Indian American sitarist, composer and educator Hasu Patel has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the United Nations for ‘Extraordinary Service to Humanity.’

Patel has been teaching sitar, tabla and vocals at Ohio’s Oberlin College for close to two decades, and continues to train students while she performs at concerts in the U.S. and abroad.

Patel received her bachelor’s degree in sitar from the Faculty of Performing Arts at M.S. University in Vadodara, Gujarat, India, and became a gold medalist.

She went on to receive her master’s degree in sitar with distinction from Gandharv Mahavidyalaya in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India and later received a master’s degree in accountancy and financial information systems from Cleveland State University, according to her bio on her website.

Patel plays sitar in a vocal style known as Gayaki Ang, where the sitar replicates the fluidity and subtle nuances of the human voice.

She made her first public appearance at the age of 10 and has won many awards since.

She is also the first woman to receive a music degree with a gold medal in the 75-year history of the Faculty of Performing Arts and is the only Indian musician/composer to be included among 25 prestigious women composers of the U.S., according to a book by Dr. Jennifer Kelly of Lafayette College in Pennsylvania titled, “In Her Own Words,” Patel’s website adds.

SAN FRANCISCO – In early 2010, an Indian American couple hosted a fundraiser in their elegant Pacific Heights home for Kamala Harris, then a Democratic candidate for California attorney general.

Harris had been San Francisco’s high-profile district attorney for more than six years, but Deepak Puri and Shareen Punian had only recently learned that Harris was, as Punian said, “one of our peeps,” a woman whose mother was an Indian immigrant.

They had always assumed Harris was African-American, and so did most of the 60 or 70 Indian American community leaders at the event, many of whom asked Puri and Punian why they had been invited.

“At least half of them didn’t know she was Indian,” said Punian, a business executive and political activist.

Harris, 54, now a U.S. senator and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, would be several firsts in the White House: the first woman, the first African-American woman, the first Indian American and the first Asian American. The daughter of two immigrants – her father came from Jamaica – she would also be the second biracial president, after Barack Obama.

Obama’s soul-searching quest to explore his identity, as the son of a white mother from Kansas and a Kenyan father who as largely absent from his life, was well-documented in his autobiography.

But when asked, in an interview, if she had wrestled with similar introspection about race, ethnicity and identity, Harris didn’t hesitate:

“No,” she said flatly.

Harris stressed that she doesn’t compare herself to Obama, and she prefers that others don’t, either. She wants to be measured on her own merits.

She said she has not spent much time dwelling on how to categorize herself.

“So much so,” she said, “that when I first ran for office that was one of the things that I struggled with, which is that you are forced through that process to define yourself in a way that you fit neatly into the compartment that other people have created.

“My point was: I am who I am. I’m good with it. You might need to figure it out, but I’m fine with it,” she said.

Harris’ background in many ways embodies the culturally fluid, racially blended society that is second-nature in California’s Bay Area and is increasingly common across the United States.

She calls herself simply “an American,” and said she has been fully comfortable with her identity from an early age. She credits that largely to a Hindu immigrant single mom who adopted black culture and immersed her daughters in it. Harris grew up embracing her Indian culture, but living a proudly African-American life.

“My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters,” Harris writes in her recently published autobiography, “The Truths We Hold.” “She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as black girls, and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud black women.”

Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was keenly attracted to the civil rights movement and the African-American culture of her new home in the 1960s and 70s. At first, she marched and protested with her black husband, then alone or with the girls after they divorced when Harris was very young.

She brought her daughters home to India for visits, she cooked Indian food for them and the girls often wore Indian jewelry. But Harris worshiped at an African-American church, went to a preschool with posters of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman on the wall, attended Civil Rights marches in a stroller, and was bused with other black kids to an elementary school in a wealthier white neighborhood. When it was time for college, she moved across the country to Washington to attend the historically black Howard University.

“Her Indian culture, she held onto that,” said Sharon McGaffie, 67, an African-American woman who has known Harris and her sister, Maya, since they were toddlers living in Berkeley, California. “But I think they grew up as black children who are now black women. There’s no question about it.”

As Harris’ political profile has risen outside her home region, she will face pressure to discuss her heritage from a broader electorate seeking to fully understand her and politically connected Indian Americans who feel she has not previously put as much focus on her South Asian roots.

In her years in the public eye – seven years as San Francisco district attorney and six years at California’s attorney general before her election to the Senate in 2016 – Harris has tended to stress issues over her personal biography.

Harris, in the interview, said that was because, “It’s not about me. It’s about the people I represent.”

She said political campaigns, especially for president, require candidates to explain their background so voters “can figure out why you do what you do.” So while she “was raised not to talk about myself,” she said that is why she wrote her book to lay out the details of her heritage and career.

“I appreciate that there is that desire that people have to have context, and I want to give people context,” she said.

Harris hasn’t tried to shape perceptions of her identity as much as she has simply accepted that most people see her as black, said Robert Smith, a recently retired professor of political science at San Francisco State University who specializes in African-American politics.

“She has not used it politically,” Smith said. “She has not avoided it, she has just kind of said it and moved on: ‘I’m this, I’m this, I’m that, now let’s move on’ to talk about the death penalty or whatever is the issue of the day.”

Smith said Harris’ “blackness was never ambiguous” and she didn’t feel the need to trumpet it.

Her lack of public focus on her heritage has left many people, even in her home state, unaware of her multiracial background. Most people assume she is African-American, and even some friends didn’t know that she was also Indian.

“I had no idea,” said Matthew Davis, a San Francisco lawyer and classmate of Harris’ at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, where they graduated in 1989.

“Even though we were good friends, I never really heard her talk too much about her personal life,” said Davis, who also worked with Harris in the San Francisco city attorney’s office before she was elected district attorney.

It was only when she was sworn in as district attorney in 2004, 15 years after they graduated from law school, that Davis learned Harris was half Indian.

“She introduced me to her mother, and that was the first time I knew,” Davis said. “It was a sense of pride for her, but I didn’t get the sense that it was the way she defined herself.”

Even now, Harris still doesn’t seem fully at ease discussing her personal heritage.

In her first campaign stop after announcing for president on “Good Morning America” on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Harris appeared on her old Howard campus to take questions.

“You’re African-American, but you’re also Indian-American,” a reporter said.

“Indeed,” she replied.

“How do you describe yourself?”

“Did you read my book? How do I describe myself? I describe myself as a proud American.”

She said it with a smile, but with an “end-of-conversation” firmness.

Leah Williams, a San Francisco lawyer who has been friends with Harris since the early 1990s, said Harris inherited a “strong sense of self” from her mother, who raised two daughters as a single immigrant mom.

“She’s not a person who doesn’t contemplate herself or her identity,” Williams said in an interview. “But there are just people who get up in the morning and look in the mirror and know who they are.”

Williams, who took her children to Washington to attend Harris’s Senate swearing-in ceremony in 2017, said Harris was “centered and anchored” because she grew up in a house with two other strong women who were role models.

