With quarters bearing her face and manicured hand set to start shipping Monday, per the U.S. Mint, Wong will be the first Asian American to grace U.S. currency. Few could have been more stunned at the honor than her niece and namesake, Anna Wong, who learned about the American Women Quarters honor from the Mint’s head legal consul.

“From there, it went into the designs and there were so many talented artists with many different renditions. I actually pulled out a quarter to look at the size to try and imagine how the images would transfer over to real life,” Anna Wong wrote in an email to The Associated Press.

The elder Wong, who fought against stereotypes foisted on her by a white Hollywood, is one of five women being honored this year as part of the program. She was chosen for being “a courageous advocate who championed for increased representation and more multi-dimensional roles for Asian American actors,” Mint Director Ventris Gibson said in a statement.

The other icons chosen include writer Maya Angelou; Dr. Sally Ride, an educator and the first American woman in space; Wilma Mankiller, the first female elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation; and Nina Otero-Warren, a trailblazer for New Mexico’s suffrage movement.

Wong’s achievement has excited Asian Americans inside and outside of the entertainment industry.

Her niece, whose father was Anna May Wong’s brother, will participate in an event with the Mint on Nov. 4 at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles. One of Wong’s movies, “Shanghai Express,” will be screened, followed by a panel discussion.

Arthur Dong, the author of “Hollywood Chinese,” said the quarter feels like a validation of not just of Wong’s contributions, but of all Asian Americans’. A star on the Walk of Fame is huge, but being on U.S. currency is a whole other stratosphere of renown.

“What it means is that people all across the nation — and my guess is around the world — will see her face and see her name,” Dong said. “If they don’t know anything about her, they will … be curious and want to learn something about her.”

Born in Los Angeles in 1905, Wong started acting during the silent film era. While her career trajectory coincided with Hollywood’s first Golden Age, things were not so golden for Wong.

She got her first big role in 1922 in “The Toll of the Sea,” according to Dong’s book. Two years later, she played a Mongol slave in “The Thief of Bagdad.” For several years, she was stuck receiving offers only for femme fatale or Asian “dragon lady” roles.

She fled to European film sets and stages, but Wong was back in the U.S. by the early 1930s and again cast as characters reliant on tropes that would hardly be tolerated today. These roles included the untrustworthy daughter of Fu Manchu in “Daughter of the Dragon” and a sex worker in “Shanghai Express.”

She famously lost out on the lead to white actor Luise Rainer in 1937’s “The Good Earth,” based on the novel about a Chinese farming family. But in 1938, she got to play a more humanized, sympathetic Chinese American doctor in “King of Chinatown.”

The juxtaposition of that film with her other roles is the focus of one day in a monthlong program, “Hollywood Chinese: The First 100 Years,” that Dong is curating at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles in November.

“(‘King of Chinatown’) was part of this multi-picture deal at Paramount that gave her more control, more say in the types of films she was going to be participating in,” he said. “For a Chinese American woman to have that kind of multi-picture deal at Paramount, that was quite outstanding.”

By the 1950s, Wong had moved on to television appearances. She was supposed to return to the big screen in the movie adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Flower Drum Song” but had to bow out because of illness. She died on Feb. 2, 1961, a year after receiving her star.

Bing Chen, co-founder of the nonprofit Gold House — focused on elevating representation and empowerment of Asian and Asian American content — called the new quarter “momentous.” He praised Wong as a star “for generations.”

But at the same time, he highlighted how anti-Asian hate incidents and the lack of representation in media still persist.

“In a slate of years when Asian women have faced extensive challenges — from being attacked to objectified on screen to being the least likely group to be promoted to corporate management — this currency reinforces what many of us have known all along: (they’re) here and worthy,” Chen said in a statement. “It’s impossible to forget, though, as a hyphenated community, that Asian Americans constantly struggle between being successful and being seen.”

Asian American advocacy groups outside of the entertainment world also praised the new quarters. Norman Chen, CEO of The Asian American Foundation, plans to seek the coins out to show to his parents.

“For them to see an Asian American woman on a coin, I think it’d be really powerful for them. It’s a dramatic symbol of how we are so integral to American society yet still seen in stereotypical ways,” he said. “But my parents will look at this. They will be pleasantly surprised and proud.”

To sum it up, Chen said, it’s a huge step: “Nothing is more American than our money.”

___

Terry Tang is a member of The Associated Press’ Race and Ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ttangAP

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Torres’ husband, Le Roy, suffers from constrictive bronchitis, a respiratory condition that narrowed his airways and made breathing difficult. Rosie is sure it’s from his exposure to burn pits on his base in Iraq. But last week, even with the Senate just hours away from boosting health and disability benefits for veterans like her husband, she still wasn’t sure she had won over lawmakers, despite earlier votes indicating the bill was on the right track.

“It was still too good to be true,” Torres said. “Even when my senators voted, I said, ‘Something is up.’”

Torres was among the veterans and family members camped out at the Capitol last week, refusing to leave until the Senate passed the bill by a final vote of 86-11. That vote, lopsided at the last, was a momentous victory for a movement that has been years in the making but gained serious traction only during the current Congress.

President Joe Biden is scheduled to sign the bill into law on Wednesday.

The White House ceremony culminates an effort that began with the vets themselves and their harrowing stories, eventually amplified for public attention by comedian-activist Jon Stewart and personally embraced by the president, who has voiced his suspicion that burn pits led to his elder son’s death.

In the end, the bill received unanimous support from Democrats and a majority of Republicans despite its hefty price tag, estimated at roughly $280 billion over 10 years.

‘LET’S FULL-THROTTLE AND GET THIS GOING’

Another Texan, former Marine Tim Jensen, who served in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, was also part of the gathering outside the Capitol last week. He said he lost his best friend, Sgt. Frank Hazelwood, to lung cancer, and two other battalion colleagues to illnesses he attributes to serving near burn pits.

“They were all cancers of the brain and the lungs, and these were not cancers typical of that age group,” Jensen said.

He got actively involved some four years ago after a phone call with Torres, who had started an advocacy organization with her husband — Burn Pits 360. The organization serves as a clearinghouse for grim stories related by veterans and their families about the impact they believe burn pits have had on their lives.

What are these burn pits? Big, smelly and nothing anyone would want to breathe, they were commonly used by the military until several years ago to dispose of such things as chemicals, tires, plastics and medical and human waste.

Former Marine Jensen said a pivotal moment in the quest for federal help occurred when Stewart joined the effort, bringing the publicity that comes with celebrity attention.

“Rosie Torres and Burn Pits 360 have been working on this for over 10 years and they were getting very little traction,” Jensen said. “They needed some bigger push, right, to get it into a national conversation.”

