ARAB GAZETTE - Weekly Newspaper - Founded by Chairman and Editor : Alauddin Saeed .

LOS ANGELES : Gabrielle Union, Jessica Alba in charge of ‘L.A.‘s Finest’

Posted by مؤسسة الوطن العربى الإعلامية - لندن ، المملكة المتحدة . WA MEDIA FOUNDATION - LONDON, UK | Sunday, 12 May 2019 | Posted in entertainment

ARAB GAZETTE - LOS ANGELES (AP)..

Expanding a comic book’s mythology can bring slighted characters to the forefront. That’s also the case with “L.A.’s Finest,” a TV series riff on the 2003 “Bad Boys II” movie in which women, notably women of color, are driving the action. Gabrielle Union pursued the idea of reprising Syd Burnett, her character from the film who’s on a new path as a Los Angeles police detective, with Jessica Alba joining her as detective Nancy McKenna. They’re also in charge behind the camera, as executive producers on the series debuting Monday on the new Spectrum on-demand platform. It’s a measure, they say, of hard-won confidence in what they can do and in their value, despite entrenched resistance from the entertainment industry. Both are entrepreneurs outside of Hollywood — Alba with her baby and home products company, and Union with a fashion line. When the two joined to talk about the series, they expanded the discussion to how newcomers such as Spectrum have created opportunities that were being dribbled out by broadcast networks. Here’s a sampling of what they had to say, edited for brevity. Union: There’s a pleasure in Jessica and I both being executive producers and creating a show where it’s not one bad-ass woman but two bad-ass women, and two bad-ass women of color who are not only bosses in real life but bosses in front of and behind the camera. And for us to both be executive producers and to have a major say-so of what goes into the show and the experience in making the show, is by far one of the most rewarding and fulfilling things of my career. Alba: We got to create an environment that we hadn’t ever been part of, or we haven’t seen ourselves in Hollywood over our 20 years-plus experience in the business. When Gab (Gabrielle) asked me to be part of the show, I said, “Here’s some table stakes. I’m breastfeeding my newborn son, I have a 7- and 10-year-old, and I never want to feel weird or awkward about them being part of my life. They will come to set, and that needs to be cool with everyone. And if it’s not, then this isn’t the show that I should be part of.” We always tried to be as effective and efficient as possible, but then also have a really supportive community where people’s families can come to set. Alba: When the story originally was being developed for a network, they very much wanted to fit us inside of these buckets or stereotypes, while we wanted to break out of those boundaries. At Spectrum, the women running the network really wanted us just to create the best show, and in that we got to create cool characters that have rich lives. They’re flawed. They’re complicated. They don’t always agree. They’re not competitive. They complement each other. But they also have fun and they’re funny and they’re witty and they’re girls that you want to like grab a beer with or a shot of tequila with or cry with. And you just don’t get to see women in this way. Union: A lot of networks in the last few years have talked a big game about wanting diversity and inclusion — “We want shows headed by women, we want strong female leads.” And the proof is in the pudding, and that that pudding is a little thin. But what you see on cable and streaming is people who actually walk the walk and talk the talk, and they put the money and resources behind developing, creating and actually putting on air shows with not one but two women, and two women of color who are allowed to be full-bodied, multi-dimensional characters. That’s really never happened in any sort of meaningful way on network television. Alba: If we grandstand and say, “Hey, we’re in this show and because we’re women of color, you should tune in, that’s (bull). We don’t care about that. You’re tuning in because it’s cool and it works. The story lines work. They’re rich. They’re interesting, they’re mysterious. The jokes are funny. They’re not corny or cheesy. And we’re not relying on any sort of stereotypical thing out there to get by. If it’s successful or not, we all can look around and I think we can be really proud of what we’ve produced. Union: If creatives are not getting the same respect — creatively, financially, structurally — it’s not real advancement. We’re trying to say, “I’m not begging for a seat at your table, where my chair is a rickety lawn chair, where you guys have Lazy Boys and I’m begging for scraps.” Actually, I don’t even want to be at this table, I don’t want to be in this house. We’re going to build our own house, with comfortable chairs and with enough room for everyone, so all of our stories, all of us in a global community, can see ourselves reflected. And all of us are respected in every sense of what that word means.