“Growing up, they could all look at each other and see themselves in each other,” Williams said.

Harris agreed that her upbringing was filled with “pride and nurturing” that gave her a solid grounding.

“I’m no different than anybody else,” she said. “I’m not suggesting that I don’t have the doubts and whatever that any normal person has. But . . . I don’t have any doubts about who I am ethnically or racially.”

Harris has often spoken of her mother, a Tamil from Chennai in southeast India, as her inspiration, and she writes about it extensively in her book.

Gopalan graduated from college in India at 19, then moved to California in 1959 and earned a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. There, she met and married Donald J. Harris, who is now an emeritus professor of economics at Stanford University. The elder Harris did not respond to a request for comment.

After their divorce, Harris visited her father’s family in Jamaica and stayed in touch with him. But she credited her mother, a noted cancer researcher and civil rights activist who died in 2009, with being “most responsible for shaping us into the women we would become.”

On her visits to India as a child, Harris was deeply influenced by her grandfather, a high-ranking government official who had fought for Indian independence. But while she had a “strong awareness and appreciation for Indian culture,” she writes, her mother raised her in an African-American world.

“From almost the moment she arrived from India, she chose and was welcomed to and enveloped in the black community,” Harris writes. “It was the foundation of her new American life.”

Sharon McGaffie’s mother, Regina Shelton, ran the preschool that Harris and her sister attended. Because Harris’s mother traveled regularly for her work as a cancer scientist, the girls would regularly stay over at McGaffie’s house, two doors down on a quiet street in Berkeley. Shelton became like a mother to Harris’ mother, and grandmother to Harris.

McGaffie said the Harris girls would regularly accompany her family to the Twenty Third Avenue Church of God in Oakland, Calif., an African American protestant congregation. Their mother eagerly encouraged them to go but did not attend herself, McGaffie said.

When Harris was sworn into office as AG and senator, she did so with her hand on the Bible that Shelton carried with her to church every Sunday.

“She has always been engaged in African American politics, community struggles, community organizations, and life,” said Karen V. Clopton, a lawyer and former judge in San Francisco who has been a friend of Harris’s for more than two decades.

Harris’s college choice marked a notable contrast from the rest of her family. Her parentsboth earned PhDs from UC Berkeley, and her sister went to UC Berkeley and Stanford Law School. Harris opted for Howard, one of the country’s most prestigious historically black schools. She said that was largely because her hero, trailblazing lawyer and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, went there.

“As a black woman, it gave her a real opportunity to be enveloped in that part of who she is,” said her friend Leah Williams. “She holds that experience close to her heart.”

Four days after addressing reporters at Howard,Harris traveled to South Carolina, a key early primary state with a large African American electorate. She spoke at the annual “Pink Ice Gala” hosted by her sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, the nation’s oldest black sorority, which has a network of 300,000 members.

In her official campaign kickoff speech in Oakland, California, last weekend, Harris stood before 20,000 people and spoke of some of her African-American heroes – faces she grew up with on Shelton’s walls.

“When abolitionists spoke out and civil rights workers marched, their oppressors said they were dividing the races and violating the word of God,” she said. “But Fredrick Douglass said it best and Harriet Tubman and Dr. King knew. To love the religion of Jesus is to hate the religion of the slave master.”

Asked in the Washington Post interview how her African-American background has influenced her, Harris said, “It’s kind of like asking how did eating food shape who I am today.”

“It affects everything about who I am,” she said. “Growing up as a black person in America made me aware of certain things that, maybe if you didn’t grow up black in America, you wouldn’t be aware of.”

Asked for an example, she said, “Racism.”

“I grew up in a hot spot of the civil rights movement,” she said. “But that civil rights movement involved blacks, it involved Jews, it involved Asians, it involved Chicanos, it involved a multitude of people who were aware that there were laws that were not equally applied to all people.”

As Harris has become a prominent figure in state and national politics, many Indian Americans are thrilled – and a little surprised to learn of her Indian background.

“It’s only been in the last year or so that she’s really come out and embraced it,” said Aziz Haniffa, executive editor of India Abroad, the oldest and largest South Asian newspaper in the United States.

Harris has never made a secret of her Indian heritage, and has she has fought on behalf issues of importance to most Indians, including immigration reform. She has appeared at Indian American gatherings throughout her career.

Indian American publications proudly use her Indian first name, which means “lotus flower,” along with her middle name, Devi, the Sanskrit word for “goddess,” which Harris generally doesn’t use.

In a 2009 interview with India Abroad, Harris said her Indian background “has had a great deal of influence on what I do today and who I am.” She told the interviewer her African American and Indian heritage “are of equal weight in terms of who I am.”

She continued: “We have to stop seeing issues and people through a plate-glass window as though we were one-dimensional. Instead, we have to see that most people exist through a prism and they are a sum of many factors.”

Shekar Narasimhan, chairman and founder of the AAPI Victory Fund, a national super PAC founded in 2015 that focuses on building the political power of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, said Harris in the past year has done several high-profile speeches and events with Indian American groups that have helped to raise her profile.

“I’m so glad she has discovered her Indian-ness,” Narasimhan said with a laugh. “It’s sudden, but I absolutely love that it’s happening. It’s not something she has exhibited over the years.”

M.R. Rangaswami, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist, said Harris’s story parallels the rising influence of the U.S. Indian community.

Rangaswami said Indians represent about 1 percent of the population, and now have about 1 percent representation in Congress, with four members of the House of Representatives and one senator.

“My advice to Kamala would be: ‘You’ve got a great story. You should tell it,’ ” he said. “As the community has come of age, there is a yearning for successful role models, and she totally fits that model.”

In the Post interview, Harris said she disagreed with the perception that she has not stressed her Indian background, saying she had “been focused on the Indian community my entire life.”

She said the view that she embraced it wholeheartedly only more recently was “a matter of what people are aware of and what the press has focused on.”

She pointed, for example, to her advocacy as early as 2001, after the 9/11 attacks, when South Asians became the targets of abuse and violence. “I was very active in fighting to make sure that the community was not the subject of hate and bias and ill-treatment,” she said.

“I grew up with a great deal of pride and understanding about my Indian heritage and culture,” she said.

In their San Francisco home, where they hosted the 2010 fundraiser, Puri and Punian said they were enthusiastic about Harris. Puri, a Silicon Valley software executive, and Punian, a finance executive, have helped introduce Harris around Silicon Valley.

Puni said Harris’s multicultural background appeals to many people.

“It’s like a Rorschach test,” he said. “Every person can interpret her differently.”

Universal Pictures’ thriller “Glass” remained No. 1 at the box office during a slow stretch for Hollywood releases, keeping its crown for a third straight weekend. IM. Nightts biggest competition was the Super Bowl, which routinely takes a big bite out of ticket sales.