Then the White House invited Danielle Robinson, the widow of Sgt. 1st Class Heath Robinson of Ohio, to attend Biden’s State of the Union address in March. During the address, Biden raised the possibility that being near burn pits led to the death of his son Beau.

“We don’t know for sure if a burn pit was the cause of his brain cancer, or the diseases of so many of our troops,” Biden said in the speech. “But I’m committed to finding out everything we can.”

Jensen said, “That’s when we knew we now have the attention and let’s full-throttle and get this thing going.”

“That certainly energized Democrats in the Senate and the House to move,” said Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas, the ranking Republican on the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.

On the House side, Rep. Mark Takano, chairman of that chamber’s Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, announced in early 2021 that helping veterans who experienced toxic exposure would be one of the panel’s priorities for the coming Congress. That was not long after Biden had taken the oath of office.

Takano, a California Democrat, recalled on the House floor last month how he briefed the president. He said Biden leaned over and started talking about Beau, who died from brain cancer at age 46. He had served in Iraq for about a year in 2008 and 2009.

“It was during that meeting when I knew I had a partner in President Biden,” Takano said.

The congressman was intent on avoiding a piecemeal approach. He didn’t want the legislation to pit vets from one war against those of another in a fight for limited Department of Veterans Affairs resources.

The bill not only expands health and disability benefits for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans but contains provisions to aid more Vietnam-era vets exposed to Agent Orange. It also provides support to veterans exposed to water contamination at North Carolina’s Camp LeJeune and to radiation in Palomares, Spain, site of one of the largest nuclear disasters in history, and Enewetak Atoll of the Marshall Islands, where the U.S. conducted numerous nuclear tests.

The House passed the first iteration of the bill in March. The vote was 256-174 with most Republicans opposing. They cited costs and the strain it would cause on a VA already struggling to meet current workloads.

‘DO YOUR DUTY AND PASS THIS’

A few weeks after the House vote, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., joined Stewart, veterans advocates and Danielle Robinson for a news conference in which she described what it was like being with her husband, for whom the bill is named, in his final moments as he died from lung cancer.

“I ask you to do your duty and pass this,” she implored.

Schumer promised the bill would get a vote in the Senate. “Everyone is going to have to show where they stand, and whose side they are on,” he said.

The Senate was at work on its own version of the bill. Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, said the veterans groups were clear that the bill was the panel’s No. 1 priority.

Tester had cooperative partners in Moran and Republican John Boozman of Arkansas, with their discussions focused on making sure the VA would be ready for the workload.

“We were talking with the VA. … Are we setting you up for failure? Is this something you can deliver on?” Tester said. “And they assured us they could. There were a few changes we had to make and we made them.”

Those changes included staggering the start for some of the benefit enhancements and providing more flexibility for hiring staff. The changes also helped trim tens of billions of dollars in spending from the House version, giving more Republicans reason to support the final product once it went back to the House.

The slightly trimmed bill ended up passing both chambers with significant bipartisan support. But then lawmakers discovered it contained a revenue-related provision that had to originate in the House, requiring a do-over for a technical fix.

That’s normally a formality, but the do-over was complicated when Republicans unexpectedly blocked the burn pits bill from advancing last month. That was shortly after Schumer announced he had reached agreement with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., on a party-line health and climate package paid for in part with higher taxes on corporations. Republicans were angry about that. Veterans were angry, too, that their burn pits bill was blocked, some felt, in retaliation.

Many would spend the next days camped out at the Capitol, taking shifts in Washington’s oppressive humidity and thunderstorms. They got a celebratory ending last week when the Senate passed the measure after giving Republicans a chance to vote on amendments, all defeated.

Moran said the vote reaffirmed to him the Senate could work.

“I’ve never worked or been a United States senator when the Senate functioned well. I missed the days in which that was the case,” he said. “It’s a pleasing circumstance that every so often there are issues and people that come together.”

The post Burn pits recognition for veterans took decade of struggle first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Senate approved the bill by a vote of 86-11. It now goes to President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law. Biden described the legislation as the biggest expansion of benefits for service-connected health issues in 30 years and the largest single bill ever to address exposure to burn pits.

“I look forward to signing this bill, so that veterans and their families and caregivers impacted by toxic exposures finally get the benefits and comprehensive health care they earned and deserve,” Biden said.

The Senate had overwhelming approved the legislation back in June, but a do-over was required to make a technical fix. That process derailed when Republicans made a late attempt to change another aspect of the bill last week and blocked it from advancing.

The abrupt delay outraged veterans groups and advocates, including comedian Jon Stewart. It also placed GOP senators in the uncomfortable position of delaying the top legislative priority of service organizations this session of Congress.

A group of veterans and their families have been camping out at the Capitol since that vote. They had endured thunderstorms and Washington’s notorious summer humidity, but they were in the galleries as senators cast their votes.

“You can go home knowing the good and great thing you have done and accomplished for the United States of America,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told them.

The legislation expands access to health care through the Department of Veterans Affairs for millions who served near burn pits. It also directs the VA to presume that certain respiratory illnesses and cancers were related to burn pit exposure, allowing veterans to obtain disability payments to compensate for their injury without having to prove the illness was a result of their service.

Roughly 70% of disability claims related to burn pit exposure are denied by the VA due to lack of evidence, scientific data and information from the Defense Department.

The military used burn pits to dispose of such things as chemicals, cans, tires, plastics and medical and human waste.

Hundreds of thousands of Vietnam War era veterans and survivors also stand to benefit from the legislation. The bill adds hypertension, or high blood pressure, as a presumptive disease associated with Agent Orange exposure.

The Congressional Budget Office projected that about 600,000 of 1.6 million living Vietnam vets would be eligible for increased compensation, though only about half would have severe enough diagnoses to warrant more compensation.

Also, veterans who served in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Guam, American Samoa and Johnston Atoll will be presumed to have been exposed to Agent Orange. That’s another 50,000 veterans and survivors of deceased veterans who would get compensation for illnesses presumed to have been caused by their exposure to the herbicide, the CBO projected.

The bill also authorizes 31 major medical VA health clinics and research facilities in 19 states.

The bill is projected to increase federal deficits by about $277 billion over 10 years.

The bill has been a years-long effort begun by veterans and their families who viewed the burn pits used in Iraq and Afghanistan as responsible for respiratory problems and other illnesses the veterans experienced after returning home. It was named after Sgt. First Class Heath Robinson from Ohio, who died in 2020 from cancer he attributed to prolonged exposure to burn pits. His widow, Danielle Robinson, was first lady Jill Biden’s guest at the president’s State of the Union address earlier this year.

Stewart, the former host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” also brought increased exposure to the burn pit maladies veterans were facing. He also was in the gallery watching the vote Tuesday. He wept and held his head in his hand as the final vote began.

“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a situation where people who have already given so much had to fight so hard to get so little,” he said after the vote. “And I hope we learn a lesson.”

