Yahoo Movies
Bold Fantasy Predictions for 2021
The FFL crew expains which players could ball out in 2021.
The FFL crew expains which players could ball out in 2021.
Country diary: a witchy barn owl swoops across a wintry landscape. Thixendale, North Yorkshire: In the hazy winter light, hares and partridges blend into the grass and fields
New Delhi [India], January 23 (ANI): As many as 14,256 new COVID-19 cases, 17,130 discharges, and 152 deaths were recorded in the last 24 hours in the country, according to the Union Health Ministry.
New Delhi [India], January 23 (ANI): The Delhi Traffic Police on Saturday issued an advisory on the arrangements and restrictions in place for smooth conduct of Full Dress Rehearsal on January 23 for the Republic Day parade.
LOS ANGELES — Kawhi Leonard scored 31 points, Paul George added 29 and the Los Angeles Clippers beat the Oklahoma City Thunder 120-106 on Friday night for their sixth straight win. Serge Ibaka had 17 points and 11 rebounds to help the Clippers improve to 12-4, tying the Lakers for the NBA’s best record. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led the Thunder with 30 points and eight assists against his former team. Luguentz Dort added 19 points. The Thunder were in catch-up mode most of the way before dropping their second straight and fourth in five games. They were just 14 of 42 from 3-point range and only got to the free-throw line 13 times. The Clippers grabbed control in the first half, scoring 36 points in the first quarter and 34 in the second on 63% shooting. They had scoring runs of 21-2 and 11-4 in the first. They opened the second quarter with a 19-10 spurt, including George’s steal and dunk followed by his consecutive 3-pointers, for their largest lead of 27 points. From there, the Thunder put together a 25-15 surge, hitting five 3-pointers, to trail 70-53 at halftime. The Thunder worked to reduce a 23-point deficit to 10 points in the third. They outscored the Clippers 15-2 during one stretch, helped by eight points from Dort and Mike Muscala’s first 3-pointer after he missed four attempts in the first half. But Leonard quickly put the Clippers ahead 91-75, running off six in a row. Muscala hit another 3-pointer that left the Thunder trailing by 13 going into the fourth. George scored 11 points in the fourth against his old team, when Gilgeous-Alexander had 10 for the Thunder. TIP-INS Thunder: It took until the second half, but Dort and Muscala continued their streaks of both hitting at least one 3-pointer in each game they’ve played this season. Dort leads the team with 34 3-pointers and Muscala is second with 26. ... They dropped to 1-6 against the West. Clippers: Lou Williams recorded his 249th career game with at least five assists off the bench, tying J.J. Barea for the most such games in NBA history. UP NEXT The teams meet again Sunday at Staples Center. ___ More AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports Beth Harris, The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Opening arguments in the Senate impeachment trial for Donald Trump over the Capitol riot will begin the week of Feb. 8, the first time a former president will face such charges after leaving office. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced the schedule Friday evening after reaching an agreement with Republicans, who had pushed for a delay to give Trump a chance to organize his legal team and prepare a defence on the sole charge of incitement of insurrection. The February start date also allows the Senate more time to confirm President Joe Biden's Cabinet nominations and consider his proposed $1.9 trillion COVID relief package — top priorities of the new White House agenda that could become stalled during trial proceedings. “We all want to put this awful chapter in our nation’s history behind us,” Schumer said about the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol siege by a mob of pro-Trump supporters. “But healing and unity will only come if there is truth and accountability. And that is what this trial will provide.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will send the article of impeachment late Monday, with senators sworn in as jurors Tuesday. But opening arguments will move to February. Trump's impeachment trial would be the first of a U.S. president no longer in office, an undertaking that his Senate Republican allies argue is pointless, and potentially even unconstitutional. Democrats say they have to hold Trump to account, even as they pursue Biden's legislative priorities, because of the gravity of what took place — a violent attack on the U.S. Congress aimed at overturning an election. If Trump is convicted, the Senate could vote to bar him from holding office ever again, potentially upending his chances for a political comeback. The urgency for Democrats to hold Trump responsible was complicated by the need to put Biden's government in place and start quick work on his coronavirus aid package. “The more time we have to get up and running ... the better,” Biden said Friday in brief comments to reporters. Republicans were eager to delay the trial, putting distance between the shocking events of the siege and the votes that will test their loyalty to the former president who still commands voters’ attention. Negotiations between Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell were complicated, as the two are also in talks over a power-sharing agreement for the Senate, which is split 50-50 but in Democratic control because Vice-President Kamala Harris serves as a tie-breaking vote. McConnell