The film, a sequel with James McAvoy, Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson, brought in $9.5 million from North American theaters, Comscore Inc. said. Analysts were predicting that number. The film had taken in $168.5 million worldwide going into the weekend – solid for a movie that cost just $20 million.

The industry is off to a weak start to 2019, with year-to-date ticket sales down 15 percent from a year ago, according to Comscore. January is typically among the slowest months, with few releases from the major studios.

February doesn’t look much better, even though the schedule holds promise with potentially big family movies like “The Lego Movie 2” and a sequel to “How to Train Your Dragon.” That’s because “Black Panther” fueled a huge February 2018, meaning theaters are looking at two down months to start the year.

“Glass” only faced competition from one new wide release: Sony Pictures’ “Miss Bala,” a crime drama shot in Mexico. It brought in $6.7 million to place third, beating Box Office Pro’s estimate of $6.5 million. Just 28 percent of critics recommended the picture.

Award-winning Indian-American alto saxophonist, composer and educator Rudresh Mahanthappa announced some new initiatives for 2019.

This Feb. 9, his Indo-Pak Coalition band is playing is playing its first U.S. show in almost a year on Saturday, Feb. 9, at  Miller Theatre, in New York City. This comes on the heels of a tour of Europe and Brazil, which Mahanthappa called “amazing.” culminating with a final concernt at Porto Alegre Jazz Festival. Calling it the band’s “best show of the run” Mahanthappa provided a video link to the the entire concert, in a mailing Feb. 2.

Mahanthappa’s Indo-Pak Coalition conceived in 2008, includes Mahanthappa on alto saxophone, Rez Abbasi on guitar, and Dan Weiss on tabla. It was hailed by The New York Times as “a trio equally grounded in folk tradition and jazz improvisation, propos[ing] a social pact as well as a musical ideal.” The ensemble’s was Apti, followed by Agrima.

One of his new projects this year is a trio called Movable Mirror with bassist Eric Revis and drummer Dave King.  “It’s a sort of 21st Century reimagining of Sonny Rollins Live at the Village Vanguard,” Mahanthappa, who has been described by the prestigious online music magazine Pitchfork, as “jaw-dropping… one of the finest saxophonists going,” will be hitting the road in June with a U.S. tour.

He is also launching a jazz festival at Princeton University where he is the director of jazz. That festival will debut on April 13.  The lineup includes Joel Frahm, Tia Fuller, Ingrid Jensen, Charenee Wade, Pedrito Martinez, Donny McCaslin, and headliner Dave Holland, Grammy Award-winner bassist and 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master. Admission is free to most sets. For more details about the festivals and the free events, visit music.princeton.edu.

Princeton University touts it as “The world’s newest jazz festival, a day-long, free, outdoor lineup of today’s top jazz stars coming together in exciting formations and alongside Princeton University’s exceptional student jazz ensembles.” , will take place 12PM-6:30PM on Alexander Beach, outside Richardson Auditorium on the Princeton University campus.

FESTIVAL SCHEDULE

The following events are free and unticketed:

12-1PM: Small Group X with Special Guest Joel Frahm, saxophone
1:20-2:20PM: Small Group A with Tia Fuller, saxophone and Ingrid Jensen, trumpet
2:40-3:40PM: Charenée Wade Quartet with Wade on vocals, Oscar Perez, piano, Paul Beaudry, bass, and Darrell Green, drums
4-5PM:  Pedrito Martinez Group with Martinez on percussion and lead vocals, Isaac Delgado Jr. keyboards/vocals, Sebastian Natal, electric bass/vocals, and Jhair Sala, percussion
5:20-6:30PM: Donny McCaslin Quartet with McCaslin on saxophones, Jason Lindner, keyboards, Jonathan Maron, bass, and Zach Danziger, drums

This event is ticketed:

8PM: Dave Holland, bass and Princeton University Jazz Small Group I

“We are very excited to launch this new festival bringing together a wide array of today’s most creative and accomplished jazz artists performing with our remarkably talented students,” Mahanthappa says in a statement on the University website. He expressed the hope that it would become an annual tradition that attracts the community at large.

Mahanthappa, a graduate of Berklee College of Music with a Masters in Music from DePaul University,  has more than a dozen albums to his credit, including Bird Calls, which topped many critics’ best-of-year lists for 2015. The Indian-American musician has been named alto saxophonist of the year for seven of eight years running in Downbeat Magazine’s International Critics’ Polls (2011-2013, 2015-2018), and for five consecutive years by the Jazz Journalists’ Association (2009-2013) and again in 2016. He has numerous other awards and recognitions over his career.

He has also received the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, and is currently the Anthony H.P. Lee ’79 Director of Jazz at Princeton University.

Born in 1971, in Trieste, Italy to Indian parents, Mahanthappa was brought up in Boulder, Colorado and gained proficiency playing everything from current pop to Dixieland. He moved to New York in 1997 where he formed his own quartet featuring another recognized Indian-American musician, pianist Vijay Iyer. Their band brought out a series of albums including, Black Water, Mother Tongue and Codebook, “each highlighting Mahanthappa’s inventive methodologies and deeply personal approach to composition,” Princeton University said on its website. He and Iyer also formed the duo Raw Materials.

In 2008, Mahanthappa came close to his parents’ Carnatic music roots, and partnered with fellow altoist Kadri Gopalnath and the Dakshina Ensemble for Kinsmen, which garnered wide acclaim. Mahanthappa has also worked with Jack DeJohnette, Mark Dresser, Danilo Pérez, Arturo O’Farrill’s Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, and co-led other bands. He has also brought out works commissioned by Ragamala Dance, and PRISM Saxophone Quartet.

The first contests to pick the Democrat who’ll challenge President Donald Trump in 2020 play to the strengths of Sens. Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, giving each a significant edge when voters begin winnowing the field of contenders.

Both are talented fundraisers who set down markers by jumping in early to what’s already shaping up to be a crowded field. Most polls of voter preference currently show California’s Harris and Warren, of Massachusetts, trailing former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders, who have made previous presidential runs and are better known.

Yet it’s not clear whether Biden or Sanders will run, and each has baggage from past campaigns that would complicate their path to the nomination in a party increasingly defined by women, minorities and young people.

The Iowa caucuses are followed by the New Hampshire primary, where candidates from neighboring New England states enjoy a built-in edge. Vermont Sanders in 2016 and John Kerry of Massachusetts in 2004 won blowout victories, and Warren hopes to follow suit.

For now, many Democratic political operatives gauge Warren and Harris as front-runners for the nomination.

“Harris has the most self-evident path on paper,” said Brian Fallon, who served as Hillary Clinton’s national press secretary in 2016 and isn’t involved in any of the current campaigns. “Warren has the crispest rationale and has shown a penchant for driving the conversation.”

The Iowa caucuses a year from now will mark the official beginning of the months-long nomination process. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker entered the race on Friday, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand jumped in last month, and at least a dozen other Democrats have taken at least preliminary steps toward a campaign or are considering the race.

