ТЕЛЕКРИТИКА

Madrid’s tree-lined Paseo del Prado boulevard and the adjoining Retiro park have been added to UNESCO’s World Heritage list.The UNESCO World Heritage Committee, holding an online meeting from Fuzhou, China, backed the candidacy on Sunday that highlighted the green area’s introduction of nature into Spain’s capital. The influence the properties have had on the designs of other cities in Latin America was also applauded by committee members.”Collectively, they illustrate the aspiration for a utopian society during the height of the Spanish Empire,” UNESCO said.The Retiro park occupies 1.2 square kilometers in the center of Madrid. Next to it runs the Paseo del Prado, which includes a promenade for pedestrians. The boulevard connects the heart of Spain’s art world, bringing together the Prado Museum with the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and the Reina Sofía Art Center.The boulevard dates to the 16th century while the park was originally for royal use in the 17th century before it was fully opened to the public in 1848.”Today, in these times of pandemic, in a city that has suffered enormously for the past 15 months, we have a reason to celebrate with the first world heritage site in Spain’s capital,” said Madrid Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida.The site is No. 49 for Spain on the UNESCO list.Also on Sunday, the committee added China’s Emporium of the World in Song-Yuan, India’s Kakatiya Rudreshwara Temple, and the Trans-Iranian railway to the World Heritage list.World Heritage sites can be examples of outstanding natural beauty or manmade buildings. The sites can be important geologically or ecologically, or they can be key for human culture and tradition. 
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Jackie Mason, a rabbi-turned-comedian whose feisty brand of standup comedy led him to Catskills nightclubs, West Coast talk shows and Broadway stages, has died. He was 93. Mason died Saturday at 6 p.m. ET at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan after being hospitalized for more than two weeks, celebrity lawyer Raul Felder told The Associated Press. The irascible Mason was known for his sharp wit and piercing social commentary, often about the differences between Jews and gentiles, men and women and his own inadequacies. His typical style was amused outrage. “Eighty percent of married men cheat in America. The rest cheat in Europe,” he once joked. Another Mason line was: “Politics doesn’t make strange bedfellows, marriage does.” About himself, he once said: “I was so self-conscious, every time football players went into a huddle; I thought they were talking about me.” Religious rootsMason was born Jacob Maza, the son of a rabbi. His three brothers became rabbis. So did Mason, who at one time had congregations in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Comedy eventually proved to be a more persistent calling than God.  “A person has to feel emotionally barren or empty or frustrated in order to become a comedian,” he told The Associated Press in 1987. “I don’t think people who feel comfortable or happy are motivated to become comedians. You’re searching for something and you’re willing to pay a high price to get that attention.” Mason started in show business as a social director at a resort in the Catskills. He was the guy who got everybody up to play Simon Says, quiz games or shuffleboard. He told jokes, too. After one season, he was playing clubs throughout the Catskills for better money.  “Nobody else knew me, but in the mountains, I was a hit,” Mason recalled.  In 1961, the pint-sized comic got a big break, an appearance on Steve Allen’s weekly television variety show. His success brought him to The Ed Sullivan Show and other programs.  He was banned for two years from the Sullivan show when he allegedly gave the host the finger when Sullivan signaled to him to wrap up his act during an appearance on Oct. 18, 1964.  Mason’s act even carried him to Broadway, where he put on several one-man shows, including Freshly Squeezed in 2005, Love Thy Neighbor in 1996 and The World According to Me in 1988, for which he received a special Tony Award. “I feel like Ronald Reagan tonight,” Mason joked on Tony night. “He was an actor all his life, knew nothing about politics and became president of the United States. I’m an ex-rabbi who knew nothing about acting and I’m getting a Tony Award.”  Mason called himself an observer who watched people and learned. From those observations he said he got his jokes and then tried them out on friends. “I’d rather make a fool of myself in front of two people for nothing than a thousand people who paid for a ticket,” he told the AP.  A reliable presenceHis humor could leap from computers and designer coffee to then-Sen. John Kerry, former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Donald Trump. He was able to articulate the average Joe’s anger, making the indignities of life seem funny and maybe just a little bit more bearable. “I very rarely write anything down. I just think about life a lot and try to put it into phrases that will get a joke,” he said. “I never do a joke that has a point that I don’t believe in. To me, the message and the joke is the same.”  