The House was the first to act on the burn pits legislation. An earlier version the House approved in March was expected to increase spending by more than $320 billion over 10 years, but senators trimmed some of the costs early on by phasing in certain benefit enhancements. They also added funds for staffing to help the VA keep up with the expected increase in demand for health care and an increase in disability claims.

Some GOP senators are still concerned that the bill will increase delays at the VA because of an increased demand for veterans seeking care or disability compensation.

“What we have learned is that the VA cannot deliver what is promised because it does not have the capacity to handle the increase,” said Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.

Sens. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Jerry Moran, R-Kan., led the effort to get the bill passed in the Senate. After passage, Tester told reporters he received a call from Biden, thanking him for “taking a big weight” off his shoulder.

For Biden, the issue is very personal. He has raised the prospect that burn pits in Iraq were responsible for the death of his son Beau.

“We don’t know for sure if a burn pit was the cause of his brain cancer, or the diseases of so many of our troops,” Biden said at his State of the Union speech. “But I’m committed to finding out everything we can.”

Moran said that when the bill failed to pass last week, he was disappointed but remembered the strength of the protesters who had sat outside in the scorching heat for days.

“Thanks to the United States Senate for demonstrating when there’s something good and a good cause, this place still works,” Moran said.

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Associated Press staff writer Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.

The post Senate approves bill to aid vets exposed to toxic burn pits first appeared on Federal News Network.

The revelation comes two weeks after The Washington Post disclosed that the Justice Department had last year seized phone records belonging to three of its journalists who covered the Russia investigation.

CNN said the Justice Department informed Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr in a May 13 letter that it had obtained phone and email records covering a two-month period between June 1 and July 31, 2017.

“CNN strongly condemns the secret collection of any aspect of a journalist’s correspondence, which is clearly protected by the First Amendment,” CNN President Jeff Zucker said in a statement published by the network. “We are asking for an immediate meeting with the Justice Department for an explanation.”

The Justice Department confirmed that the records were formally sought last year, though it did not reveal anything else about the investigation and what story might pertain to. CNN said that in the two-month period listed in the letter, Starr’s reporting included stories on Syria and Afghanistan and coverage of U.S. military options in North Korea that were being offered to President Donald Trump.

“The records at issue relate to 2017 and the legal process to seek these records was approved in 2020,” Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley said in a statement. “Department leadership will soon meet with reporters to hear their concerns about recent notices and further convey Attorney General (Merrick) Garland’s staunch support of and commitment to a free and independent press.”

The letter indicated that the government sought records of Starr’s Pentagon phone extension, the CNN Pentagon booth phone number and her home and cellphone records. The government also said it had obtained “non-content information” from her emails, which would include information about the senders and recipients but not the actual content of the communications.

The Justice Department under former Attorney General Eric Holder announced revised guidelines for obtaining records from the news media during criminal leak investigations, removing language that news organizations said was ambiguous and requiring additional levels of review before a journalist could be subpoenaed.

The updated policy was a response to outrage among news organizations over Obama administration tactics seen as overly aggressive and hostile toward newsgathering.

Bruce Brown, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said Thursday that the phone record seizure amounted to a “big story that just got bigger.”

“That a journalist from another news organization had communications records seized by the Trump Justice Department suggests that the last administration’s efforts to intrude into reporter-source relationships and chill newsgathering is more sweeping than we originally thought,” Brown said.

He called for the Justice Department to explain exactly what happened and “how it plans to strengthen protections for the free flow of information to the public.”

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Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP

The post CNN: Trump Justice Department seized reporter phone records first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Smithsonian said in a statement that its “top priority is to protect the health and safety of its visitors and staff.” No reopening date is scheduled.

The decision comes at a time of rising speculation over whether the District of Columbia will tighten virus restrictions in the face of a nationwide spike. Local figures, both for the number of new positive tests and the government’s preferred metric of a seven-day rolling average per 100,000, are at their highest point since May.

After shuttering all facilities in mid-March, the Smithsonian reopened the National Zoo on a limited basis on July 24, with all indoor buildings closed and timed entry passes to limit crowds. Since then, Smithsonian officials have gradually opened up other facilities, including the National Portrait Gallery and the Museum of African-American History and Culture.

The closure of the zoo’s indoor facilities has meant that fans of the ever-popular pandas had to resort to webcams to get a glimpse of the new baby panda cub born to matriarch Mei Xiang in August.

“Due to the changing nature of the situation, we are not announcing a reopening date at this time,” the Smithsonian said in its statement. “We will use this time to reassess, monitor and explore additional risk-mitigation measures.”

The nation’s capital is at the second phase of its reopening plan, which permits limited indoor seating in restaurants but requires all adults to wear masks outside their homes. Both Maryland and Virginia have recently boosted their restrictions, but D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said there were fewer rollbacks necessary in the city because it had consistently been more conservative that its neighbors.

“We have been very deliberate,” she said Wednesday. “We never had bars open. We never had spectators at sporting events.”

Bowser said her team is discussing more targeted “interventions” that they believe will have a tangible impact on the spread of the virus. She said those changes are coming soon.

Bowser has repeatedly warned about the dangers of small family gatherings such as birthday parties, and has appealed to her residents to skip the traditional Thanksgiving family meal this year. With the exception of Maryland and Virginia, which are exempted, residents of every state other than Hawaii and Vermont are currently required to receive a COVID-19 test before travelling to Washington.

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The wild whiz-bang of the first “Guardians” and its gleeful upending of superhero conventions was, I thought, not the second-coming others felt it was. Having sat through a meteor shower of imposingly well-made Marvel products, the too-pleased-with-itself “Guardians” felt to me like an intensely scripted politician trying to smugly crack wise.

When the motley crew of scavengers reunites in “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” many of its tricks — the anachronistic ’70s hits, the exotically foul-mouthed creatures — are not the sneak attack they were in 2014. But that turns out to be a good thing. No longer so busy advertising his movie’s genre transgressions, Gunn, who wrote and directed the sequel, is free to swim backstrokes through his cosmic, CGI-spiced gumbo.

It’s a soupy, silly spectacle that recalls, if nothing else, the weird, kaleidoscopic design of a Parliament-Funkadelic album cover. Gunn’s film also shares George Clinton’s goofy extravagance (and includes his song “Flashlight”), and a neon-colored cast with its own Mothership.

There are two types in the universe, Dave Bautista’s muscle-mound Drax declares early on. “Those who dance and those who do not.” In the “Guardians” universe, which blithely mocks just about everything, this is close to a mission statement. Whereas the first film featured Chris Pratt’s Peter Quill on a faraway planet bopping to Redbone’s “Come and Get Your Love,” the early scenes of “Vol. 2” find the Guardians battling some giant monster while Baby Groot — the extraterrestrial tree turned sapling (voiced by Vin Diesel) — grooves to ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky.”