Warren’s economic message — taking on Wall Street and addressing income inequality — is well-suited to the populist leanings of the state’s Democrats. Iowa catapulted Barack Obama’s insurgent 2008 candidacy and gave Sanders an initial burst of momentum to make a highly competitive challenge to Clinton, who was the odds-on favorite in 2016.

“I would definitely say that Elizabeth Warren is a front-runner,” said Bryce Smith, the 27-year-old Democratic Party chairman of Dallas County, which includes the Des Moines area. “The name recognition dramatically helps her. Her progressive policy and background in the Democratic arena puts her out in the the front of the pack, or towards the front of the pack.”

Smith said Warren’s proposal for a 2 percent wealth tax on net worth above $50 million, rising to 3 percent above $1 billion, will appeal to Iowa caucus-goers. “We don’t see that as a big impact to the people living here in Iowa,” he said. “That taxation might actually come back to help us in the long run.”

If Warren pulls off a win in Iowa “she should have an advantage in New Hampshire from the exposure she’s had for many years just being here, that most people who run for president from Massachusetts end up having,” said Mary Anne Marsh, a Democratic consultant based in Boston. “You do that, you’re hard to stop.”

Next come Nevada and South Carolina toward the end of February, and then the Super Tuesday states on March 3, where Harris enjoys advantages and is widely seen as the candidate to beat, given her biographical appeal and policy emphasis on civil and immigrant rights.

South Carolina is the first primary with a significant share of black voters, a pillar of the Democratic base that fueled the victories of Clinton in 2016 and Obama in 2008, and Harris’s message is tailored to that community. The Palmetto State has picked the Democratic nominee in all but one contest since 1992, and Harris, who would be the first black woman in the Oval Office, has history-making appeal to a base that’s also heavy on women.

“I think she’s the front-runner in the primary, period. In South Carolina, definitely,” said Bakari Sellers, a former Democratic state senator from South Carolina. “My momma and her friends choose the Democratic nominee,” he said, referring to older black women who are active and have leading roles in the community.

Another benefit for Harris is that her delegate-rich home state of California votes months earlier than usual, on March 3 — the state’s primary in 2016 was June 7 — and plans to let voters cast their ballots beforehand. Several Super Tuesday states like Alabama and North Carolina have large shares of black voters.

Plenty of factors could change that dynamic, starting with the shape of the field. A run by Sanders, whose message and target constituency are similar to Warren’s, could cost her support. And Booker may be a formidable competitor to Harris among black voters.

“Senator Harris, along with Senator Booker, are positioned to do well,” said Symone Sanders, a former aide to the Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign. “But I caution people to think just because they’re black means they have a huge advantage over non-black candidates.”

Both have courted African-American lawmakers and made overtures to voters with their platforms. Harris, who announced candidacy on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, has a proposal to reduce racial disparities in maternal mortality, while Booker has offered a “baby bonds” plan aimed at eliminating the wealth gap between white and black children.

“In a two-person race like in 2008 and 2016, you need to put together a coalition of several different groups of voters,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a former adviser to Obama. “But in a large field like the Republican contest in 2016, dominating one group of voters can be sufficient to win.”

A cluttered field of progressives, which includes Gillibrand, could split votes on the left and clear the way for a more moderate candidate like Biden. Several other Democrats who likely would run more centrist campaigns also are weighing bids, including former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock.

Julian Castro, a Housing and Urban Development secretary under Obama, has a unique appeal to the growing Latino electorate as potentially the first Hispanic president. The field also includes Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who’d be the first openly gay and the first millennial president.

One wild card is former representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas, who generated an enthusiastic following, and demonstrated prodigious fundraising ability, in his ultimately unsuccessful campaign to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz last November.

Early as it is, Trump’s been doing a little handicapping on his opposition. In an interview with the New York Times, he said Harris had “a little better opening act than the others” and that Warren’s credibility was damaged by her release of DNA testing indicating she had some distant Native American ancestors. Trump has frequently ridiculed Warren for her claim of Native American heritage, calling her “Pocahontas” — a nickname that she and some American Indians have called a slur.

In a separate interview with CBS, the president was dismissive of Booker: “I know him. I don’t think he has a chance.”

The racism was present the moment he took the stage.

Using something black to darken his face, Thomas Dartmouth Rice didn’t hold back in his singsong performances, which date to the 1830s. The white man danced like a buffoon and spoke with an exaggerated imitation of black slave vernacular to entertain his audiences.

His fictional character also had a name: “Jim Crow.”

David Pilgrim, curator of the Jim Crow Museum in Michigan, noted how Jim Crow and other performances featuring white men in blackface captivated white crowds up until the mid-20th century.

Now blackface is back in the spotlight after a photograph emerged Friday from Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s medical school yearbook page. It shows one man in blackface standing beside another figure in a Ku Klux Klan robe.

The governor, a Democrat, apologized for the photograph on his yearbook page that is “clearly racist and offensive.” But a flood of prominent Democrats and Republicans began calling for his resignation.

On Saturday, Northam refused to resign and said he’d never seen the photo in the yearbook before Friday. “I am not the person in that photo,” he said at a press conference, though he also described darkening his face to impersonate Michael Jackson for a dance contest in San Antonio.

Historians remind us that while blackface is considered “clearly racist” now, it was once celebrated.

“Professional blackface minstrelsy was considered a uniquely American contribution to world culture,” said Rhae Lynn Barnes, a Princeton professor working on a book about blackface. “Before the civil rights movement, making fun of African-Americans was synonymous with American patriotism.”

Blackface dates to the era of minstrel shows, or “minstrelsy,” in the early 1800s. Intended to be comedic, minstrel shows were first performed in New York with white actors who wore tattered clothing and used shoe polish to blacken their faces in a stereotypical depiction of Africans enslaved in the United States, according to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

The performances, the museum explains, “cannot be separated fully from the racial derision and stereotyping at its core. By distorting the features and culture of African Americans – including their looks, language, dance, deportment, and character – white Americans were able to codify whiteness across class and geopolitical lines as its antithesis.”

When blackface was used in the first minstrel shows, it was done “to depict false stereotypes of black people: the big lips, the lack of education, the poor clothing,” Daryl Davis, a black blues musician known for his efforts to befriend and convert members of the Ku Klux Klan, said in an interview.

“It wasn’t about trying to look black, but trying to look black in a way that portrays blacks negatively,” he added.

Pilgrim notes that Rice was not the first white comic to perform in blackface but was the most popular of his time. As a result of Rice’s success, Jim Crow became a “common stage persona for white comedians’ blackface portrayals of African-Americans,” he said. In his Jim Crow persona, Rice also sang “Negro ditties” such as “Jump Jim Crow.”

Later, the phrase Jim Crow became a shorthand for the racist laws used throughout the South to segregate black people after emancipation.

Davis, however, has long argued that context is key when judging the use of blackface. In the 1900s, for example, white artists such as Al Jolson painted their faces as they performed ragtime and blues music pioneered by African-Americans.