On TV, Mason was a reliable presence, usually with a cameo on such shows as 30 Rock or The Simpsons or as a reliable guest on late night chat shows. He performed in front of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, and his show Fearless played London’s West End in 2012.  He portrayed a Jewish ex-pajama salesman in love with an Irish-Catholic widow portrayed by Lynn Redgrave in a series called Chicken Soup in 1989, but it didn’t last. During the O.J. Simpson murder trial, the British Broadcasting Corp.’s Scottish service hired Mason as a weekly commentator. Mason’s humor sometimes went too far, as when he touched off a controversy in New York while campaigning for GOP mayoral candidate Rudolph Giuliani against Democrat David Dinkins, who was Black. Mason had to apologize after saying, among other things, that Jews would vote for Dinkins out of guilt.  Felder, his longtime friend, told the AP that Mason had a Talmudic outlook on life: “That whatever you would say to him, he would start an argument with you.”  He is survived by his wife, producer Jyll Rosenfeld, and a daughter, Sheba. 
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Known as the Indians since 1915, Cleveland’s Major League Baseball team will be called Guardians.The ballclub announced the name change Friday — effective at the end of the 2021 season — with a video on Twitter narrated by actor and team fan Tom Hanks. The decision ends months of internal discussions triggered by a national reckoning by institutions and teams to drop logos and names considered racist.The choice of Guardians will undoubtedly be criticized by many of the club’s die-hard fans, some of whom quickly went on social media to vent.The organization spent most of the past year whittling down a list of potential names that was at nearly 1,200 just over a month ago. But the process, which the club said included 140 hours of interviews with fans, community leaders, front office personnel and a survey of 40,000 fans.Owner Paul Dolan said last summer’s social unrest, touched off by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, spurred his intention to change the name.Dolan is expected to provide more details on the choice and background on the change at a news conference at Progressive Field before the Indians host the Tampa Bay Rays.Dolan said the new name mirrors the city and its people.”Cleveland has and always will be the most important part of our identity,” he said in a statement. “Therefore, we wanted a name that strongly represents the pride, resiliency and loyalty of Clevelanders. ‘Guardians’ reflects those attributes that define us.””It brings to life the pride Clevelanders take in our city and the way we fight together for all who choose to be part of the Cleveland baseball family. While ‘Indians’ will always be a part of our history, our new name will help unify our fans and city as we are all Cleveland Guardians.”The change comes as the Washington Football Team continues to work toward a similar makeover. The franchise dropped its Redskins name before the 2020 season. Washington recently said it will reveal a new name and logo in 2022.Cleveland’s new name was inspired by two large landmark stone edifices near the downtown ballpark — referred to as traffic guardians — on the Hope Memorial Bridge over the Cuyahoga River.The team’s colors will remain the same, and the new Guardians’ new logos will incorporate some of the architectural features of the bridge.In 2018, the Indians stopped wearing the contentious Chief Wahoo logo on their jerseys and caps. However, the team continues to sell merchandise bearing the smiling, red-faced caricature that was protested for decades by Native American groups.FILE – In this Jan. 29, 2018 file photo, foam images of the MLB baseball Cleveland Indians’ mascot Chief Wahoo are displayed for sale at the Indians’ team shop in Cleveland.Numerous Native American groups have protested Cleveland’s use of the Wahoo logo and Indians name for years, so the latest development brought some comfort.”It is a major step towards righting the wrongs committed against Native peoples, and is one step towards justice,” said Crystal Echo Hawk, executive director and founder of IllumiNative, a group dedicated to fighting misrepresentations of Native Americans.The name change has sparked lively debate among the city’s passionate sports fans. Other names, including the Spiders, which is what the team was called before 1900, were pushed by supporters on social media platforms.But Guardians does seem to fit the team’s objective to find a name that embodies Cleveland’s hard-working, loyal, Midwestern-valued ethos while preserving the team’s history and uniting the community.
