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‘Madama Butterfly’ gets a do-over

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:14:33 GMT

Phil Chan believes “Madama Butterfly” should be celebrated as a masterpiece.Chan also believes the 120-year-old Puccini opera should be reclaimed and reinvented by Asian and Asian-American artists.Best known for his work in ballet and as a co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface, an organization  committed to eliminating offensive stereotypes of Asians on stage, Chan makes his opera directing debut with the Boston Lyric Opera’s “Madama Butterfly.” The production, which runs Sept. 14-24 at the Emerson Colonial Theatre, is the culmination of a massive exploration of the legacy of “Madama Butterfly” undertaken by Chan, the BLO team and a dozen others.“We can say that ‘Madama Butterfly’ is inherently racist and sexist, but we could also ask, ‘How can we save it? What else can this work be?’” Chan told the Herald. “Three years ago, scholars, performers, directors, historians, and folks from all across the opera ecosystem took a look at this work asking what are problems with it and what i...

Varvaloucas: Gen Z dropping college dream, America should catch up

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:14:33 GMT

For years, we have lamented the spike in college costs and accompanying student debt bloat while we teach high schoolers to covet admittance to a tiny sliver of prestigious universities — ones that refuse to enlarge incoming class sizes despite endowments the size of some small countries’ gross domestic product.President Joe Biden’s first plan to relieve student debt is dead in the water, and the second is off to a slow start. Meanwhile, Americans’ confidence in higher education is eroding, and college graduates are surprised to find themselves still in the working class.Colleges are finally lying in the beds they made for themselves. According to data from the National Student Clearinghouse, undergraduate enrollment dropped 8% from 2019 to 2022 and doesn’t show signs of recovering post-pandemic. “The slide in the college-going rate since 2018 is the steepest on record,” The Associated Press reported this spring, going on to paint those numbers as a crisis for Gen Z.But is it really...

Dear Abby: In the military, but jealous of others’ careers

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:14:33 GMT

Dear Abby: I’m ashamed to admit that I’m envious of my younger brother’s recent success. He got into a fantastic medical program, and once he’s completed it, I’m sure he’ll get a great job with loads of perks. I am proud of him and I do love him, but I can’t deny my jealousy.I have been in the military for 13 years. It’s been fine as far as financial stability and job security, but my job is dull. I sit behind a desk and essentially push paper as well as perform many other unpleasant military tasks and traditions. I also follow the orders of mostly jackass supervisors.Unfortunately, I’ve got it in my head that I need to do 20 years to retire. I fear starting over or taking risks outside the military without a pension cushion. I have spent a lot of my life envying the success of others.They always seem to be very happy or at least doing better than me. My brother is the most recent one.This feeling of jealousy and, dare I say, mil...

Maldivians vote for president in a virtual geopolitical race between India and China

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:14:33 GMT

MALE, Maldives (AP) — Voting started in the Maldives presidential election Saturday, a virtual referendum over which regional power — India or China — will have the biggest influence in the Indian Ocean archipelago state.President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, perceived as pro-India, sought re-election for a second term amid allegations by his main rival, Mohamed Muiz, that he has allowed India an unchecked presence in the country. Muiz promised that if he won the presidency he would remove Indian troops stationed in the Maldives and balance the country’s trade relations, which he said is heavily in India’s favor.Muiz’s party, the People’s National Congress, is viewed as heavily pro-China. Its leader, Abdullah Yameen, when he was president in 2013-2018, made Maldives a part of China’s “One Belt One Road.” The initiative envisages building ports, railways and roads to expand trade — and China’s influence — in a swath across Asia, Africa and Europe.Mohamed Share...

Republicans’ opposition to abortion threatens a global HIV program that has saved 25 million lives

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:14:33 GMT

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The graves at the edge of the orphanage tell a story of despair. The rough planks in the cracked earth are painted with the names of children, most of them dead in the 1990s. That was before the HIV drugs arrived.Today, the orphanage in Kenya’s capital is a happier, more hopeful place for children with HIV. But a political fight taking place in the United States is threatening the program that helps to keep them and millions of others around the world alive.The reason for the threat? Abortion.The AIDS epidemic has killed more than 40 million people since the first recorded cases in 1981, tripling child mortality and carving decades off life expectancy in the hardest-hit areas of Africa, where the cost of treatment put it out of reach. Horrified, Republican U.S. President George W. Bush and Congress two decades ago created what is described as the largest commitment by any nation in history to combat a single disease.The program known as the U.S. President’s Eme...