He credits Jolson with spreading black music to white audiences and advocating for black artists. Other historians say blackface is always racist, no matter who is wearing it or why.

But in the case of Northam, Davis said, the context is clear: “It doesn’t matter if the photo was from 1984, 1974 or 2004. He defined what he meant when he paired blackface with a Klan hood. Racial segregation. Racial supremacy. When you have a symbol associated with hate from the beginning, you are saying exactly what you mean.”

In the internet age, social media has fueled furors over blackface. In 2018, a photo of an Iowa teacher who darkened her face to appear as a Lafawnduh, a black character in the 2004 movie “Napoleon Dynamite,” went viral just as NBC talk show host Megyn Kelly was coming under fire for defending the use of blackface in Halloween costumes.

“In today’s climate, blackface is never appropriate,” said Mia Moody-Ramirez, a Baylor University professor and author of “From Blackface to Black Twitter.”

Just last week, photos surfaced of Florida Secretary of State Michael Ertel wearing blackface with red lipstick and a New Orleans Saints bandanna in 2005. He also wore a shirt that read “Katrina Victim.”

“There’s nothing I can say,” Ertel told the Tallahassee Democrat. He submitted his resignation that day.

Historian Arica L. Coleman, author of “That the Blood Stay Pure: African Americans, Native Americans and the Predicament of Race and Identity in Virginia,” said Northam needs to step down as well.

“People think this man in blackface serves as the litmus test for racism. Yes, it is racism. Racism is overt but it is also subtle, Coleman said. “This particular incident, as bad as it is, does not obliterate the subtle ways racism is reinforced by our political system and the way systemic racism continues to be propped up and supported by both Democrats and Republicans.”

Not too long ago, I posted a picture on social media of a friend of mine playing with my son. They were both visibly enjoying each other’s company, which is huge because he has a very keen sense of discernment at not quite 2 years old.

I made it a point to reference her as his auntie in the caption that ran with the picture. To my surprise, I received a private message from my blood relative which stated, “Auntie, who?” It made me laugh at such pettiness, but also made me think because my son has many family members who are not of his own blood.

What exactly is the difference between family and relatives?

As a mom who is constantly moving, this is a question that I had to clearly define for myself and for my son to ensure that he understands the difference and necessity of separating the two. Due to living overseas, we have grown accustomed to building villages with people who aren’t related to us. My son was born in Poland and has also lived in Egypt and, now, China. As a result of consistently changing environments, I’m adamant that the people we define as family are constant, active participants in his development, growth and expression of love.

I have realized during his short life that people stake claim and use titles undeserving, trying to prove their own importance. As a mother who’s been with my son everyday since he was born, I could not just walk away from my son, deciding to just stop parenting, and still have a right to that title if someone else were to actually fill that role. Titles don’t necessarily have to hold any weight, but I believe that they do with the kind of life we live. To earn a title, like auntie, it requires someone to do more and be more. It places action behind the title of who they represent.

By searching the word “family,” there is a secondary definition as “all descendants of a common ancestor.” I would beg to differ on this definition and would swap it with “relative,” instead.

In my experience, relatives are the people you are bonded to through genetics. But family is something different and much more complex, especially in today’s more nomadic society.

As the face of family changes, there is a new normal that has allowed us to redefine it. The way that I’m raising my son to understand the concept of family is that family is people who show up. People who do the work and put in the time to help make him the greatest human being he can be. The people who support, love, respect and honor your very being. They do not have to be related to you.

I’ve found that the people I hold dearest, as family, have been there to hold me up in the hardest times in my life and celebrate my triumphs, equally. My father always taught me, through example, that we hold a responsibility to each other to be present for others. We need one another.

When I gave my friend the title of aunt, my blood sister missed the fact that because my husband and I live abroad without much help, he and I hadn’t had any time alone in the almost two years our son has been with us. This newfound family member wanted to give us a break. She suggested that we take a few hours for my husband’s birthday to enjoy the company of each other with the ability to not be worried about the care being given to our son.

She sent me videos and pictures, easing my anxiety. She fed and changed my baby. She played with him. She made a safe space for him to feel comfortable enough to be without us. She was, indeed, an auntie.

We have established miniature pockets of family outside of relatives. We have many aunts, uncles, sisters and brothers that have jumped in to create a real village that supports us. I know that my blood relative loves me and my son. But because of where we live now and how we live, we are lucky enough to have other people we can call family.

The cliche goes: “Home is where the heart is.” I would take that a step further, saying that family is home, no matter where you are.

KATHMANDU – At least a third of the ice in the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush will thaw this century as temperatures rise, disrupting river flows vital for growing crops from China to India, scientists said on Monday.

Vast glaciers make the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region – which is home to the world’s highest peaks topped by Mount Everest and K2 – a “third pole” behind Antarctica and the Arctic region, they said.

“This is the climate crisis you haven’t heard of,” said Philippus Wester, who led the report.

“Global warming is on track to transform the frigid, glacier-covered mountain peaks of the HKH cutting across eight countries to bare rocks in a little less than a century,” said Wester of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).

The report, by 210 authors, said that more than a third of the ice in the region will melt by 2100 even if governments take tough action to limit global warming under the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

And two-thirds of the ice could vanish if governments fail to rein in greenhouse gas emissions this century. “To me this is the biggest worrying thing,” Wester told Reuters on the sidelines of an event to launch the report in Kathmandu.

Glaciers have thinned and retreated across most parts of the region since the 1970s. Ice in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region would push up sea levels by 1.5 metres if it all melted, Eklabya Sharma, deputy director general of ICIMOD, told Reuters.

MOUNTAIN CLIMATE HOTSPOTS

The region stretches 3,500 km (2,175 miles) across Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan.

The study said the thaw will disrupt rivers including the Yangtze, Mekong, Indus and Ganges, where farmers rely on glacier melt water in the dry season. About 250 million people live in the mountains and 1.65 billion people in river valleys below.

Changes in river flows could also harm hydropower production and cause more erosion and landslides in the mountains.

But more research is needed to gauge exactly how glaciers affect distant crops, said Wouter Buytaert, of Imperial College in London, who was not involved in the study.

“While glacier meltwater propagates downstream, it mixes with water from other sources such as direct rainfall, wetlands, and groundwater, up to a point where the impact of glacier melting may become negligible,” he said.

The authors said that people living in small island states were often viewed as the most vulnerable to climate change because of rising sea levels.

“It’s not just occupants of the world’s islands that are suffering,” said Dasho Rinzin Dorji, an ICIMOD board member from Bhutan. He said in a statement that mountain regions were also extremely vulnerable as “climate hotspots”.

UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid has approved Indian tycoon Vijay Mallya’s extradition to India, The Times of India reported late on Monday.

The move comes after a UK court in December ruled that Mallya should be extradited from Britain to India to face fraud charges resulting from the collapse of his defunct Kingfisher Airlines.