The “Guardians” universe, made up of such ironies and oddities, worships at the altar of incongruity. Referenced within are “Cheers,” Mary Poppins, Looking Glass’ “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl),” David Hasselhoff and Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain.” It’s the kind of wacked-out tapestry that even Lindsey Buckingham would find head-spinning.

While Quill resembles a classic Han Solo-like hero, his fellow Guardians — Zoe Saldana’s green-skinned Gamora, the caustic, Bradley Cooper-voiced raccoon Rocket, Drax and Groot — are a multi-species band of outsiders. No two are alike in temperament or genetics.

Though they bicker endlessly, they’re a cobbled-together, multi-species family, just one more likely to trade insults than hugs. And the nature of family is at the center of “Vol. 2.” Quill, having lost his mother as a young child in the first film, learns that his father is a “celestial,” or deity, named Ego (Kurt Russell), with a planet of his own creation. The Guardians meet him after fleeing the remote-controlled pods that pursue them when Rocket steals batteries from Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki), the High Priestess of the golden-hued Sovereign race.

Returning is Michael Rooker’s excellent Yondu Udonta, who resembles a rejected audition to the Blue Man Group and controls a lethal arrow with a whistle. He’s hired to capture the Guardians, but his character — who raised the orphaned Quill — plays an unexpectedly emotional role in Quill’s journey into his past. The effect is similar for Gamora’s sister Nebula, the Guardians’ furious prisoner. Others are in the mix, too, including a brief cameo by Sylvester Stallone and, more impressively, Chris Sullivan’s mutinying, unfortunately named pirate Taserface.

All of the names, though, are kind of joke, as is much of the plot (batteries?), the planets and, well, the whole operation. In one scene, an escaping ship shoots through so many hyper-speed portals that their faces go bug-eyed like Looney Tunes characters, maybe revealing the films’ underlying DNA.

But while this “Guardians of the Galaxy” has no earnest belief in its sci-fi theatrics (the credits action scene is largely just blurry background to Baby Groot’s dancing), it believes surprisingly sincerely in its characters’ inner lives, the ones buried beneath their sarcastic exteriors. “Guardians” takes place further in the reaches of the galaxy than any other Marvel movie, yet it’s the most earthbound. In the words of David Bowie, another space oddity, let’s dance.

“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” a Walt Disney Co. release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for “intense sequences of sci-fi violence, and brief suggestive content.” Running time: 136 minutes. Three stars out of four.

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Follow AP Film Writer on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

The post Review: ‘Guardians’ returns and it’s better than the first first appeared on Federal News Network.

The New York Times reported Thursday that Watters announced he’d been gone for several days at the end of Wednesday night’s edition of “The Five.”

Watters made the comment about Ivanka Trump on Tuesday. He criticized people booing her as she defended her father’s attitude toward women while holding a microphone on stage at an event in Germany. Then he added: “I really liked how she was speaking into that microphone.”

The comment sparked online criticism from MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski and New York Post columnist John Podhoretz .

Watters later explained on Twitter that he was referring to Ivanka Trump’s voice and how it “resonates like a smooth jazz radio DJ.”

The post Fox host takes vacation after Ivanka Trump microphone quip first appeared on Federal News Network.

The code-named “The Puppy Episode” of “Ellen” that aired April 30, 1997, was more than just a hit. It was one of those huge cultural “where were you” moments for anybody remotely interested in TV, or the advancement of LGBTQ people working in TV, or who were itching to come out of their closets at home at a still-perilous time.

Variety summed it up this way: “Climaxing a season of swelling anticipation, Ellen Morgan (the bookstore-managing alter ego of Ellen DeGeneres) finally acknowledges her lesbianism tonight in an ‘Ellen’ hour that represents television’s most-hyped coming out since Little Ricky came out of Lucy 44 years ago.”

The hype was real, fed by DeGeneres’ personal desire to end her secret-keeping at age 38 and to bring her TV character along for the ride. The off-screen act came first in Time by slightly more than two weeks, but “Puppy” was months in the making under lock and key, something that failed to matter when the script leaked and the world then waited.

Why risk it all? Because DeGeneres, one of America’s sweethearts then and now, was done with the lying and the hiding.

“It became more important to me than my career,” she said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “I suddenly said, ‘Why am I being, you know, ashamed of who I am just to be successful and famous in society’s eyes?'”

The hate was also real. There was pulpit-pounding from conservatives, including full-page newspaper ads (the late Rev. Jerry Falwell called her “Ellen DeGenerate”). There was nasty mail all around, including some for guest star Oprah Winfrey suggesting that she “go back to Africa.” After “Puppy” wrapped, cast, crew and live audience were hustled out of the Burbank, California, studio because of a bomb threat.

Winfrey, who played Ellen’s therapist, told the AP she had no clue that “I would get the worst hate mail of my career.” She praised DeGeneres for having the courage to produce a “seminal moment for anybody who was hiding behind anything.”

The episode was watched by an estimated 44 million viewers. It won an Emmy for writing, a Peabody as a landmark in broadcasting and numerous other accolades. The attention coincided with a new and very public relationship for DeGeneres with her girlfriend at the time, Anne Heche, herself new to the out life.

The following season, DeGeneres’ fifth, was the last. It was a failure in terms of ratings. The network took to slapping “adult content” warnings on the show, something DeGeneres knew nothing about ahead of time. The season was bashed by some as unfunny and “too gay,” as was the out-and-proud DeGeneres herself as she lived life big with Heche offscreen. Sponsors fled and the show was canceled.

DeGeneres went into a “hole,” a deep depression, where she stayed without work for more than three years. Laura Dern, among the guest stars on “Puppy” and happy to be included, didn’t work for a year after she played the out love interest to whom Ellen Morgan finally came out. (Both Dern and Winfrey join DeGeneres on Friday on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” to mark the anniversary).

Ellen Garcia in San Pedro, California, is a gay, 47-year-old office administrator for a mental health nonprofit. She was 27 and out to just close friends and co-workers when she watched.

“How you feel about yourself, and how you feel about how society views you, plays a huge factor and that’s why this show was so significant, because it brought all those things out,” she said. “It made me feel normal.”

So what made it the right time for DeGeneres? Well, nothing, she said.

“There was every indication that I should not do it. My publicist at the time said, ‘Don’t do it.’ The studio, the network, everyone said (it),” she recalled. “I said, ‘You know, look, you may lose a show but you have thousands of other shows revolving through this door that come to you and you’ll have another show. This is my career. If I’m willing to lose my career for this, you have to let me do this.'”