Alyssa Milano calls for sex strike, ignites social media

Posted by مؤسسة الوطن العربى الإعلامية - لندن ، المملكة المتحدة . WA MEDIA FOUNDATION - LONDON, UK | | Posted in social media

ARAB GAZETTE - By IVAN MORENO..

Actress Alyssa Milano ignited social media with a tweet Friday night calling for women to join her in a sex strike to protest strict abortion bans passed by Republican-controlled legislatures. The former star of “Charmed” and current cast member of “Insatiable,” which is filmed in Georgia, urged women in her tweet to stop having sex “until we get bodily autonomy back.” Her tweet came days after Georgia became the fourth state in the U.S. this year to ban abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can be as early as six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant. “We need to understand how dire the situation is across the country,” Milano told The Associated Press on Saturday. “It’s reminding people that we have control over our own bodies and how we use them.” She noted that women have historically withheld sex to protest or advocate for political reform. She cited how Iroquois women refused to have sex in the 1600s as a way to stop unregulated warfare. Most recently, she noted that Liberian women used a sex strike in 2003 to demand an end to a long-running civil war. Milano received support from fans and fellow actress Bette Midler joined her in also calling for a sex strike with her own tweet. But both liberals and conservatives also lampooned her idea, with conservatives praising her for promoting abstinence and liberals saying she was pushing a false narrative that women only have sex as a favor to men. Milano said the criticism didn’t bother her and that her tweet was having her desired effect, “which is getting people to talk about the war on women.” She said she fears one of the laws could eventually be decided by the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court, which Republicans hope will overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. “That is absolutely horrifying to me,” Milano said. “Anyone who is not completely and totally outraged by this and doesn’t see where this is leading, I think is not taking this threat seriously.” Milano said people have to determine for themselves how long the sex strike should last. For her part, she hasn’t decided yet how long she will forgo sex. “I mean I don’t know,” she said. “I sent a tweet last night I haven’t really thought much past that this morning.”

Museum exhibition offers glimpse into world of ‘Star Trek’

Posted by مؤسسة الوطن العربى الإعلامية - لندن ، المملكة المتحدة . WA MEDIA FOUNDATION - LONDON, UK | | Posted in tourism

ARAB GAZETTE - DEARBORN, Mich. (AP)..

An exhibition at the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in suburban Detroit is offering a glimpse into the world of “Star Trek.” Titled ”Star Trek: Exploring New Worlds ,” the exhibition runs through Sept. 2 at the museum in Dearborn. It offers a look at more than 100 artifacts and props from the original TV series and its spinoffs. It also explores its enduring impact on culture, from arts and technology to fashion and literature. The traveling exhibition from Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture includes a tricorder, communicator and phaser from the original series. It also features artifacts from the “Star Trek” films and original set pieces, including a navigation console and costumes. The exhibition is a collaboration involving CBS Consumer Products, which manages licensing and merchandizing for the network.

Space-tourism enters ‘home stretch’ toward commercial flight

Posted by مؤسسة الوطن العربى الإعلامية - لندن ، المملكة المتحدة . WA MEDIA FOUNDATION - LONDON, UK | | Posted in sciences

ARAB GAZETTE - SANTA FE, N.M. (AP)..