ROTTERDAM – A rare D-Day flag that flew on a U.S. Navy ship leading the allied advance at the beaches of Normandy nearly 75 years ago will be returned to America after going on display in the Netherlands on Monday.

The 48-star “Normandy” flag was on the U.S. Navy’s LCC 60, one of just three advanced fleet vessels directing troops onto Utah Beach in German-occupied France on June 6, 1944.

Howard Vander Beek, who commanded the vessel as a Navy lieutenant, kept the flag throughout the war, brought it home and kept it in his basement until he died in 2014. It was sold at auction by his family two years later and bought by Dutch collector Bert Kreuk for $514,000.

“It was pierced by German machine gun bullets and ripped by the wind,” said Kreuk. “The flag will be going home.”

Kreuk, who ran a business in the United States for 20 years, wants to donate it to the American people and hopes that U.S. President Donald Trump will come pick it up in the Netherlands.

Dozens of U.S. and Dutch soldiers stood at attention as the tattered flag, stained by diesel fumes and dirt, arrived at Rotterdam’s Kunsthal museum in a military convoy headed by a U.S. Sherman tank.

Rotterdam’s orchestra played “Fanfare for the Common Man”, written in 1942 by U.S. composer Aaron Copland, as the flag was laid into a display case by soldiers.

U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands Piet Hoekstra said he has discussed the flag with high-level U.S. government officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

“We are making sure that the White House is aware of this opportunity,” said Hoekstra. “Vander Beek carried it in his backpack across significant parts of Europe until the end of the war. They are all special, this one is maybe a little bit more unique,” Hoekstra said.

The flag will be on display in Rotterdam until Feb. 17.

Pakistani-origin sports host Adnan Virk has been fired by ESPN, according to a report in the New York Post.

Virk is accused of leaking confidential company information to the media on multiple occasions, according to sources, the report said. Virk had recently signed a new multi-year contract.

When ESPN investigated the allegations, it felt that Virk failed to fully cooperate, the Post reported.

“Adnan Virk no longer works at ESPN,” ESPN vice president Josh Krulewitz told The Post.

Virk could not immediately be reached for comment. CAA, Virk’s agency, declined comment.

On Friday, Virk was escorted off the Bristol, Connecticut campus. The specific nature of the information Virk chose to share is unknown at this time, the report said.

During his move up the ESPN ladder, Virk had become a lead studio host on its college football game coverage. He was a regular host on “Baseball Tonight” and college basketball. He was one of the main fill-in hosts on ESPN Radio. He had developed a

Virk was born in Toronto, Ontario to Zakaria and Taherah Virk, according to Wikipedia. His parents had immigrated to Canada from Pakistan. In 1984, the family relocated to Kingston, then in 1989 to Morven, a small town just outside Kingston, where his parents owned and operated a gas station and Zack’s Variety store.

After graduating from Ernestown Secondary School, where he played basketball and soccer, Virk studied Radio and Television Arts at Ryerson University.

From 2003 to 2009 he hosted several programs on The Score, and was an associate producer for Sportscentre at TSN. He was also the co-host of Omniculture and Bollywood Boulevard at Omni Television. In 2009, he joined Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment as a host and reporter for Raptors TV, Leafs TV and Gol TV Canada. In April 2010 he joined the ESPN family of stations in Bristol.

After joining ESPN, he became one of three main anchors for Baseball Tonight. During 2014 spring training he began calling play-by-play for an ESPN affiliate. In the baseball off-season, he hosted SportsCenter and Outside the Lines. He would also fill in for Keith Olbermann on Olbermann. He was the host of a movie podcast Cinephile on ESPN, Wikipedia noted.

Virk lives in West Hartford, Connecticut, with his wife Eamon, whom he married in 2007. He has four sons.

India has lodged a protest with the United States government after several Indian students were detained there in connection with their enrollment in a fake university, after an undercover operation.

The American authorities said this past week that they had indicted eight people accused of exploiting the country’s student visa system. They were said to have helped foreign nationals illegally remain in the United States by enrolling them into the University of Farmington in Farmington Hills, Michigan, which billed itself as a “nationally accredited business and STEM institution” with an innovative curriculum, flexible class schedules and a diverse student body, reported Reuters.

But the private university was being secretly operated by agents of the Department of Homeland Security to expose immigration fraud, according to federal prosecutors who announced charges in the case.

The Indian government said on Saturday that it had issued a rare “démarche” to the United States Embassy in New Delhi, telling it that Indian officials needed immediate consular access to the detainees.

“We underlined that students, who may have been duped into enrolling in the ‘University’, should be treated differently from those recruiters who have duped them,” the Indian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The Indian government also urged the United States to release the students from detention, without deporting them.

Though the American government did not disclose the nationalities of those involved, the Indian Foreign Ministry said on Saturday that “several Indian students” had been detained. Indian news outlets reported that more than 100 students had been held in the United States, reported Reuters.

The Detroit Free Press reported 129 of the 139 students arrested by ICE were from India. One student is Palestinian.

In a statement on Jan. 30, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement said eight people had been charged with conspiracy to commit visa fraud and harboring aliens for profit.

“Homeland Security Investigations special agents uncovered a nationwide network that grossly exploited U.S. immigration laws,” Steve Francis, the Homeland Security Investigations special agent in charge, said in the statement. “These suspects aided hundreds of foreign nationals to remain in the United States illegally by helping to portray them as students, which they most certainly were not.”

The agency said that the defendants had collectively profited in excess of $250,000.

The university in the Detroit area was operated for almost two years by special agents as part of an undercover operation starting in 2017, the statement said, Reuters reported.

“All participants in the scheme knew that the school had no instructors or actual classes,” it said.

China, India and South Korea together sent 56.1 percent of all international students in the United States in 2017-18, an annual survey by the Institute of International Education showed last year.

The Detroit Free Press reported India’s Minister of External Affairs expressed concern about the arrests of Indian students, calling their welfare its “highest priority.”

“We have urged the U.S. side to share full details and regular updates of the students with the Government, to release them from detention at the earliest and not to resort to deportation against their will,” read the statement issued Saturday.

Russell Abrutyn, an immigration attorney in Berkley who is contact with some of the students detained, told the Detroit Free Press, “a lot of the students were … essentially taken advantage of or taken in by what appeared to be a legitimate school.”

Abrutyn said a majority of the students detained are in Michigan, with several at Calhoun County Jail in Battle Creek.

“I think it’s really alarming that the government is going out of its way and spending millions of dollars to set up these false schemes to entice foreign students and immigrants who are already a vulnerable class of people to break the law,” Amer Zahr, an adjunct professor of law at the University of Detroit-Mercy and a spokesman for one of the students arrested, Najlaa Karim Musarsa, 29, of Dearborn Heights, was quoted as saying by the Free Press. “It’s really disturbing.”

Musarsa, of Palestinian origin from the West Bank, is currently in custody in Calhoun County jail.