had proposed delaying the start and welcomed the agreement. “Republicans set out to ensure the Senate’s next steps will respect former President Trump’s rights and due process, the institution of the Senate, and the office of the presidency,” said McConnell spokesman Doug Andres. "That goal has been achieved.” Pelosi said Friday the nine House impeachment managers, or prosecutors, are "ready to begin to make their case” against Trump. Trump’s team will have had the same amount of time since the House impeachment vote to prepare, Pelosi said. Democrats say they can move quickly through the trial, potentially with no witnesses, because lawmakers experienced the insurrection first-hand. One of the managers, California Rep. Ted Lieu, said Friday that Democrats would rather be working on policy right now, but “we can't just ignore" what happened on Jan. 6. “This was an attack on our Capitol by a violent mob,” Lieu said in an interview with The Associated Press. “It was an attack on our nation instigated by our commander in chief. We have to address that and make sure it never happens again.” Trump, who told his supporters to “fight like hell” just before they invaded the Capitol two weeks ago and interrupted the electoral vote count, is still assembling his legal team. White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Friday deferred to Congress on timing for the trial and would not say whether Biden thinks Trump should be convicted. But she said lawmakers can simultaneously discuss and have hearings on Biden's coronavirus relief package. “We don’t think it can be delayed or it can wait, so they’re going to have to find a path forward,” Psaki said of the virus aid. “He’s confident they can do that.” Democrats would need the support of at least 17 Republicans to convict Trump, a high bar. While most Republican senators condemned Trump's actions that day, far fewer appear to be ready to convict. A handful of Senate Republicans have indicated they are open — but not committed — to conviction. But most have come to Trump's defence as it relates to impeachment, saying they believe a trial will be divisive and questioning the legality of trying a president after he has left office. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally who has been helping him find lawyers, said Friday there is “a very compelling constitutional case” on whether Trump can be impeached after his term — an assertion Democrats reject, saying there is ample legal precedent. Graham also suggested Republicans will argue Trump's words on Jan. 6 were not legally “incitement.” “On the facts, they’ll be able to mount a defence, so the main thing is to give him a chance to prepare and run the trial orderly, and hopefully the Senate will reject the idea of pursuing presidents after they leave office,” Graham said. Other Republicans had stronger words, suggesting there should be no trial at all. Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso said Pelosi is sending a message to Biden that “my hatred and vitriol of Donald Trump is so strong that I will stop even you and your Cabinet from getting anything done.” Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson suggested Democrats are choosing “vindictiveness” over national security as Biden attempts to set up his government. McConnell, who said this week that Trump “provoked” his supporters before the riot, has not said how he will vote. He said Senate Republicans "strongly believe we need a full and fair process where the former president can mount a defence and the Senate can properly consider the factual, legal and constitutional questions.” Trump, the first president to be impeached twice, is at a disadvantage compared with his first impeachment trial, in which he had the full resources of the White House counsel’s office to defend him. Graham helped Trump hire South Carolina attorney Butch Bowers after members of his past legal teams indicated they did not plan to join the new effort. ___ Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani in Washington, Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina, and Jill Colvin in West Palm Beach, Florida, contributed to this report. Mary Clare Jalonick And Lisa Mascaro, The Associated Press
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Photo GettyThe University of Mississippi has been a formidable institution since its founding in 1848—thirteen years before the Civil War started. And it has been steeped in racism and exclusion for decades. The school’s mascot has changed several times since 1928, but the most controversial—from the late ’70s through 2003—was “Colonel Reb,” a caricature of a slaveowner (the current mascot is the “Landshark”). The school didn’t remove the song “Dixie” from its marching band’s repertoire until 2016. A long-contested Confederate statue that graced the entrance of the campus was finally moved in 2020 to a less prominent location on university property. Yet, the racist monikers of “Ole Miss,” an antebellum term used by the enslaved, and “Rebels” who fought to uphold slavery, are still held dear.In 2018, Ed Meek, a wealthy businessman who donated $5.3 million to the School of Journalism and New Media and had it subsequently named after him, wrote a blatantly racist, sexist Facebook post that made Black female students feel specifically targeted and unwelcome at a university where underrepresented Black students and faculty make up 13 and 6 percent respectively in a state where 38 percent of the population is Black. By contrast, an overrepresented 76 percent of students and faculty are