Billionaire Richard Branson is moving Virgin Galactic’s winged passenger rocket and more than 100 employees from California to a remote commercial launch and landing facility in southern New Mexico, bringing his space-tourism dream a step closer to reality. Branson said Friday at a news conference that Virgin Galactic’s development and testing program has advanced enough to make the move to the custom-tailored hangar and runway at the taxpayer-financed Spaceport America facility near the town of Truth or Consequences. Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said a small number of flight tests are pending. He declined to set a specific deadline for the first commercial flight. An interior cabin for the company’s space rocket is being tested, and pilots and engineers are among the employees relocating from California to New Mexico. The move to New Mexico puts the company in the “home stretch,” Whitesides said. The manufacturing of the space vehicles by a sister enterprise, The Spaceship Company, will remain based in the community of Mojave, California. Taxpayers invested over $200 million in Spaceport America after Branson and then-Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, pitched the plan for the facility, with Virgin Galactic as the anchor tenant. Virgin Galactic’s spaceship development has taken far longer than expected and had a major setback when the company’s first experimental craft broke apart during a 2014 test flight, killing the co-pilot. Branson thanked New Mexico politicians and residents for their patience over the past decade. He said he believes space tourism — once aloft — is likely to bring about profound change. “Our future success as a species rests on the planetary perspective,” Branson said. “The perspective that we know comes sharply into focus when that planet is viewed from the black sky of space.” Branson described a vision of hotels in space and a network of spaceports allowing supersonic, transcontinental travel anywhere on earth within a few hours. He indicated, however, that building financial viability comes first. “We need the financial impetus to be able to do all that,” he said. “If the space program is successful as I think ... then the sky is the limit.” In February, a new version of Virgin Galactic’s winged craft SpaceShipTwo soared at three times the speed of sound to an altitude of nearly 56 miles (99 kilometers) in a test flight over Southern California, as a crew member soaked in the experience. On Friday, that crew member, Beth Moses, recounted her voyage into weightlessness and the visual spectacle of pitch-black space and the earth below. “Everything is silent and still and you can unstrap and float about the cabin,” she said. “Pictures do not do the view from space justice. ... I will be able to see it forever.” The company’s current spaceship doesn’t launch from the ground. It is carried under a special plane to an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,240 meters) before detaching and igniting its rocket engine. “Release is like freefall at an amusement park, except it keeps going,” Moses said. “And then the rocket motor lights. Before you know it, you’re supersonic.” The craft coasts to the top of its climb before gradually descending to earth, stabilized by “feathering” technology in which twin tails rotate upward to increase drag on the way to a runway landing. Branson previously has said he would like to make his first suborbital flight this year as one of the venture’s first passengers on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20. But he made no mention of timelines on Friday. Pressed on the timeframe, Whitesides said he anticipates the first commercial flight within a year. Three people with future space-flight reservations were in the audience. “They’ve been patient too,” Branson said. “Space is hard.” Hundreds of potential customers have committed as much as $250,000 up front for rides in Virgin’s six-passenger rocket, which is about the size of an executive jet. Space tourism has not been a complete novelty since millionaire U.S. engineer Dennis Tito in 2001 paid $20 million to join a Russian space mission to the International Space Station. Branson’s goal has been to “democratize” space by opening travel up to more and more people. The endeavor began in 2004 when Branson announced the founding of Virgin Galactic in the heady days after the flights of SpaceShipOne, the first privately financed manned spacecraft that made three flights into space. Space sector analyst Adam Jonas, a managing director of equity research at Morgan Stanley, said Branson’s venture could have an outsized impact in the age of social media on how the public visualizes space as a domain for scientific and commercial exploration. “You bring them back to earth and they explain what they saw — that’s a story, put through the velocity of social media, people want to hear,” he said. “Sometimes you need some distance to gain a perspective, seeing the earth from space, seeing how thin that layer of atmosphere is that protects us.” Branson’s plans have gradually advanced amid a broader surge in private investment in space technology with cost-saving innovations in reusable rockets and microsatellite technology. Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos announced Thursday that his space company Blue Origin will send a robotic spaceship to the moon with aspirations for another ship that could bring people there along the same timeframe as NASA’s proposed 2024 return. Bezos has provided no details about launch dates.

Trump has long seen previous US trade agreements as losers

Posted by مؤسسة الوطن العربى الإعلامية - لندن ، المملكة المتحدة . WA MEDIA FOUNDATION - LONDON, UK | | Posted in economy

ARAB GAZETTE - WASHINGTON (AP)..