India said its consular offices in the U.S. “have visited several detention centers throughout the U.S. to extend consular assistance to detained students. So far, about 30 Indian students have been contacted by our consular officers. Efforts to contact the remaining Indian students are continuing.”

The American Telugu Association and American Telangana Association said they are working with attorneys to try and help the students.

Ravi Mannam, an attorney in Atlanta, told the Free Press last week that ICE’s fake university “kind of hooked these students by promising them credits for their previous masters programs.”

ICE says the students arrested were not in valid status because they were not enrolled in a full course of study, which is required by Homeland Security. The students had previously attended other universities, but then transferred to the University of Farmington as part of a Curricular Practical Training program that allows students to work.

The American Bazaar reported Indian Ambassador to the United States Harsh Vardhan Shringla, speaking at a meet in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Saturday, said the Indian students may have got trapped into the scam as they were clueless or ignorant about the legality of the Michigan school.

“And for many of [the students], we understand … were quite unaware of the rules and the regulations,” he said. “Many of them thought they were going in for a real university, [many] were going [to] that university, asking about classes and enquiring why classes were not being held.”

He added: “[There] is a difference between Indian law and American law. In Indian law, we don’t have this concept of entrapment. We only investigate when there is a sense of guilt, when there is a sense of someone has committed an act that is a criminal act or misdemeanor. That act is investigated and then you come out with evidence. But you don’t intentionally lure people into a situation where they make mistakes and commit criminal acts or acts that can be in contradiction with the law of the land you live in.”

Aries
An excellent opportunity is likely to come to you soon. Things look to be promising for those who feel a need for change from the present job. Health remains good. You may get involved in preparations for an event on the home front. Better equation is likely to ensue in your relationship with spouse. This is a good time to look up your near and dear ones.
Lucky Number : 8
Lucky Colour : Parrot Green

Taurus
Hectic schedule may give you little time to attend to personal things. Chartered accountants and lawyers will be able to find some good clients. Deliberating deeply on an issue at hand will be necessary to avoid complications at a later date. Good returns from investments are foreseen. A bad habit can play havoc with your health, if you don’t quit now.
Lucky Number : 3
Lucky Colour : Beige

Gemini
You may find it difficult to achieve what you set out for on the professional front. Family life appears immensely satisfying. Profits are set to steadily increase giving a boost to your standard of living. Don’t let lethargy and disinterest mar your chances on the academic front. Steer clear of mental stress. Some of you may plan something exciting to avoid boredom.
Lucky Number : 4
Lucky Colour : Indigo

Cancer
This is an auspicious week for those who want to begin construction work. Things work with clockwork precision on the work front. You will manage to handle complex issues by taking initiative based on your judgement. Consider a proposal coming your way seriously, as it can give you good returns. Friends and relations may keep the home front abuzz.
Lucky Number : 22
Lucky Colour : Dark Slate Grey

Leo
A job you are trying to avoid may come to you and there is little you can do about it. Prying into the personal lives of others does not augur well for you, so get rid of this habit. Roads don’t appear safe for you for speed driving, so remain careful. Certain things on the home front may not be to your liking. However, you will do your level best to make things pleasant at home.
Lucky Number : 1
Lucky Colour : Yellow

Virgo
An opportunity for improving performance awaits some on the academic front. A property may be sold off at a hefty margin. You are likely to remain financially strong, as money flows in. An item misplaced or broken by you may unleash partner’s ire. A social activity may prove most enjoyable. Don’t let up on your fitness regime.
Lucky Number : 7
Lucky Colour : Magenta

Libra
Make the best of the opportunities coming your way on the career front. Your authority may get undermined by your wrong actions, so be careful in what you say or do. On the academic front, you are likely to make good progress. This is not the time to press your luck on the financial front, as loss is indicated. Love beckons the lonely hearts and may lead romance.
Lucky Number : 9
Lucky Colour : Lemon

Scorpio
Those in love are set to take romance to the next level. Your style and confidence is likely to win some admirers on the academic front. Your quest for perfect health is likely to lose steam and get you back to square one! You will manage to take the necessary steps to smoothen things out on the family front. Remaining focussed on your professional priorities will prove beneficial.
Lucky Number : 2
Lucky Colour : Purple

Sagittarius
A tense situation at work may keep you on tenterhooks as the week begins, but it will be a temporary phase. Partner may be a bit harsh, but will talk sense, so listen to him or her. You may not be able to keep abreast of what is happening on the academic front and suffer. You can expect good returns from the money invested in a scheme.
Lucky Number : 8
Lucky Colour : Parrot Green

Capricorn
Remaining regular in your workouts will keep you in perfect health. Dealers may find improvement in their daily sales. A hike in salary is foreseen and calls for celebration, so get the champagne bottle out! Your positive approach in a family matter is likely to lighten the domestic atmosphere. Buying a vehicle or a major item is on the cards for some.
Lucky Number : 22
Lucky Colour : Saffron

Aquarius
This is not the time to bring in major changes in your life, as things may not turn out as expected. Some pending decisions threaten to halt the progress of your current task. You may have to make extra efforts on the professional front. You are likely to make the first move in getting to know someone who is giving unusual attention to you on the romantic front.
Lucky Number : 4
Lucky Colour : Indigo

Pisces
Accolades and congrats may pour in for something you have achieved. Beware of losing your patience on someone close. A pleasurable time is indicated on the romantic front this week. There is a good scope of acquiring something on the property front. You are likely to start or resume the exercise routine to get back in good shape.
Lucky Number : 17
Lucky Colour : Violet

VIJAYAWADA, India -The four-lane highway stretches across this flat, riverine part of southern India, flanked by fields of rice and sugar cane. My guide twists around from the passenger seat to offer some advice: Keep a low profile and don’t take pictures. The activity we seek is “strictly prohibited,” he explains. But he assures me his brother-in-law will know where to go.

It is the first day of Makar Sankranti, a major festival that takes place each January to celebrate the harvest and the advent of longer days. People light bonfires, discarding the old and welcoming the new. They prepare feasts and create intricate decorations made from brightly colored powders. And they hold cockfights – many, many cockfights.

Awash in gambling and liquor, the fights are big-money affairs. They’re also entirely illegal. The fact that they persist points to a conundrum of modern-day India: When the rule of law takes on tradition and political muscle, it often loses.

The country’s Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld a ban on cockfights, but its writ does not appear to extend here. Six miles down a rural road, a rutted track leads off to the right through tracts of guava and tobacco. After two improvised checkpoints, we reach a huge pit. More than 100 cars are parked in the ochre-colored earth. From beyond the far end of the slope comes the sound of cheers and rooster calls.

This is our destination: a cockfight held under the auspices of the local member of the state legislature.

Cockfights take place all over the globe – including in pockets of the United States – and on a small scale across India. But what happens in some coastal districts of the state of Andhra Pradesh during the Sankranti festival is “completely different,” says N.G. Jayasimha, who heads the Indian arm of Humane Society International. It is like a “huge Super Bowl tournament.”

