered colleagues. Hutu fighters found Jacqueline hiding in a Catholic school and took turns raping her. She remembers praying to die.

But three months passed, and a Tutsi rebel army overthrew the government, and there she was, following a U.N. soldier out of the rubble. Her husband and children were dead. She now had HIV and a baby on the way.

Jacqueline once poured soap and hair dye into Angel’s bottle and decided to drink the toxic mix, too. She wanted everything to go black. But instead they vomited, and Jacqueline reluctantly decided to keep going.

She would hug Angel, then beat her. Affection and rage, affection and rage. This pattern held until they started therapy in 2007, run by an organization called Foundation Rwanda. (The Washington Post agreed to a request from the foundation and the families interviewed for this article to withhold their last names, so they can avoid discrimination and harassment.)

The charity organized weekly support groups, and the other moms inspired Jacqueline to become a Christian. She began to feel that Angel had come from God.

Foundation Rwanda paid Angel’s school tuition through graduation. Which has brought her to this point, this limbo.

She mostly hangs around her house, except to buy food or refill her medicine or go to church. She recently broke up with her boyfriend of five years — he wanted to get married, and she didn’t want to tell him about her HIV.

Beyond her plank fence, the hills burst with banana trees. Adobe homes dot the horizon — tiny from here, like Monopoly pieces. Men play checkers outside a shuttered dive bar. Someone’s cow moos.

Angel is comfortable in her universe, but she is curious about what else is out there. She waits for the test score.

Trump says Comey leaks are the real issue, in Sunday morning Twitter flurry

President Trump fired a preemptive Twitter strike ahead of the Sunday morning news shows, saying former FBI Director James Comey’s admission to a Senate panel that he leaked his own notes of a discussion with the president are the real issue.

"I believe the James Comey leaks will be far more prevalent than anyone ever thought possible. Totally illegal? Very 'cowardly!' " Trump tweeted.


He was referring to Comey’s testimony that he sent an associate a memo he wrote about a one-on-one talk with Trump; the details emerged in The New York Times.

Trump and his legal team already have denied certain parts of Comey’s allegations, including that he sought Comey’s “loyalty” months before he fired him from the FBI.

The move to focus on leaks comes as the Russia investigation proceeds on multiple tracks – one investigation conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller, and others being led by Capitol Hill committees including the Senate intelligence panel that heard from Comey last week.

Trump, as he tries to focus on infrastructure and other policy goals, also tweeted Sunday about the economy.

"The #FakeNews MSM doesn't report the great economic news since Election Day. #DOW up 16%. #NASDAQ up 19.5%. Drilling & energy sector...,” he wrote. “...way up. Regulations way down. 600,000+ new jobs added. Unemployment down to 4.3%. Business and economic enthusiasm way up- record levels!”