President Donald Trump’s combative approach to trade has been one of the main constants among his often-shifting political views. And he’s showing no signs of backing off now, even as the stakes intensify with the threat of a full-blown trade war between the world’s two biggest economies. The president went after China on Day 1 of his presidential bid, promising to “bring back our jobs from China, from Mexico, from Japan, from so many places.” Trump’s views on trade helped forge his path to victory in states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio, where he linked the loss of manufacturing jobs to the North America Free Trade Agreement and other trade deals. He warned the worst was yet to come with President Barack Obama’s proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership. His trashing of existing and proposed trade agreements grabbed the headlines, but he also made clear his view that globalization had been bad for America and that he would use tariffs to protect national security and domestic producers. He cited the nation’s Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan as leaders whose footsteps he was following when it came to trade and tariffs. “Our original Constitution did not even have an income tax,” Trump told voters in Monessen, Pennsylvania, some four months before the 2016 presidential election. “Instead, it had tariffs, emphasizing taxation of foreign, not domestic production.” No. 7 on his list of trade promises in that speech: taking on China for “its theft of American trade secrets.” “This is so easy. I love saying this. I will use every lawful presidential power to remedy trade disputes, including the application of tariffs consistent” with existing trade laws, Trump said. Those laws include Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, which Trump cited to enact tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from China, Canada, Mexico and elsewhere. They also include Section 301 of the Trade Act, which Trump used last year to apply 25 percent tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods and 10 percent tariffs on $200 billion of goods. That 10 percent was increased to 25 percent on Friday. Trump is laying the groundwork to extend the 25 percent tariff to all of China’s exports to the U.S. “Such an easy way to avoid Tariffs? Make or produce your goods and products in the good old USA. It’s very simple!” Trump tweeted on Saturday. Of course, America’s trading partners haven’t let Trump’s tariffs stand without taking similar action themselves. Farmers, boat makers and whiskey and wine producers are just some of the U.S. industries caught in the middle. “Farming is a very small margin, small profit business. We rely on lots of volume and lots of sales to generate a profit,” said Brent Bible, a soybean and corn farmer in Lafayette, Indiana, who has seen prices for both commodities drop in the past year. “We are operating at a loss now.” Trump’s philosophy on some issues has evolved over the years. He once described himself regarding the abortion issue as “very pro-choice.” Now, his administration promotes him as the most “pro-life president in American history.” On trade, not so much. In “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” Trump complained of the Japanese that “what’s unfortunate is that for decades now they have become wealthier in large measure by screwing the United States with a self-serving trade policy that our political leaders have never been able to fully understand or counteract.” Fast-forward nearly three decades, and Trump declared in his 2015 announcement for the presidency that other nations were prospering at America’s expense. “When was the last time anybody saw us beating, let’s say, China, in a trade deal? They kill us. I beat China all the time,” Trump said. Trump’s approach on trade is a dramatic departure for the Republican Party, but GOP lawmakers have declined to take action that would block his tariffs. They credit his tactics for getting improvements to a trade deal with Canada and Mexico to replace NAFTA, and for getting China to the negotiating table. “President Trump is the first president to take China head-on,” said Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee. He said “everyone knows I’m not a fan of tariffs, but I think everyone knows as well that China has been cheating for far too long.” Trump has received some encouragement from Democratic leaders. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., tweeted to Trump: “Don’t back down. Strength is the only way to win with China.” Current and former officials in the administration believe that voters will give the president credit for standing up to China, and not blame him for any pain that may result from the tariffs war. Overall, AP VoteCast found Americans critical in their assessments of Trump on trade. But that’s not the case with his supporters. According to the survey of more than 115,000 midterm voters nationwide, 45% approved of Trump on trade, while 53% disapproved. Among voters who approved of Trump’s job overall, fully 88% approved of his handling of trade. While Trump casts his tariffs as being paid for by China, they actually are paid by the American companies that bring a product into the U.S. This can help some U.S. producers, though, because it makes their goods more competitive price-wise. Still, the burden of Trump’s tariffs on imports from China and other countries falls entirely on U.S. consumers and businesses that buy imports, said a study in March by economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Columbia University and Princeton University. Republican-leaning business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have warned that the tariffs threaten to derail the economy and low unemployment rates, but with economic growth at 3.2 percent last quarter and the unemployment rate at 3.6 percent, Trump isn’t changing strategy now. “Tariffs will make our Country MUCH STRONGER, not weaker. Just sit back and watch!” Trump tweeted on Friday.

For Harris, memories of a warrior mother guide her campaign

Posted by مؤسسة الوطن العربى الإعلامية - لندن ، المملكة المتحدة . WA MEDIA FOUNDATION - LONDON, UK | | Posted in life style

ARAB GAZETTE - NEW YORK (AP)..

