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14th-century Ghanian celebration of freedom comes to life in new East Bay show

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:50:00 GMT

Every year, the Anlo-Ewe people of coastal Ghana reenact the foundational story of their exodus, a flight from servitude to freedom.Known as Hogbetsotso, the ritual recounts via music and dance how their ancestors in the 14th century fled the walled city of Notsie (in present day Togo) and made their way west to the Volta region.“It’s a story you grow up with,” said CK Ladzekpo, the Ghanaian choreographer, percussionist, composer and longtime director of UC Berkeley’s African music program.Hailing from an illustrious family of artists and cultural practitioners, Ladzekpo also been a creative force at the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts in Richmond, which is where he’s premiering “Hogbetsotso — Day of Crossing Over,” June 10 and 11. Distilling the Anlo-Ewe rituals he absorbed as a youth, the production was made possible due to a Hewlett 50 Arts Commission in Folk and Traditional Arts.Thinking back on the elaborate celebration, Ladzekpo has come to see that the primary m...

Disneyland gets jaw-dropping Groot robot ready for Guardians of the Galaxy dance party

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:50:00 GMT

A top-secret project that has been under wraps for years could soon be revealed in Avengers Campus as Walt Disney Imagineering inches closer to pushing a jaw-dropping Groot robot out into Disney California Adventure to take part in a Guardians of the Galaxy dance party.Disneyland is conducting play tests of technology from the Walt Disney Imagineering Research & Development team for select theme park visitors who are shown a short presentation of the Groot audio-animatronic character.Imagineering’s Project Kiwi version of the Young Groot audio-animatronic may be coming to Avengers Campus this summer, according to MiceChat.The Marvel superhero on the team of intergalactic mercenaries in the “Guardian of the Galaxy” films is a gentle, kind and childlike extraterrestrial tree-like creature who says only one thing: “I am Groot.”The most logical place to test out robot Groot: Next to the Guardians of the Galaxy — Mission: Breakout in DCA’s Avengers Campus. The behind-the-scenes play ...

‘Ten years of stolen life can’t simply be brushed off’: After overturned Oakland murder convictions and charges against detective, two men sue OPD

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:50:00 GMT

OAKLAND — Two Bay Area men who spent years behind bars for faulty murder convictions are suing the Oakland Police Department and a detective who admitted he paid a key witness after previously denying she’d received financial assistance, court records show.The lawsuit, filed Thursday by Giovante Douglas and Cartier Hunter, accuses Oakland police Detective Phong Tran of obtaining convictions against both men by paying off a witness and committing “clear perjury” to cover it up. The suit says both men spent close to a decade in jail and prison, until their convictions were quietly overturned by the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office in 2022.Tran was charged in April with multiple felony charges, including perjury and bribery. The criminal complaint alleges Tran lied under oath when he denied making payments to Aisha Weber, the woman who would testify she witnessed the 2011 fatal shooting of 23-year-old Charles Butler Jr., and implicated both men by...

San Mateo catfisher who posed as 15-year-old girl sentenced to prison

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:50:00 GMT

(KRON) -- A catfisher who posed as a 15-year-old girl to lure pre-teen boys over social media was sentenced to serve four years in state prison. A San Mateo County judge ordered Wai Kit Ching, 32, of San Mateo, to immediately report to prison following Wednesday's sentencing hearing. Ching was living in San Mateo when he created fake social media profiles posing as a teenage girl, according to prosecutors. Between 2019 and 2020, Ching "enticed five different male victims aged 12-14 to send him videos of them masturbating. His Instagram account and home computer revealed a large amount of child pornography," prosecutors wrote. Detectives with the San Mateo Police Department seized Ching's computers and discovered that several boys had been victimized. Catfishing is a type of online romance scam in which a person pretends to be someone else using fake photos and personas. "Romance scams occur when a criminal adopts a fake online identity to gain a victim’s affection and trust," t...

Bay Area real estate value is fastest dropping in the nation, report says

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:50:00 GMT

SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) -- Real estate values across much of the Bay Area are the fastest dropping in the nation, according to a recent report from RealEstateAgents.com. The report, released late last month, identified the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward market and San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara market as the no. 1 and no. 2 fastest dropping markets in the country in terms of real estate values over the past year. More trouble for downtown SF as owner of Hilton, Parc 55 cease payments on hotel properties The study compared median home prices for single-family homes between the fourth quarter of 2021 and the fourth quarter of 2022.The SF-Oakland-Hayward market saw a 6.10% decrease in value, with median home sale prices dropping from $1,310,000 in Q4 of 2021 to $1,230,000 in Q4 of 2022, the report said. The San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara market saw a 5.8% decline over the same time period, with media prices going from $1,675,000 to $1,577,000.The report cites people leaving the SF Bay Ar...