The rebranding comes as the Indians, who have one of baseball’s lowest payrolls, try to stay in contention despite a slew of injuries as the July 30 trading deadline approaches.”This is a historic moment for our franchise, and we are excited for our players and staff to debut our new team name and look in 2022,” said Chris Antonetti, the club’s president of baseball operations. “We look forward to our team proudly representing the city of Cleveland as the Guardians.”Guardians is the fifth name in franchise history joining the Blues (1901), Bronchos (1902), Naps (1903-1914) and Indians (1915-2021).
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A Somali-American fashion designer is launching a line of headscarves with a major North American retailer to give Muslim women more options and to make hijabs more visible to U.S. shoppers. VOA Somali’s Maxamud Mascadde has our story from the Midwest state of Minnesota, narrated by Radhia Adam.
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A debate is brewing between former gold medalist Maya DiRado and some American swimmers over U.S. medal threat Michael Andrew’s decision not to be vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus as he prepares to compete at the Tokyo Olympics.DiRado sparked the discourse this week with a lengthy thread on Twitter in which she wrote that she’s “disappointed” in Andrew’s decision to compete unvaccinated and his reasoning behind it.
Andrew revealed earlier this month that he isn’t vaccinated after being asked about his status by a reporter.“My reason behind it is, for one, it was kind of a last moment, I didn’t want to put anything in my body that I didn’t know how I would potentially react to,” he said.“As an athlete on the elite level, everything we do is very calculated and understood. For me, in the training cycle, especially leading up to trials, I didn’t want to risk any days out. There were periods where you take a vaccine, you have to deal with some days off.”Andrew said he has no plans to be vaccinated in the future.“We feel very safe and protected knowing that we’re minimizing risk as much as possible,” he said, citing daily testing during the Olympics.Tokyo Olympic organizers and the International Olympic Committee didn’t make it mandatory for athletes to be vaccinated to compete. Just over 20% of the Japanese population is fully vaccinated. The IOC has reported 13 positive cases among all athletes in Japan.About 100 of the 613 U.S. athletes in Tokyo are unvaccinated, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s medical chief said Friday. Andrew is the only member of the U.S. swim team to publicly reveal that he is not vaccinated.“That Michael would make a decision that puts even a bit of risk on his teammates for his own perceived well-being frustrates me,” DiRado wrote. She is one of three athlete representatives on USA Swimming’s board of directors, having retired after the 2016 Rio Games, where she won four medals, including two golds.The top Americans — Caeleb Dressel, Katie Ledecky, Lilly King and Simone Manuel — have all said they are fully vaccinated.Former gold medalist Anthony Ervin tweeted to DiRado that Andrew had COVID-19 in December, “and thus has a natural immunity.”Andrew’s teammate, Tom Shields, criticized DiRado’s stance.“What part of that responsibility involves shaming one of our Olympian’s (sic) on the eve of competition?” Shields tweeted.Andrew dominated at the U.S. trials last month with impressive times in qualifying for the 100-meter breaststroke, 200 individual medley and 50 freestyle to earn his first Olympic berth.The 22-year-old swimmer who lives in Encinitas, California, first created waves in the sport when he turned pro at age 14. He is trained by his father, Peter, using a non-traditional method known as Ultra Short Race Pace Training. It involves only swimming at your goal race pace or faster in practice. It eliminates drills, kicking or any technique-based work. His mother, Tina, is his agent.“We chose a path. We’ve prided ourselves on that,” Andrew said. “It is cool to finally be at this point and for people to see that all those years of hard work and the fact that we can do it differently makes sense.”The online back-and-forth was surprising, as the American swimmers typically present a positive and united front at the Games while emphasizing team success over individual accomplishment.
“Michael is allowed to make his own decisions and I can guarantee you that none of us here are holding any decision like that against him,” teammate Patrick Callan tweeted. “He is still doing everything in the best interest of this team.”
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