Speaking from the Senate floor for the first time, Kamala Harris expressed gratitude for a woman on whose shoulders she said she stood. In her autobiography, Harris interspersed the well-worn details of her resume with an extended ode to the one she calls “the reason for everything.” And taking the stage to announce her presidential candidacy , she framed it as a race grounded in the compassion and values of the person she credits for her fighting spirit. Though a decade has passed since Shyamala Gopalan died, she remains a force in her daughter’s life and her White House bid. Again and again in the campaign, those who gather around the California senator are hearing mention of the diminutive Indian immigrant the candidate calls her single greatest influence. “She’s always told the same story,” says friend Mimi Silbert. “Kamala had one important role model, and it was her mother.” Her mother gave her an early grounding in the civil rights movement and injected in her a duty not to complain but rather to act. And that no-nonsense demeanor on display in Senate hearings over special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and more? Onlookers can credit, or blame, Gopalan, a crusader who raised her daughter in the same mold. Appearing in New York recently, Harris said there were two reasons she was running for president. The first, she said, was a sense of duty to restore truth in justice in the country at an inflection point in history. The second: a mother who responded to gripes with a challenge. “She’d say, ‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’” Harris told the crowd. “So I decided to run for president of the United States.” Harris’ parents met as doctoral students at the University of California, Berkeley at the dawn of the 1960s. Her father, a Jamaican named Donald Harris, came to study economics. Her mother studied nutrition and endocrinology. For two freethinking young people drawn to activism, they landed on campus from opposite sides of the world just as protests exploded around civil rights, the Vietnam War and voting rights. Their paths crossed in those movements, and they fell in love. At the heart of their activism was a small group of students who met every Sunday to discuss the books of black authors and grassroots activity around the world, from the anti-apartheid Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa to liberation movements in Latin America to the black separatist preaching of Malcolm X in the U.S. A member of the group, Aubrey Labrie, says the weekly gathering was one in which figures such as Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro were admired, and would later provide some inspiration to the founders of the Black Panther Party. Gopalan was the only one in the group who wasn’t black, but she immersed herself in the issues, Labrie says. She and Harris wowed him with their intellect. “I was in awe of the knowledge that they seemed to demonstrate,” said Labrie, who grew so close to the family that the senator calls him “Uncle Aubrey.” The couple married, and Gopalan Harris gave birth to Kamala and then Maya two years later. Even with young children, the duo continued their advocacy. As a little girl, Harris says she remembers an energetic sea of moving legs and the cacophony of chants as her parents made their way to marches. She writes of her parents being sprayed with police hoses, confronted by Hells Angels and once, with the future senator in a stroller, forced to run to safety when violence broke out. Sharon McGaffie, a family friend whose mother, Regina Shelton, was a caregiver for the girls, remembers Gopalan Harris speaking to her daughters as if they were adults and exposing them to worlds often walled off to children, whether a civil rights march or a visit to mom’s laboratory or a seminar where the mother was delivering a speech. “She would take the girls and they would pull out their little backpacks and they would be in that environment,” says McGaffie. A few years into the marriage, Harris’ parents divorced. The senator gives the pain of the parting only a few words in her biography. Those who are close to her describe her childhood as happy, the smells of her mother’s cooking filling the kitchen and the sound of constant chatter and laughter buffeting the air. The mother’s influence on her girls grew even greater, and friends of Harris say they see it reflected throughout her life. As a kindergartner, Stacey Johnson-Batiste remembers Harris coming to her aid when a classroom bully grabbed her craft project and threw it to the floor, which brought retaliation from the boy. He hit the future politician in the head with something that caused enough bleeding to necessitate a hospital visit, cementing for Johnson-Batiste a lifelong friendship with Harris and a view of her as a woman who embodies the ethics of her mother. “Even back then,” Johnson-Batiste says, “she has always stood up for what she thought was right.” As a teenager, after her mother got a job that prompted a family move to Montreal, Harris began seeing how she could achieve change in ways small and large. Outside her family’s apartment, she and her sister protested a prohibition against soccer on the building’s lawn, which Harris says resulted in the rule being overturned. As high school wound down, she homed in on a career goal of being a lawyer. Sophie Maxwell, a former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, says Harris wasn’t choosing to eschew activism but rather to incorporate it into a life in law: “Those two things go hand in hand.” In college, at the historically black Howard University in Washington, D.C., Shelley Young Thompkins recalls a classmate who was certain of what she wanted to do in life, who was serious about her studies and who put off the fun of joining a sorority until her final year even as she made time for sit-ins and protests. Thompkins and Harris both won student council posts. In her new friend, Young Thompkins saw a young woman intent on not squandering all that her mother had worked to give her. “We were these two freshmen girls who want to save the world,” she says.