For nearly a quarter century, an AP correspondent watched the Putin era unfold in Russia

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:14:33 GMT

NARVA, Estonia (AP) — At the Ivangorod-Narva border crossing, the last glimpse of Russia is of a sprawling fortress and the first sight of Estonia is another fortress on the other bank of a slender river. They’re almost comically close: People with strong arms could have a game of catch between the ramparts.But the proximity is deceptive — the psychological distance between Estonia and Russia is immense and only widening. The countries that once were part of the Soviet Union took radically different paths after the USSR’s collapse.Estonia largely fulfilled the wish of its former President Toomas Hendrik Ilves to become “just another boring Northern European country.” With low-key determination, Estonia remade itself into a model of order and ease, enticing to startup companies and “digital nomads.”Russia initially cultivated lively debate and flamboyantly welcomed the world, then gradually choked off freedoms and closed itself off while its citizens fled and uneasy foreigners felt c...

Trump, DeSantis and other 2024 GOP prospects vie for attention at Iowa-Iowa State football game

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:14:33 GMT

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Donald Trump will cross paths with several Republican rivals Saturday when he attends Iowa’s in-state college football grudge match, one of the former president’s few visits so far to the state that holds the first nominating caucus. Trump will wade into one of the state’s largest sports crowds at Jack Trice Stadium in Ames, where Iowa State University will host the University of Iowa. Also planning to be at the game are Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and several lesser-known candidates.As the race enters its traditional ramp-up after Labor Day, the former president has largely skipped holding town halls or participating in many of the state’s cherished campaign traditions, but has not paid a price so far. Trump remains far ahead of DeSantis and other rivals in Iowa and nationally. Trump has made a habit of visiting Iowa on the same day as DeSantis, whom Trump treats as his main threat. Both men are expected to be in and around the stadium ...

Hurricane Lee is charting a new course in weather and could signal more monster storms

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:14:33 GMT

ATLANTA (AP) — Hurricane Lee is rewriting old rules of meteorology, leaving experts astonished at how rapidly it grew into a goliath Category 5 hurricane.Lee could also be a dreadful harbinger of what is to come as ocean temperatures climb, spawning fast-growing major hurricanes that could threaten communities farther north and farther inland, experts say.“Hurricanes are getting stronger at higher latitudes,” said Marshall Shepherd, director of the University of Georgia’s Atmospheric Sciences Program and a past president of the American Meteorological Society. “If that trend continues, that brings into play places like Washington, D.C., New York and Boston.”HYPER-INTENSIFICATIONAs the oceans warm, they act as jet fuel for hurricanes.“That extra heat comes back to manifest itself at some point, and one of the ways it does is through stronger hurricanes,” Shepherd said.During the overnight hours on Thursday, Lee shattered the standard for what meteorologists call rapid intensifi...

Benedict Arnold burned a Connecticut city. Centuries later, residents get payback in fiery festival

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:14:33 GMT

NEW LONDON, Conn. (AP) — A month before the British surrender at Yorktown ended major fighting during the American Revolution, the traitor Benedict Arnold led a force of Redcoats on a last raid in his home state of Connecticut, burning most of the small coastal city of New London to the ground.It has been 242 years, but New London still hasn’t forgotten.Hundreds of people, some in period costume, are expected to march through the city’s streets Saturday to set Arnold’s effigy ablaze for the Burning of Benedict Arnold Festival, recreating a tradition that was once practiced in many American cities.“I like to jokingly refer to it as the original Burning Man festival,” said organizer Derron Wood, referencing the annual gathering in the Nevada desert.For decades after the Revolutionary War, cities including New York, Boston and Philadelphia held yearly traitor-burning events. They were an alternative to Britain’s raucous and fiery Guy Fawkes Night celebrati...

Tribal nations face less accurate, more limited 2020 census data because of privacy methods

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:14:33 GMT

SANTA FE, N.M (AP) — During the 2020 census, Native American leaders across the U.S. invested time and resources to make sure their members were tallied during the head count, which determines political power and federal funding. But the detailed data sets from the 2020 census they will receive this month are more limited and less accurate than they were in the previous census — and it isn’t because the COVID-19 pandemic severely limited outreach efforts. Rather, it’s due to new privacy methods implemented by the U.S. Census Bureau in order to protect the confidentiality of participants, one of which introduces intentional errors, or “noise,” to the data.At stake is the availability and accuracy of data helping tribal leaders make decisions about where to locate grocery stores or schools and estimate future population growth. Census numbers determine funding for social programs, education, roads and elderly care for tribes that have been historically undercounted.“It was...