white. Several members of the faculty and staff and students initiated a petition to rename the building, remove the confederate statue, and to establish scholarships for Black women in journalism. A name that was floated to replace Meek’s was that of my great-grandmother Ida B. Wells—a journalism pioneer and native Mississippian from nearby Holly Springs.One of those who protested was UM history professor Dr. Garrett Felber, who strongly advocated for the renaming of the journalism school. I met him in 2018 when he organized an Ida B. Wells Teach-In that featured various speakers, a student choir, a short video, and I gave a few remarks. Interacting with advocates for justice and inclusion gave me a sense of hope that UM, which has a contentious history of race relations, would finally get on the path to being a more open and inclusive institution. When I met with the then dean of the journalism school, I did not experience a warm reception. I left the meeting with the impression that there was more sympathy for the wealthy donor Meek, who was viewed as having his character attacked, than the Black students whose presence he implied denigrated the quality of the school. Meek eventually withdrew his money and removed his name from the school.Despite the tough and sometimes racially contentious environments on some college campuses, the academy is routinely framed by some as liberal enclaves where people mull over philosophies that are removed from the “real world.” Felber is the opposite of that. Like Wells, he has advocated fiercely to address and solve issues of criminal justice. He was the lead organizer of the Making and Unmaking Mass Incarceration conference, project director of the Parchman Oral History Project, and co-founder of Liberation Literacy, an abolitionist collective which began as a racial justice reading group inside and outside of prisons in Oregon. He initiated the Prison Abolition Syllabus, which contextualized the prison strikes in 2016 and 2018. He also helped launch Study and Struggle, a political education program that addresses the crises of Mississippi prisons and detention centers.His advocacy is reminiscent of Wells, who frequently visited prisoners and even worked as a probation officer because she was committed to helping those who were easy targets of the police state. She wrote about the injustice of the convict lease system, which used prisoners as sources of free labor. She also wrote her detailed pamphlet The Arkansas Race Riot, after she visited a group of imprisoned sharecroppers from Elaine, Arkansas who defended themselves from attack by a group of white vigilantes.Felber was on the brink of expanding his work focused on the carceral state when a $57,000 grant he applied for was heralded by the university to support the Study and Struggle program. Then a second grant for the same program was rejected by the chair of his department with the claim that the program was political versus historical and could jeopardize department funding. This was in the climate of the Trump administration’s attack on critical race theory and antiracist work. Felber suspected the rejection of the grant was more about appeasing racist donors than the excuse he was given about him not following proper procedure. He requested a written explanation outlining the rationale for the rejection of the grant as a condition of him meeting with his chair about the matter. Then he lost his job.The sudden termination of Felber sends a very strong and disturbing message. Felber was doing antiracist work and initiated programs that benefited the marginalized and disenfranchised. He was questioning the university's deference to wealthy racists, which is part of its long and storied history of racial intolerance, marginalization, and downright violence against Black people and their allies. To directly address past injustices, he organized a program in February 2020 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the mass arrest and expulsion of Black students who simply demanded equality, respect, and support. From the need to have federal protection for James Meredith to integrate the school in 1962, to the lethargy with which the university has addressed offensive symbols, songs, and statues, the flagship state school in my great-grandmother’s home state of Mississippi seems proud to uphold an environment that is hostile toward diversity, equity, and inclusion.A letter of support for Felber with pledges to avoid speaking at the school until he is reinstated has already garnered over 5,000 signatures from his fellow academics across the country. This show of solidarity among scholars illustrates that there is a community that believes in tolerance, inclusion, academic freedom, and institutional transparency. After a protest-filled summer in response to systemic racism and police brutality, some institutions are examining their environments and making significant strides to reckon with racist pasts and policies. Maybe UM will someday be proactive in a march toward reparative justice versus begrudgingly responding to agitation.Michelle Duster teaches at Columbia College Chicago. She is the author of the forthcoming Ida B. the Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells (Atria/One Signal Publishers).Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