The doing wasn’t easy. The first draft of “Puppy” was rejected by the show’s Disney point person. It took forever for script approval, with “Puppy” finally hitting air as the fourth season’s third-to-last show, a full hour as opposed to the usual half-hour. DeGeneres had thrown a bash at her California house for cast members and writers months earlier, at the top of the fourth, declaring then that she wanted to come out, but nobody was sure how it would all play out.

“I remember these walks from our offices to the Disney offices to see the big guys,” recalled Dava Savel, one of the executive producers and writers. “We walked with her and it was kind of like the Bataan Death March. We were like, ‘Ohhh, here we go.’ I remember Ellen crying on the way back when Disney finally gave her the OK.”

History was made. Friends gathered around TVs. The gay rights advocacy group GLAAD organized watch parties after an ABC affiliate in Alabama declined to air “Puppy.”

DeGeneres herself made a spectacular comeback, eventually, now the host of her own daytime talk show and still America’s sweetheart at age 59. (President Barack Obama awarded her the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom, last year.) Numerous gay leads followed on TV, yet advocates hope for still more diversity and accuracy in story and character development.

None of that mattered the night of April 30, 1997.

Eric Marcus, creator and host of the podcast “Making Gay History” and author of a 2002 collection of oral history of the same name, put it this way: “For everyday people, Ellen made gay OK.”

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Associated Press television writers Lynn Elber in Los Angeles and Frazier Moore in New York contributed to this report.

___

This story has been amended to correct the name of Ellen DeGeneres’ current show.

The post ‘Yep, I’m Gay’: Happy 20th out anniversary, Ellen DeGeneres first appeared on Federal News Network.

Scores of officers in riot gear lined up in preparation for possible violence between supporters and opponents of Coulter, but there were no major confrontations, largely because members of an anti-fascist group did not show up in force.

Coulter did not appear at the rally or show up at the University of California, Berkeley despite hinting that she might “swing by to say hello” to her supporters. Coulter had said she was forced to cancel a speaking engagement at the school. University officials said they had been unable to find a suitable and safe spot for her to speak, and offered a May 2 date.

She did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press, but she told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson after the event that she wasn’t going to say anything more inflammatory than calling for enforcement of immigration laws.

“Well, my seditious and hateful speech, the theme of it, obviously, it was going to be a searingly brilliant speech on immigration,” she said.

Thursday’s tensions were another example of how Berkeley has emerged as a flashpoint for extreme left and right forces amid the debate over free speech in a place where the 1960s U.S. free speech movement began before spreading to college campuses across the nation.

Berkeley student Joseph Pagadara, 19, said he had worried about violence and added that the university is caught in the middle of the country’s political divide.

“Both sides are so intolerant of each other. We are a divided country. We need to listen to each other but we’re each caught in our own bubbles,” he said.

As for Coulter, Pagadara said the university should have let her speak. “Now she’s making herself look like the victim and Berkeley like the bad guys,” he said.

University police erected barricades and refused to let any protesters enter the campus. Six people were arrested; one for obstructing an officer and wearing a mask to evade police, and another for possessing a knife.

Several hundred people gathered for the afternoon event supporting Coulter at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park in downtown Berkeley.

“It’s a shame that someone can’t speak in the home of the free speech movement,” said Wilson Grafstrom, an 18-year-old high school student from Menlo Park.

He wore a military grade helmet with a “Make America Great Again” sticker across the back, goggles, a gas mask and knee pads. He blamed people opposed to Coulter and President Donald Trump for forcing him to gear up for problems.

Many at the park about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from the university’s main Sproul Plaza also wore such helmets and body armor. Some had “Build That Wall” or Trump stickers across their headgear. One man had duct tape reading “Berkeley” over his mouth.

While the afternoon rally ended without serious conflict, police at one point formed a human wall in the street separating anti-Trump protesters from the park where pro-Trump groups were gathered.

Anti-Coulter protesters at the park held a banner that read: “It’s not about ‘free speech,’ it’s about bigots trying to normalize hate.”

Earlier, dozens of police wearing flak jackets and carrying 40 mm launchers that shoot “foam batons” flanked Sproul Plaza while a small group of protesters condemning Coulter staged a rally outside campus.

Officers took selfies with students in an attempt to lighten the mood.

Gavin McInnes, co-founder of Vice Media and founder of the pro-Trump “Proud Boys,” spoke at the park gathering later in the day. He said America doesn’t have an obligation to take people from other countries.

“We are here because Ann Coulter got canceled,” he said. “She is one of the most inspiring writers in America today. She is an American hero.”

On its Facebook page, the group calls itself a fraternal organization aimed at “reinstating a spirit of Western chauvinism during an age of globalism and multiculturalism.”

University officials said they feared violence on campus if Coulter spoke, citing “very specific intelligence” of threats that could endanger her and students. In a letter to the campus Wednesday, Chancellor Nicholas B. Dirks said the university is committed to defending free speech but also to protecting its students.

“This is a university, not a battlefield,” Dirks wrote.

Earlier this month, a bloody brawl broke out in downtown Berkeley at a pro-Trump protest that featured speeches by members of the white nationalist right. They clashed with a group of Trump critics who called themselves anti-fascists.

In February, violent protesters forced the cancellation of a speech by right-wing writer Milo Yiannopoulos, who like Coulter was invited by campus Republicans.

___

Associated Press writer Kristin J. Bender contributed to this report from San Francisco.

The post Berkeley protests peaceful as hundreds rally over Coulter first appeared on Federal News Network.

The free-of-charge, air-conditioned splendor, inspired by visits to the city’s priciest hotels, is open to everyone. More than 1 million people a year are expected to use the facility, park officials said.

On Thursday, two bathroom attendants held toilet tissue that a park official cut as the inaugural ribbon for the high-tech facility housed in a landmarked Beaux Arts building behind the New York Public Library in Manhattan. The toilets, in 310 square feet divided between the women’s and men’s sides, are reopening after a three-month renovation.

The eye-popping, LED-illuminated elegance is unusual in a city where public toilets are scarce and generally grungy.

“It’s very clean, and the flowers are alive,” said Irena Marentic, a tourist from Slovenia, as she left the space, whose walls and floors are lined with tiles from Spain and Italy and adorned with art created by Bryant Park’s painters-in-residence.

The women’s side has three toilet stalls, while the men’s side has two stalls and three urinals, the same number as before the renovation. The facility can’t be expanded because the space surrounding it is considered a scenic landmark.

The public luxury was funded privately by the Bryant Park Corp., a not-for-profit that manages the city-owned park and works to improve business in the neighborhood, which includes Fifth Avenue.

“We strive for perfection and only settle for excellence,” declared Dan Biederman, the executive director of the Bryant Park Corp.

The team behind the new posh public bathroom visited the Waldorf Astoria and other luxury hotels for inspiration.