Funded by Dark Money, Chris Rufo’s Nonprofit Stokes the Far Right’s Culture War

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:50:00 GMT

In the trailer for one of Christopher Rufo’s early documentaries, a shot of a rural villager driving a donkey cart cuts to scenes of a downtown Chinese cityscape, then a baseball diamond. “Two cultures in Western China are in deep conflict. Living in complete segregation, can they put aside their differences in the name of baseball?” the narrator asks. “Diamond in the Dunes,” a PBS documentary Rufo directed in 2009, serves as a reminder of the radical transformation the young filmmaker turned far-right activist has undergone in the past several years. Long gone are the days when Rufo championed the coming together of Uyghurs and ethnic Chinese in a campy multiculturalist tribute to America’s favorite pastime. Today, Rufo is credited as the main architect of conservatives’ weaponization of critical race theory, using his skills as a director and investigative researcher to stoke panic in the GOP base, while simultaneously using critical race theory as a catalyst to introdu...

Smoke from wildfires, a fact of life in the West, catch outdoor workers off guard in the East

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:50:00 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — The hazardous haze from Canada’s wildfires is taking its toll on people whose jobs have forced them outdoors along the U.S. East Coast even as a dystopian orange hue led to the cancelation of sports events, school field trips and Broadway plays. Delivery workers, construction workers, railroad and airport employees, farm laborers on the West Coast have become all too familiar with the hazards that come with massive wildfires. Yet in the East a sun jaundiced by smoke is so novel, many workers had no idea what was happening. Some, unprepared for the effects of smoke inhalation, left their jobs midday unable to carry on as the air quality worsened. Most, however, pushed through in the hopes that the skies would clear. They haven’t. A laggardly weather system has settled over the region and the smoky blanket billowing from wildfires in Quebec and Nova Scotia continued Thursday, and may persist into the weekend.New York City Public Schools announced Thursday t...

Mentally ill or deliberate killer? Trial starts for man charged with killing Massachusetts officer

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:50:00 GMT

DEDHAM, Mass. (AP) — The prosecutor in the murder trial of a man charged with killing a Massachusetts police officer and an innocent bystander nearly five years ago told jurors in opening statements on Thursday that the suspect acted with deliberation when he used the officer’s own gun to shoot him multiple times.The defense, however, described a defendant who has spent years struggling with mental illness made worse by frequent marijuana use, who wasn’t taking his medications, and who in the days before the killings was having a dispute with his longtime on-and-off girlfriend.Emanuel Lopes, 25, faces 11 charges, including two counts of murder, in connection with the killings of Weymouth police Sgt. Michael Chesna, 42, a veteran and married father of two, and bystander Vera Adams, a 77-year-old widow, on July 15, 2018. He has pleaded not guilty.“We will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Lopes shot and killed Sgt. Michael Chesna, shot and killed Vera Adams, and shot at...

Renowned human rights campaigner Oleg Orlov on trial for “discrediting” Russian military

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:50:00 GMT

MOSCOW (AP) — The co-chair of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights group Memorial, Oleg Orlov, went on trial in Moscow Thursday, charged with “discrediting” the Russian military in his criticism of Russia’s campaign in Ukraine. If convicted, he could face up to five years in prison. Orlov has been fined twice for anti-war pickets, with the new charges based on an article he wrote denouncing Russian aggression in Ukraine.Discrediting the Russian military is a criminal offense under a law adopted after Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. The law is regularly used against Kremlin critics. Memorial and its supporters have called the trial politically motivated.“Oleg Orlov was brought to the dock solely because of an anti-war article he wrote, denouncing Putin’s Russia as a totalitarian fascist society,” Natalia Zviagina, Amnesty International’s Russia Director, said. “Predictably, the system he described cannot tolerate his need to defend the truth and his refusal to...

UAE’s al-Jaber promises young activists he’ll listen; says nothing about fossil fuel ties

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:50:00 GMT

BONN, Germany (AP) — The United Arab Emirates official tapped to head the next global climate summit pledged Thursday to listen to young people demanding a place at the table when negotiators gather in the Gulf nation this fall, but offered no response to criticism of his links with fossil fuel interests.In his first appearance at a United Nations climate meeting this year, the UAE’s Minister of Industry Sultan al-Jaber said he wants the COP28 summit in Dubai to be “inclusive” and deliver a “game-changing outcome” for international efforts to tackle climate change.“I’m determined to make your participation successful,” he said in a brief speech to delegates from youth activist groups that have been clamoring for leaders to take drastic action against global warming.The comments by al-Jaber in Bonn, Germany, drew a wary response from his audience.“Many people, including children and youth all over the world, are rightly concerned about your ties and links to the fos...