Carolina Cabral/GettyIt became a favorite shouting game on the streets of Caracas. Someone would randomly holler President Nicolás Maduro’s name and people nearby would roar back “motherf**ker”!Not any more. This gleeful verbal exchange between total strangers from a year ago is now regarded as a criminal behavior under the recently established Law against Hatred. The so-called Esquinas de Ideas (Corners of Ideas), where opponents used to tear into the country’s leader, are mostly gone. So are the fiery speeches of dissent in the National Assembly.It appears that political and civic opposition has completely retreated from the public spaces all around Venezuela.In this vacuum, Maduro’s allies talk aggressively about the radical social changes they plan to implement while also issuing dark threats against their opponents. These Chavistas—what Maduro supporters call themselves—regained absolute control of the National Assembly following the December 6 elections, which were boycotted by the opposition and not recognized as legitimate by most Western countries, including the U.S. The opposition, calling the election fraudulent, effectively lost the last democratic institution in the country.Disastrous Venezuelan Coup Was Supported by Trump Admin Officials, Lawsuit ClaimsOpposition leader Juan Guaidó—once deliriously popular—has vowed to fight on, even if it would mean getting together with his fellow opposition lawmakers in parks, gymnasiums or backyards. However, many have gone underground and Guaidó is now in danger of becoming irrelevant.The list of opposition setbacks over the past five years is a long one: a failed legislative referendum to depose Maduro, lack of military support for an uprising, street protests lasting over 100 days that ultimately went nowhere, and the failure of an interim government led by Guaidó.At the beginning of his revolt, Guaidó’s popularity hovered over 70 percent. He had the backing of 60 countries around the world—including the U.S. and much of Europe—which recognized him as Venezuela's rightful president. But as the opposition fizzled, the Venezuelan public has lost faith. “The opposition leading figures have only around a 25 percent approval rating, including Guaidó and [Leopoldo] López,” says Luis Vicente León, a sociologist and a director of Datanálisis, a major polling firm based in Caracas.Just over 2 months ago, López—another key resistance leader and longtime political prisoner whose followers have built a Nelson Mandela-like aura around him—escaped to Madrid. He now lives in exile in Spain.The loss of influence by López and Guaidó, combined with the fact that the resistance does not control any public institutions anymore, has led to the near-complete immobilization of the opposition and deeply damaged its reputation.“The opposition tried everything there was but nothing worked out,” asserts Alonso Moleiro, an influential columnist and political analyst based in Caracas. “The regime now feels powerful and will probably impose its authority with an iron fist.”Back in December 2015, the opposition swept socialists from the National Assembly in a landslide electoral win. The incoming lawmakers were darlings of millions of Venezuelans who saw in them a legendary generation that was about to liberate Venezuela from Maduro's socialistic regime.They peaked with the meteoric rise of Guaidó. On January 23, 2019, this young lawmaker boldly called Maduro a usurper and proclaimed himself the interim president while out in the open on the street. Guaidó was at that time next in line for the presidency as President of the National Assembly. He dazzled countless Venezuelans with this move, as well as many international leaders, who recognized him as the president of Venezuela. (U.S. President Joe Biden will reportedly follow suit; his support might save Guaidó from prison, at least for the time being.)Today, Guaidó is without public office and shackled by a record of failed strategies and even corruption allegations. The euphoric public embrace came crashing down and now Guaidó and other opposition politicians face not only a big decline in popular support but also dwindling numbers. Dozens from the resistance have fled into exile.This has created tremendous tension between those who have escaped and those who have remained, analysts say. The lawmakers who are still in the country and have decided to keep challenging the government face both a real possibility of a government crackdown as well as continued economic hardship. Opposition lawmakers in Venezuela never made any money, as they were labeled early on in their tenure as illegitimate by the Supreme Court, which is stacked with Maduro’s allies. They were stripped of their powers in March 2016.Here’s How Venezuela’s ‘Interim President’ Blew His Chance to Oust MaduroBut those abroad do get paid. As part of Guaidó’s exiled government they make money from funds Guaidó has received from the U.S and other western countries. And no secret agents constantly hound them as they do members of the resistance in Venezuela.There is also a divide about the best strategy against Maduro going forward. “Leaders abroad favor more sanctions, isolation and international pressure. But those inside Venezuela feel they need to reassess this strategy, maybe set the bar lower and make the demand something other than Maduro’s exit, at least as a starting point,” says Risa Grais-Targow, a Latin American analyst at the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy based in New York. “This split in strategy between moderates and hardliners in the opposition will continue to widen,” she predicts.No wonder: If anti-Maduro lawmakers inside Venezuela were to call now for further economic sanctions or even invasion by Western countries to topple Maduro, they could easily face a one-way ticket to prison.Chavistas in the National Assembly have wasted no time in moving against the opposition. During their first session they set up a commission that will investigate the alleged crimes of Juan Guaidó and his deputies. And most recently, Chavistas in the National Assembly have asked the Venezuelan Attorney General to issue an arrest warrant against Guaidó’s lawmakers.Iris Valera, a radical Chavista and newly named vice-president of the National Assembly, has also called for stripping citizenship from those Venezuelans who have left the country as well as expropriating land and possessions from some of the emigrants.Some political analysts point to López's flight to Spain as indicative of this rift within the opposition as it tries to grapple with the current political dominance of the Chavistas.