A few out-of-town companies provided donations not included in the facility’s $280,000 cost. The Japanese luxury brand Toto contributed self-flushing, energy-saving toilets and hands-free faucets and wash basins. Brill Hygienic Products Inc., of Delray Beach, Florida, supplied sanitary, electronic seat covers that rotate with each use.

Attendants with mops keep everything clean from 7 a.m. until midnight during the warm months and until 10 p.m. the rest of the year. By park rules, no tips are allowed.

The bathroom is most often used by visitors to the leafy, grassy refuge of Bryant Park, which draws them with its seasonal attractions including a skating rink in winter, holiday shops, outdoor movies on summer nights and tables and chairs.

The park went through a makeover some years ago after decades of urban decay and crime that spilled into the bathroom, which was closed for years and reopened only in the 1990s.

With the improvement of the park, the number of visitors has increased. So, too, has the daily use of the toilets, from an average of 1,800 in 2013 to 3,300 last year, or 1.2 million a year, park officials said. On the women’s side, the wait could be as long as 20 minutes.

On Thursday, with the line growing, park workers directed people to the massive library building and more public toilets, though not quite as fancy.

The post No dump here: Posh public bathroom pops up, with music, art first appeared on Federal News Network.

Deputy Kenneth Bryant, who married Asia Childress in Mississippi in 2012, filed suit last week in a county circuit court in Jackson, the state capital. He’s seeking unspecified damages. Bryant’s lawsuit includes images of texts he says Childress and Kelly exchanged.

Representatives of the rhythm and blues crooner, whose full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, didn’t immediately return requests for comment Thursday. Kelly hasn’t yet responded to the suit.

Anna Powers, a lawyer for Bryant, said Kelly was served with the suit Saturday when he performed in Jackson. Powers said Bryant, before marrying Childress, knew she previously had a relationship with Kelly.

“That was water under the bridge, over and done,” Powers said. “Our client loved his wife, wanted to work out his relationship.”

But the lawsuit says Childress reconnected with Kelly after attending one of his concerts in October 2012, leading to multiple liaisons over more than four years.

At one point in their marriage, according to Bryant, Childress persuaded him to move to the Atlanta area, claiming it would improve her career. Bryant said he sacrificed a good job but that his wife really wanted to be closer to Kelly to pursue the affair. Kelly, 50, once lived in Atlanta part-time.

“Each time R. Kelly would have a concert in a nearby state, Childress would disappear to unite with her lover,” the lawsuit states. “Time after time, R. Kelly cuckolded Bryant, with blatant disregard for Bryant’s and Childress’ vows.”

Powers said that Childress has asked for a divorce, but none has been filed. Childress is a licensed public school teacher in Mississippi, but it’s unclear where she now lives and she could not be reached for comment.

Mississippi is one of only a handful of states that allow spouses to sue others for breaking up their marriages in what are called alienation of affection lawsuits. The others are Hawaii, North Carolina, South Dakota and Utah.

“R Kelly’s wanton and reckless interference with plaintiff’s marriage relationship, his blatant disregard for family values, and his un-condoned and unrelenting adulterous relationship with plaintiff’s wife was accompanied by R. Kelly’s enticement of Childress to ignore her marriage,” the suit states.

Kelly is currently touring to promote his albums “The Buffet,” his 16th solo or collaborative release since 1992. His hits include “I Believe I Can Fly,” ”Bump N’ Grind” and “Ignition.” Kelly’s shows and lyrics often focus on sex and infidelity — such as his Trapped in the Closet series, dealing with a web of sexual deceit.

The Grammy winner has in the past denied allegations he had sexual relationships with underage girls, although he has settled a number of lawsuits. In 2008, a Chicago jury acquitted Kelly of child pornography charges after he was accused of having sex with an underage girl and videotaping it.

___

Follow Jeff Amy at: http://twitter.com/jeffamy . Read his work at https://www.apnews.com/search/Jeff_Amy .

The post Mississippi man sues R. Kelly, says singer ruined marriage first appeared on Federal News Network.

He stands in the railway car that delivered him and his family to the camp. He walks to the gas chamber and the showers. Some rooms he can’t bear to go in. He shares his recollections and tries to remember what he can of his family. All he can really visualize of his sister is the fleeting image of her golden braid of her hair.

Walking with Gutter in Majdanek is an undeniably powerful way to make the Holocaust tangible, and to see it through a survivor’s eyes. Now, being Gutter’s companion as he revisits his painful past is an experience anyone can have just by putting on a headset.

The virtual reality piece “The Last Goodbye,” made from 3-D video and thousands of photographs at Majdanek, is being billed as the first Holocaust survivor testimony in room-scale VR. It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, where the medium’s growing ambitions have been on display over the past week.

What “The Last Goodbye” and other works show is that virtual reality, while still very much in its early days, has a potent ability to foster empathy. In transporting you to an intimate space with someone, it gives that old expression, “walk in my shoes,” a new, high-tech, physical dimension.

That’s literally the concept behind Katheryn Bigelow and Imraan Ismail’s “The Protectors: Walk in the Ranger’s Shoes,” an 8-minute, 360-degree visit with the Garamba National Park rangers. They defend the Democratic Republic of the Congo park from waves of poachers.

Ismail, whose earlier, award-winning VR experience, “The Displaced,” followed three child refugees, says of virtual reality: “It enables empathy because it enables a kind of presence in someone else’s space. And breaking through apathy.”

“For me, it’s exactly that. It’s empathy,” says Bigelow. “Here are these individuals who put their lives on the line in order to thwart the problem. Sometimes they pay the ultimate price. In order to be able to help, you have to be very well informed.”

Big names filmmakers and actors are increasingly experimenting in VR, a fast-growing new media landscape that the investment bank Citi last fall forecast will be a trillion-dollar industry by the year 2035. Jon Favreau (“Iron Man”) and Justin Lin (“Fast & Furious”) have tried their hand in it, and in May, “Birdman” director Alejandro Inarritu will premiere a virtual reality project at the Cannes Film Festival. He has called it an effort to “allow the visitor to go through a direct experience walking in the immigrants’ feet, under their skin, and into their hearts.”

Jennifer Brea turned to VR for an accompanying experience to her Sundance entry film, “Unrest,” about her battle with chronic fatigue syndrome. In the VR experience, the viewer feels what it’s like to be bedridden in her room. Brea calls virtual reality “an engine of empathy.”

A sense of growth was palpable at Tribeca, which increased the size of its VR arcade this year. Loren Hammonds, a film and experiential programmer at Tribeca, sees a rapidly progressing medium where artists are continually reexamining their notions of how to orient the viewer.

“The rules are being broken,” says Hammonds. “There are constantly these sets of rules that keep being presented to creators: you can’t move the camera or you can’t cut. And the minute someone breaks it and it works, well, no more rule.”