“Leopoldo López felt he was useless as a prisoner and decided to take his fight to Europe where he can, among other things, keep international support behind Guaidó and away from other opposition leaders,” notes sociologist Luis Felipe León.Last October, after López had spent a total of six years in prison, under house arrest, and in diplomatic asylum in the Spanish ambassador’s residence in Caracas, he escaped and fled the country. This was another blow to the psyche of the opposition supporters.Previously, López's supporters kept declaring that this leader was walking in the footsteps of Nelson Mandela. López had declared he would leave prison only when all other political prisoners were free and the government had met his demands.In November 2019, López told me that he was ready to sacrifice his best years for the country's freedoms and democracy. Along with Mandela and Martin Luther King, Lopéz mentioned another hero of his, the Czechoslovakian dissident and playwright Václav Havel, who became his country’s first democratically elected president in 40 years after the fall of Communism.López talked to me, while he was hiding in the Spanish embassy in Caracas, about his admiration for Havel. “In prison, I read several of Havel's books, among them Letters to Olga. There is one episode that left a huge impression on me. He writes about never giving up, never kneeling down before the dictatorship, that the prison for him was another form of resistance. I have taken the same path.”But last month from Madrid, López told PBS Newshour that being cut off from the outside world left him impotent and so he decided to flee. “I was increasingly more isolated and I needed to contribute from the outside.”López also said that in Venezuela, life is often like a rollercoaster between hope and despair and that the opposition will bounce back again from the current period of despair.But, at least for now, Maduro appears to be firmly entrenched, successfully beating back countless attempts by the opposition to dislodge him. At the same time, the U.S. oil sanctions against Venezuela will probably stay in place for now. But hope that Maduro’s lack of cash might lead to his downfall has repeatedly been proven wrong.On the other hand, being cash-poor is still a weakness for the current regime. Some in the opposition claim that Maduro won’t have enough money to bribe his cronies to keep them on his side and that the powerful and essential generals could at some point turn on Maduro. So the thinking and the hoping goes.“Even though the economy has deteriorated and the pie they all share has shrunk for the military leaders, it is better to be in power with less money than on the outside with no money and in jail,” argues the analyst Risa Grais-Targow. “This regime proved to be remarkably resilient.”Meanwhile many Venezuelans feel abandoned and left on their own in a country where food, medicine and fuel is scarce and power outages occur on a daily basis. Many feel like refugees within their own country. Aurelio Navarro, a farmer, has found solace and refuge on his farm in a picturesque area called Galipán which is nestled in the mountain range Ávila.From one side of his plot of land, he enjoys the azure waters of the Caribbean sea, on the other side, the thick foliage of tropical vegetation. Navarro basks in the calm of his paradise.But don’t talk politics in his presence. The topic immediately puts him in two different emotional mindsets: crippling fear and heavy doses of nostalgia. The first feeling is triggered by the abuses of Maduro’s regime, the second one by Guaidó’s ineffectual opposition.“All my life I’ve been waiting for a leader I could fall in love with,” says Navarro. “It happened with Guaidó but he failed and broke my heart,”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
New Delhi [India], January 23 (ANI): Union Home Minister Amit Shah will on Saturday launch the "Ayushman CAPF" healthcare scheme for the central paramilitary force personnel in Guwahati, Assam.
Ryan Nichols faces multiple charges for his participation in the failed insurrection attempt at the U.S. Capitol earlier this month
Microsoft won't raise the price of Xbox Live, and it's adding free multiplayer for free-to-play games like 'Fortnite.'
The SpaceX Transporter-1 mission set to launch today will put 133 commercial and government spacecraft, as well as 10 more Starlink satellites, in orbit. SpaceX says that’s “the most spacecraft ever deployed on a single mission” — the previous record holder, an Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, ferried only 104 satellites to space. In addition to having a record-breaking payload, Transporter-1 is also the first dedicated launch under the SmallSat Rideshare Program SpaceX announced back in 2019.
Courtesy Gingko Press IncThe elegantly attired, 4’11” great grandmother might not have been easily identifiable as a music mogul to the industry insiders attending the American Association of Independent Music Awards at Manhattan’s Highline Ballroom on that day in the summer of 2015. Then Patricia Chin, co-founder of reggae label VP Records, stepped up to the stage to receive the group’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the first woman ever to have done so. “As I look out at the audience tonight, I imagine that many of you may be asking yourselves, ‘who is this Chinese lady with this big Jamaican accent, and what is VP Records?’” said Miss Pat, (as she is affectionately known) in her acceptance speech, to roaring applause. “In large part the story of VP Records is about a woman working behind the scenes and her journey for the past 50 years in the reggae music industry.”VP Records, established in Queens, New York, in 1979, with additional offices in Kingston, London, Miami, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo, is the world’s largest independent label, distributor, and publisher of reggae and dancehall music, controlling more than 25,000 song titles. In her forthcoming glossy coffee table memoir, Pat Chin: Miss Pat My Reggae Music Journey, Miss Pat tells VP’s story, which is inextricably tied to the development of Jamaica’s recording industry and the birth of ska, rocksteady and reggae. Miss Pat offers historical anecdotes about recording sessions with Bob Marley and Lee “Scratch” Perry when both were seeking greater fortunes. Accolades for Miss Pat are found throughout, including one from hip-hop godfather DJ Kool Herc, who says: “What Berry Gordy was to Motown, Patricia Chin is to VP Records and the reggae industry.” Courtesy Gingko Press Inc In the book’s most compelling passages, Miss Pat courageously details her life’s greatest challenges: the death of her infant son; fleeing Jamaica’s explosive politics of the 1970s, struggling to acclimate to another society; defying the sexist and racist attitudes she encountered as a non-white female working in the music business in New York City; becoming educated about alcoholism to help her embattled husband, VP Records co-founder, Vincent “Randy” Chin, who passed away in 2003; coping with the unsolved murder of her grandson, VP A&R Joel Chin, in 2011. “The process of writing my book was freeing,” Miss Pat told The Daily Beast in an early December interview via Zoom. “I wanted my book to be truthful, entertaining and interesting so I couldn’t leave out personal details, I want people to get to know me better instead of seeing me as just a music person.”The reggae matriarch, now 83, was born Dorothy Patricia Williams on Sept. 20, 1937; her maternal and paternal grandparents migrated to Jamaica, respectively, from China and India, seeking better lives. “It was hard to survive where they came from, so they took a chance on Jamaica,” recalled Miss Pat, who was raised in a single room house in Kingston’s Greenwich Farm community. “Despite our lack of material comforts, there was never time for complaints. My mother shared stories about her hardworking shopkeeper parents and the innovative tricks they used to do business with their customers, despite the language barrier,” she writes. Miss Pat’s father wanted her to work in a bank, but, inspired by her idol Mother Teresa, she studied nursing at Kingston’s University of The West Indies. Inheriting her mother’s rebellious spirit, Miss Pat relished the freedom of living on campus, where she was often visited by a handsome young man, Vincent Chin, much to her father’s disapproval. “Known for skipping school and smoking marijuana, Vincent was your typical bad boy, the kind of suitor no parent wanted for their daughter,” Miss Pat writes. “To make it worse, he had already fathered a child (Clive) who was a toddler. My father saw my suitor for what he was: trouble.”On March 15, 1957, Miss Pat, then 19 years old, left school and married Vincent, two weeks before giving birth to their son, Gregory. He died from meningitis on his first birthday. “For the sake of my well-being,” penned Miss Pat, “I was never told where my infant son was laid to rest.” Vincent and Pat’s son Christopher was born four months later.Are Jamaica’s Biggest Stars Leaving Reggae Behind?Vincent got a job, stocking jukeboxes across the island with new 7” records; Miss Pat believed that the older discs could be sold directly to the public. In 1959 they set up a shop within a small grocery store selling the used records. They called their business Randy’s Record Mart, after Randy Wood, owner of WHIN AM, a jazz, R&B, and country music station in Tennessee that Vincent faithfully listened to on his shortwave radio. In 1961 Vincent and Miss Pat moved to an 8’ x 10’ space within a Chinese restaurant located at 17 North Parade, a bustling area of downtown Kingston, next to a central bus route; they set up a small speaker box outside playing music, which brought in customers. Sales increased and with a loan from Miss Pat’s father, the couple eventually bought out the Chinese restaurant and purchased the building. Shortly thereafter, Vincent and Pat acquired the building next door and began building a recording studio. Courtesy Gingko Press Inc The opening of Studio 17 upstairs from Randy’s Record Mart coincided with the development of Jamaica’s first popular music form, ska, which led to a proliferation in recordings that Studio 17 helped expedite. “In those days, there was no one stop studio where one could complete their work, start to finish. You had to go to one place to do a recording, another to do the mastering. With more