Creators, many eyeing the neighboring booths in the Tribeca arcade, acknowledge there’s a competitive atmosphere in VR that can feel like a land rush. Technology is one race, and all agree virtual reality is going to get exponentially smoother and crisper. “The Last Goodbye” has been “future-proofed,” meaning that more detailed photography and video has been set aside for when the tech catches up, says Patrick Milling Smith, chief executive of VR production company Here Be Dragons.

But storytelling is a race of its own in VR, a medium many call a combination of cinema and gaming. Should the viewer have agency to move and shape their experience? If so, to what degree? How do you guide them?

For inspiration, Baobab Studios co-founder Eric Darnell, an animation veteran who co-directed the “Madagascar” films, has studied how magicians manipulate the eyes of their audiences. Baobab’s first VR work, “Invasion!” supplied the viewer a partner — a little white bunny — for an alien arrival.

“Now everyone is doing that,” says Maureen Fan, chief executive of Baobab. “But a lot of people debated us on that. We felt that as a user, why are you there if you’re a fly (on the wall) verses if you’re a bunny? If you have a role to play, how much more do you feel for that character and feel immersed in that world?”

At Tribeca, Baobab premiered the first chapter of an ambitious multi-part series, “Rainbow Crow,” in which John Legend voices a mythical, sonorous bird forever changed by a cosmic adventure. “It’s about love. It’s about inclusion. It’s about community,” says Legend.

The creators of the choose-your-own-adventure, live-action “Broken Night” wanted to take go further. In it, Emily Mortimer plays a woman with a hazy memory recounting a violent encounter with an intruder in her home. At various points in the story, viewers are given a choice to follow different paths in the story, which they select by looking to one side of the action or the other.

“The problem with live-action VR today is it’s not interactive,” says co-director Tal Zubalsky. “Kind of the whole promise of VR is to get you to a different place. But if you get there only as an observer and not as a participant, then you’re not really there.”

___

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

The post In VR land rush, creators unlock an ’empathy engine’ first appeared on Federal News Network.

4:40 p.m.

A rally in support of Ann Coulter has wrapped up in Berkeley, and the conservative provocateur did not make an appearance despite hints from her and hopes from supporters that she might.

A handful of right-wing protesters milled around Thursday afternoon, and a small group of left-wing protesters gathered nearby. But there has so far been none of the violence or destruction that marked similar gatherings in recent months.

Vice Media co-founder Gavin McInnes, the rally’s final speaker, read some of the speech Coulter intended to give and called her a hero who was censored and betrayed.

Police in riot gear are set to remain in the area and on alert if more a heated protest breaks out.

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2:50 p.m.

Hundreds of far-right protesters, some dressed in goggles, gas masks and knee pads, are rallying in support of conservative speaker Ann Coulter in downtown Berkeley.

Some at the rally in downtown Berkeley are wearing combat gear, including military grade ballistic helmets and body armor.

Dozens of police in riot gear stand ready to crack down on violence if it erupts.

Many of the protesters have “Build That Wall” or “Trump” stickers across their helmets and several are concealing their identities wearing mirrored ski goggles over their eyes.

So far, there’s no sign of opponents, or so-called anti-fascists who have violently clashed with the far-right demonstrators previously in Berkeley.

Police have arrested four people at demonstrations on and near the campus related to a canceled Coulter speech.

___

2:25 p.m.

Police have arrested four people as demonstrations continue near the University of California, Berkeley campus involving a canceled speech by commentator Ann Coulter.

Berkeley police Officer Byron White said Thursday that two people were arrested in the city; one for a drug violation and another for possessing a weapon.

University police made two additional arrests for obstructing an officer and wearing a mask to evade police, and another for possessing a knife.

Signs posted around the courtyard list 25 items that are banned, ranging from explosive devices and weapons to balls, skateboards, e-cigarettes and signs.

Dozens of demonstrators gathered near the campus and rallied to show support for free speech and condemn the views of Ann Coulter and her supporters.

___

12:20 p.m.

Dozens of demonstrators gathered near the University of California, Berkeley campus amid a strong police presence and rallied to show support for free speech and condemn the views of Ann Coulter and her supporters.

The rally Thursday ended peacefully and another was set later in the day.

Several dozen police officers surrounded Sproul Plaza on the campus and refused to let protesters enter.

The officers were clad in riot gear and carrying 40 mm launchers that shoot “foam batons” in case of violence.

Earlier, police mobilized on motorbikes, in armored trucks and on foot for possible violence at the rallies over Coulter’s canceled appearance at the university.

Coulter says she might still show up to say hello to supporters.

Police and university officials have said they were bracing for trouble whether or not she decides to show.

___

11:55 a.m.

A few dozen supporters of President Donald Trump and conservative commentator Ann Coulter converged on a park in downtown Berkeley for a peaceful gathering as two dozen police officers looked on.

Holding American flags and wearing “Make America Great Again” hats, the participants talked with each other and reporters on Thursday.

There were no speeches or demonstrations at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park during the first of several events and rallies planned throughout the day.

Earlier, police mobilized on motorbikes, in armored trucks and on foot for possible violence at the rallies over Coulter’s canceled appearance at the University of California campus in the city.

Coulter says she might still show up to say hello to supporters.

Police and university officials have said they were bracing for trouble whether or not she decides to show.

___

11 a.m.

Police in Berkeley are mobilizing on motorbikes, in armored trucks and on foot for possible violence at rallies and protests over Ann Coulter’s canceled appearance at the California city’s university.

Far-right supporters are planning rallies Thursday to denounce what they claim is an attempt to silence their conservative views. A counterprotest by a socialist group also is planned.

Past rallies by the two sides have descended into bloodshed.

City police are preparing at Civic Center Park near campus. San Francisco Bay Area station KTVU reports (http://bit.ly/2pqjmmm ) that they have removed signs throughout the park with graphic images in support of Milo Yiannopoulos, another conservative commentator whose speech at UC Berkeley was canceled earlier this year.

The university’s officers also are out in force, setting up barricades to the school’s main plaza and posting signs warning that weapons are prohibited on campus.

___

9:10 a.m.

The International Socialist Organization says it will hold an “Alt Right Delete” rally in downtown Berkeley to show support for free speech and to condemn the views of conservative commentator Ann Coulter and her supporters.

Thursday’s rally at noon comes as Gavin McInnes, founder of the pro-Trump “Proud Boys” has said he will speak in the afternoon at Berkeley’s Civic Center Park.

He is encouraging similar groups to show up for gathering.

Another group called the Orange County Alt Right Group is planning a morning rally in the same place.

Coulter’s planned speech at University of California, Berkeley, was canceled and police are preparing for possible violence by the groups with opposing political views.

___

8:20 a.m.

The American Civil Liberties Union’s national legal director says “unacceptable threats of violence” that led to the cancellation of Ann Coulter’s speech at the University of California, Berkeley are inconsistent with free speech principles that protect people from government overreach.

David Cole says hateful speech has consequences especially for people of color, LGBTQ people, immigrants and others who have been historically marginalized.

But Cole said late Wednesday the government cannot define threats to free speech because that could result in censorship.

Though Coulter’s speech at UC Berkeley was canceled, far-right supporters were planning rallies Thursday to denounce what they claim is an attempt to silence their conservative views.

Police are preparing for violent outbreaks between militant factions on both sides.

___

7:05 a.m.

Ann Coulter’s speech at University of California, Berkeley, has been canceled, but far-right supporters plan to hold a rally Thursday to denounce what they claim is an attempt to silence their conservative views.

KCBS reports (http://cbsloc.al/2qiK5yi ) that university police are preparing for violent outbreaks between militant factions on both sides. The speech was canceled over fears of violence.

Gavin McInnes, founder of the pro-Trump “Proud Boys,” says he will speak at 2 p.m. at Berkeley’s Civic Center Park and is encouraging other alt-right groups to make a large showing at the gathering.

Coulter says that despite the cancellation of her speech, she might at some point still “swing by to say hello” to her supporters.

Police and university officials say they are bracing for possible trouble, citing intelligence and online chatter by groups threatening to instigate violence.

___

12:02 a.m.

Conservative pundit Ann Coulter says that while her speech at the University of California, Berkeley was canceled, she may still show up to say hello to her supporters.

Police and university officials say they’re bracing for trouble Thursday whether or not she decides to show.

They say intelligence and online chatter by groups threatening to instigate violence over the acid-tongued Coulter has them on edge.

Coulter said in an email to The Associated Press that she might stroll across campus to greet supporters and “stroll around the graveyard of the First Amendment.”

University officials canceled the speech for fear violence would break out. They offered the college Republicans, who had invited Coulter, a different date and venue for the speech, but were turned down.

The post The Latest: Ann Coulter a no-show at rally in Berkeley first appeared on Federal News Network.

Soules is charged with leaving the scene of a deadly accident, a felony that carries up to five years in prison, in Monday night’s crash near his farm in northern Iowa that killed 66-year-old Kenneth Mosher.

Authorities say that Soules’ truck rear-ended Mosher’s tractor, throwing him into a ditch. Police audio shows that Soules called 911 to report that he had “rear-ended a guy on a tractor” and sought medical help for Mosher before he left the scene in another vehicle.

Authorities say that Soules was located at his home about 10 miles away but that he initially refused to answer his door for officers. He was arrested five hours after the crash after they obtained a warrant to enter the home. Soules was released on bond Tuesday after 10 hours in jail. Investigators are looking into who drove Soules away and whether alcohol, speed or texting played a role in the crash. The sheriff says alcoholic beverages were found at the scene and police are trying to determine who had possessed them.

Soules had been represented by attorney Molly Spellman at his initial court appearance Tuesday. But on Thursday, high-profile defense lawyer Alfredo Parrish and two colleagues from his Des Moines law firm informed the court that they are now representing Soules in the case.

A statement issued Thursday from the firm and Soules’ publicist argued audio of the 911 call showed that initial portrayals of Soules having fled the scene were misleading. The statement noted that Soules identified himself on the call and “explained his role in the terrible accident.” It added that he tried to perform CPR on the victim and stayed until emergency medical personnel arrived — two facts that aren’t clear on the call.

The call featured someone performing CPR but it wasn’t clear that it was Soules, who told the dispatcher that he didn’t know the technique. The call was abruptly ended by Soules, who police say then “took off” in a truck.

“His attorneys are confident that once all the evidence is made public, it will show Soules acted reasonably and did everything in his power to provide aid to Mr. Mosher,” the statement said, adding that everyone “in this close-knit farming community is mourning Mr. Mosher’s passing.”

Soules, who is required to wear an ankle bracelet for monitoring, is due in court next week for a preliminary hearing. He is charged with violating a law that requires drivers involved in fatal accidents to remain at the scene “except to seek necessary aid or to report the accident to law enforcement authorities.”

The post Legal team says ‘Bachelor’ star acted reasonably after crash first appeared on Federal News Network.

A red carpet and military honor guard awaited Macri as his motorcade pulled up the driveway to the South Lawn entrance of the White House, where Trump and first lady Melania Trump greeted Macri and his wife, Juliana Awada. The men patted each other’s backs as they turned and went inside. The couples then walked along the colonnade to the Oval Office, ladies first.

Trump and Macri enjoy a personal relationship dating back years from their days as businessmen, ties both hope to leverage to boost U.S.-Argentina relations.

Trump repeatedly referred to his counterpart as his “good friend” and praised Macri as “a great, wonderful person,” and “a great leader.”

“We’re just going to be great friends, better than ever before,” he said of his expectations for relations with the country as the pair met in the Oval Office before a working lunch. Journalists were allowed in at the beginning of both events.

Argentine journalists in the Oval Office asked about lemons. The Trump administration recently postponed a decision by former President Barack Obama to lift a 16-year ban on imports of Argentine lemons. Argentina is one of the world’s top lemon producers.

“I think we’re going to be very favorably disposed,” Trump added, joking of their meeting: “I’ll tell him about North Korea and he’ll tell me about lemons.”

To mark Macri’s visit, the State Department released a batch of several hundred declassified U.S. government documents relating to human rights abuses committed during Argentina’s 1976-1983 dictatorship.

The release is the third of its kind since former President Barack Obama announced the declassification project during a visit to Argentina last March. The first batch was released in August and the second in December. The documents belong to the CIA, FBI and other agencies. They date to the presidencies of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

The White House says the release was made at Macri’s request.

Trump also announced on Thursday a new, bilateral cyber working group “which will help protect the security and economic interest of both of our countries,” he said.

The White House said after the meetings that the leaders had discussed a range of bilateral and regional issues, including trade, security issues like narcotics trafficking and money laundering, as well as Venezuela’s deteriorating political situation.

Trump said “it’s very sad to see what’s happening” in Venezuela, where tens of thousands of Venezuelans have taken to the streets over the past month to protest against socialist President Nicolas Maduro. They blame Maduro for triple-digit inflation, hours-long lines to get food, shortages of medical supplies and a rise in crime. Protesters have clashed with security forces, which have used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse crowds, and looting has destroyed dozens of businesses.

White House officials point to the relationships Trump is building with his foreign counterparts as he approaches his 100th day in office. The president has spoken extensively in recent weeks about the “chemistry” he says he built with Chinese President Xi Jinping after their talks earlier this month at Trump’s private estate in Florida.

___

Associated Press writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report. Follow Darlene Superville and Jill Colvin on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dsupervilleap and http://www.twitter.com/colvinj

The post Trump, Argentine President Macri hold White House talks first appeared on Federal News Network.