and more artists and producers emerging, and with the existing studios charging high fees, we designed the studio to be a full house production so that we could be completely independent,” writes Miss Pat, who would play the test pressings of recordings in the shop to gauge the customers’ interest and then choose which songs they would press in bulk for sale.Vincent Chin started producing his own records and one of his biggest hits arrived in 1962, the year of Jamaica’s independence from England. “Independent Jamaica” didn’t incorporate the island’s indigenous ska beat, it was a calypso sung by Trinidadian born, Kingston based Lord Creator; nonetheless, it became an anthem for the new nation’s optimism, released on Randy’s Creative Calypso label.Miss Pat stocked the shop with at least one record by every artist she knew of and asked aspiring artists and producers to leave their records on consignment, which laid the foundation for Randy’s wholesale division. Music lovers flocked to Randy’s to hear the latest records while producers sought out the singers and musicians that would frequent an adjacent alley called Idler’s Rest (“the unofficial epicenter of Jamaican music,” Miss Pat writes) to record tracks at Studio 17. Many icons of Jamaican music recorded there, including singers Gregory Isaacs, Dennis Brown and Alton Ellis, harmony trios The Wailers and The Maytals and seminal ska outfit, The Skatalites.Several classic roots reggae albums were recorded at Studio 17, including The Wailers’ Soul Rebel, Burning Spear’s Marcus Garvey, Peter Tosh’s Equal Rights and melodica master Augustus Pablo’s debut This Is Augustus Pablo, the latter produced by Pablo’s school mate, Vincent’s son Clive.Clive also produced Pablo’s (still) influential single, “Java” and Studio 17’s first international hit, Carl Malcolm’s “Fattie Bum-Bum,” which reached No. 8 on the UK singles chart. The late American singer Johnny Nash, reportedly the first non-Jamaican to record rocksteady/reggae on the island, was so impressed by Studio 17, he booked the facility for three consecutive months. Miss Pat attributes Studio 17’s success to Vincent’s amiable personality. “He loved everyone regardless of how poor they were; many musicians didn’t even have shoes on their feet, but Vincent would bring them into the studio, encourage them. Everything was experimentation, we didn’t have a reggae culture yet, it started from that time,” notes Miss Pat.Due to escalating political violence in Jamaica throughout the 1970s, Vincent and Pat migrated to the U.S. “At that time (under Prime Minister Michael Manley’s socialist government) if you owned a business, you had a little more money than the others and with the unrest and riots going on, we felt very uncomfortable, and worried about the safety of our children,” Miss Pat acknowledged. They chose New York City because Vincent’s brother was living in Brooklyn, where he established Chin Randy’s Records. Vincent and his sons Clive and Christopher landed at New York City’s JFK airport in the summer of 1977. Miss Pat remained in Kingston with her two younger children, Vincent (a.k.a. Randy) Jr. and Angela; they joined the family in New York City the following year.Vincent and Pat started their new endeavor by renting a small storefront near the elevated train tracks along Queens’ Jamaica Avenue, from which they supplied reggae records to a few outlets. When the Jamaican government began clamping down on exports, Vincent and Pat started pressing their own records in New York; as their sales increased, they purchased a building at 170-21 Jamaica Ave in 1979 from another wholesale record business owner, Sam Kleinholt. The Chins named their reggae wholesale/retail store VP Records, the initials of Vincent and Pat’s first names. They hired Kleinholt’s secretary, Rhoda Bernstein, who worked with VP for 15 years, until her death. “She was a godsend,” Miss Pat writes, “she taught us everything she thought would help us adjust; to say she made our transition into New York life easier is an understatement.”Not all New Yorkers were as welcoming. Miss Pat remembers wanting to purchase a home in the (then) predominantly white community of Jamaica Estates, about two miles from VP Records; her real estate broker discouraged her, without explanation. “Years after, I realized I couldn’t buy there because we were of a different culture, there was a color barrier,” she notes, “he wanted to put me in another area where I would be more ‘comfortable.’” Miss Pat also recalled instances when VP customers called the store, got her on the line and asked to speak to a man instead. “They thought I didn’t know the music,” she reminisced. “I worked hard on my skills; we had so much music coming out every day, I had to know the name of the record, the singer, the producer, the rhythm track; I was like an encyclopedia, I knew everything about the music.” Courtesy Gingko Press Inc As VP Records grew into a thriving one stop shop covering all facets of Jamaican music, in 1990 the Chins purchased two large warehouses, one in Jamaica, Queens, the other in Miami. As the decade progressed, Jamaican dancehall reggae exploded in popularity as several of the genre’s superstars (including Shabba Ranks, Super Cat) signed to major record labels and impacted a wider American market. VP had distributed these artists’ records for years, so their familiarity with the music became an indispensable asset to the majors in furthering dancehall’s appeal. The Chins’ next move was establishing the VP Records label in 1993, the same year they launched their most successful annual reggae/dancehall compilation series, Reggae Gold.VP Records’ 1999 release “Who Am I” by Beenie Man was a certified gold single. Even greater triumphs arrived with Sean Paul, who was signed to VP by Clive’s son Joel Chin, in 2000. VP entered into a partnership with Atlantic Records, propelled by Sean’s big hit “Gimme The Light.” Sean’s two-time platinum selling sophomore album Dutty Rock won a Grammy for Best Reggae Album. “That was the moment we took a deep gasp and realized, as we Jamaicans would say, ‘dis a nuh joke ting we a deal wid,’” writes Miss Pat.Vincent, however, was uninspired by dancehall; he became depressed and was, according to Miss Pat, “mentally checking out of the business.” He struggled with alcoholism, which included several stays in rehab. Miss Pat writes that Vincent’s excessive drinking was linked to “a troubled spirit,” that she tied all the way back to his childhood, and “his parents’ mixed-race marriage. Vincent’s father was prominent in the Chinese Jamaican community, but he didn’t interact with his Black wife within that community. I believe this unspoken prejudice caused my husband to develop a deep sense of insecurity, resentment and sadness.” Miss Pat recalls her mother enduring a similar dilemma, because her parents disapproved of their daughter’s marriage to an Indian man. “My grandparents made up with my father and mother, but it took them 12 years because 100 years ago, marrying outside of your (Chinese) culture was a no-no. But my parents were in love and survived all the barriers.” Miss Pat’s father was also an alcoholic and her mother tried to conceal that from Pat and her siblings, just as Miss Pat shielded her children from the truth. “Not being honest with my children is one of my biggest regrets, it’s the only thing I would do differently, if given the chance,” Miss Pat reveals.Vincent and Pat’s son Randy, VP’s President, gave up his successful career in aeronautics to join the family business in 1995; Christopher is the company CEO and Angela runs the Florida warehouse/distribution center. Clive has intermittently worked with VP but has also pursued numerous independent projects. In December 2014 he filed a lawsuit against VP seeking $3 million, alleging the company licensed songs he wrote and recorded at Studio 17 without his permission; that lawsuit was quietly resolved.In addition to the award at the Highline Ballroom, one of Miss Pat’s proudest moments was VP Records’ 25th anniversary concert at Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall in 2004, headlined by various acts associated with the company over the years, including Beenie Man, Shaggy and Beres Hammond. “That was the first time I saw my name in lights and with all the people lining up to come in, I was overjoyed. For one night, reggae had taken over an iconic American landmark. If I didn’t know before that, that anything was possible, I knew it then,” she writes. In 2007 VP Records acquired its chief competitor, the UK’s Greensleeves Records, and their catalogue of 12,000 songs, to become the largest independent reggae company in the world. That imposing status is the crowning result of Miss Pat’s remarkable and still ongoing journey. “It took a while for this to sink in,” she pens. “When you’ve built something from the ground up, the memories of selling records in your 8’ x 10’ shop never quite leave you.”CIA, Guns, and Rasta: Inside the Making of Reggae’s Most Iconic FilmRead more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
Canada said its officials have met online with former diplomat Michael Kovrig, who has been held in China for more than two years in a case related to an executive of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei. Canada’s Foreign Ministry said officials led by Ambassador Dominic Barton were given “on-site virtual consular access” to Kovrig on Thursday. Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor have been confined since Dec. 10, 2018, just days after Canada detained Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, who is also the daughter of the founder of the Chinese telecommunications equipment giant.
Bill Maher opened Friday’s Real Time with a round of applause for “a semi-peaceful transition of power.” Maher also applauded the arrival of a new administration and the comic possibilities it presents. In celebration, he spent the first 90 seconds of his monologue on Joe Biden before turning back to Donald Trump jokes. The show […]
Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], January 23 (ANI): Viva Group Managing Director Mehul Thakur and Director Madan Gopal Chaturvedi have been arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank (PMC) and Housing Development and Infrastructure Limited company scam, said officials on Saturday.
Toronto Raptors guard Fred VanVleet doesn't think the Raptors played their brand of basketball for the first few games of the season and is happy they've turned a corner.
After a dismal effort in the first leg of their back-to-back with the Heat, the Raptors were exceptional on the defensive end of the floor in a victory over Miami.
Toronto Raptors forward Stanley Johnson doesn't think it's difficult to score on zone defenses and outlines some of the important aspects to keep in mind.
Toronto Raptors head coach Nick Nurse disagreed with the idea that his team is a veteran squad. He also discusses how disappointed he was with his team’s effort last game and why it’s important to show up for every game in the NBA.
Srinagar (Jammu and Kashmir) [India], January 23 (ANI): The Srinagar district police on Friday organised a COVID-19 awareness camp where coronavirus protection kits were distributed among below poverty line (BPL) families under the Civic Action Program 2020-21.