Birds worth as much as $700 each are trained for the fights all year. One breeder described feeding his roosters a special diet of millet, sorghum, cashews and lizard meat. Each event, involving dozens of fights and lasting up to three days, can draw hundreds or thousands of people.

Large amounts of money change hands, though given the illegality of the proceedings, no one knows exactly how much. This year, the organizers of one event used drones equipped with cameras to film the fights and transmit the video tonearbyscreens, Jayasimha says.

After climbing a narrow path, we arrive at the cockfight near the village of Koppaka in the district of West Godavari. There are more than 1,000 people, nearly all men, concentrated around two rings. The first is simply a head-high fence where spectators jostle for a look. Beyond it, past gambling tables and stands offering fresh watermelon and grilled corn, is the main arena. The crowing of roosters echoes from dozens of birds tied to spikes in the ground.

Inside the arena, under a billowing white tent, is Chintamaneni Prabhakar, a member of the state legislature from the Telugu Desam Party that governs Andhra Pradesh. He takes selfies with spectators, constantly shadowed by two bodyguards carrying snub-nosed rifles. Before each cockfight, he strides into the earthen ring and inspects the birds before returning to his front-row seat.

An announcement over a loudspeaker warns that taking photographs and videos is forbidden. Short and lethal-looking blades are strapped to the roosters’ legs. Trainers give the birds a sip of water, stroke their heads, then tap their beaks together before retreating. The noise from the crowd swells as the two birds rush at each other in a blur of feathers and dust.

Less than a minute later, the trainers separate the birds and return them to their starting points, but one is wounded and cannot get up. It tilts unnaturally to one side. Later the loser will be picked up by the feet and dropped in a hollow at the arena’s edge where the ground is already stained red.

After each fight, money furiously changes hands. Mani Chinnam, 25, a breeder outside the arena, seems surprised when asked whether he is concerned about participating in an illegal activity. “Why should I worry?” he responds. Chinnam has brought 25 roosters to the fights, all with powerful chests, shiny tail feathers and alert eyes. Their training regimen involves swimming three times a day.

No police are visible anywhere. Local law enforcement officials say they focus on preventing the fights before they happen – through education, legal notices and arrests – because breaking up the actual events is neither possible nor prudent.

The crowds at cockfights can range into the thousands, says M. Ravi Prakash, the police superintendent for West Godavari district. “There are 4 million people [in the district] and all are supporting this,” he says. “So how can we control it with a 2,500 [person] force?” Junior officers are also wary of crossing powerful local politicians, he notes.

Cockfighting is “very, very culturally ingrained,” adds Vishal Gunni, the police superintendent in the neighboring district of East Godavari. “How do you celebrate Thanksgiving? With turkeys. What would happen if you were to ban the cutting of turkeys?”

Animal rights activists place the blame on elected officials who attend the fights. “When politicians organize these events, the message is sent to the people that law and order means nothing,” Jayasimha says. Contacted after the cockfight, Chintamaneni Prabhakar, the local legislator present at the event in Koppaka, declined to comment and claimed he had no knowledge of the proceedings.

After leaving the first cockfight, we drive to the village of Telaprolu in a nearby district where another event is well underway. It is a grittier scene: several dusty tents with a raised platform at the center where spectators crowd and push for a view of the battling roosters. The announcer barks at the audience, brandishing a whip and yelling at them to move back.

Radhakrishna, 35, a local farmer who uses only one name, has brought his three children, all under the age of 12, to the fights. He has memories of being here as a child atop his own father’s shoulders. Now his children, too, enjoy coming, Radhakrishna says.

The announcers continue their thunderous shouts and trainers carefully carry roosters to and from the ring. As we leave, the sky is starting to darken and floodlights come on around the arena. The fights will continue uninterrupted into the night.

It’s Week 5 of “The Bachelor” and finally we have answers to some of this season’s most pressing questions, such as: How long can a 31-year-old woman hold out for a man who’s dating a dozen other women? When will a 23-year-old experience her first kiss? And most disconcertingly: What happened to Kirpa’s chin?

The only person to leave this episode was Elyse, who had a delightful one-on-one date with Colton two weeks ago and is struggling with the fact that she’s in Thailand but not getting any time with Colton. (You’re at a beautiful resort in a lovely locale. Do some yoga and chill.) Instead she storms into his hotel room in a white dress fit for a breezy beach wedding to announce she can’t bear the idea of him dating multiple women and then, potentially – maybe – proposing to her at the end.

Such a confrontation happens nearly every season, but rarely this early. What does she expect him to do – call the season off so they can ride off into the sunset? Elyse appears upset at the decision she’s making, but at least she’s leaving of her own volition.

Here are the best, worst and weirdest moments from this week.

– The best moment

There have been some inane job descriptions in “Bachelor” history: Aspiring dolphin trainer. Chicken enthusiast. Free spirit. Twins.

But Heather is a new kind of odd. Instead of being described as something she is or wants to be, she’s been defined by what she hasn’t done. The 23-year-old from Carlsbad, California, has Never Been Kissed. She revealed this to Colton early on, perhaps so that he would know he’s not the only person this season who hasn’t reached certain adult milestones. And so that he wouldn’t lean in too soon and accidentally take her lip virginity. He handled that first talk very maturely, ending every encounter with a hug.

Now that they’re on a one-on-one date in Thailand, viewers are waiting patiently for that first kiss. It doesn’t happen while they’re perusing a market, holding hands and nestling into one another. When they’re on a boat, Colton asks Heather whether she “blows kisses” – proving that it is possible to tell a good consent joke. (And yes, blowing a kiss is OK, she confirms.) It doesn’t happen while they’re discussing what a great day they’ve had and how Colton wants a partner with whom he can experience new things. (We can think of a few new things you can experience.) And yet … nothing. It doesn’t happen at dinner, either, when Heather discusses being in an eight-month relationship with a guy she’s also never kissed. It doesn’t happen after Colton gives her a rose. Instead, another hug.

At this point it’s getting awkward. All this talk about how Heather has waited so long for this simple act of affection because she wants it to be special, and viewers are starting to think … maybe she’ll keep waiting. Actually, maybe that’s better – to not have this private thing you’ve waited so long for to occur very much in public.

Just as viewers are about to give up on it happening, Colton and Heather go for a walk and BAM, LOOK UP – THERE ARE LITERAL FIREWORKS. This seems like the right moment to, you know, lean in and experience a thing for the first time. And just like that, Heather gets a promotion midseason. Her job description now reads: Has Been Kissed.

– The worst moment

In “Bachelor” universe there’s typically a lot of foreshadowing before a feud. (See: The endless discussions of pageant drama between Hannah B. and Caelynn.) But the biggest fight of the season occurred with absolutely no buildup, as Onyeka suddenly decided that she had to warn Colton about Nicole’s true intentions.

Onyeka pulled Colton aside at the party after the group date and told him that before Elyse left, she revealed a damaging fact: That Nicole allegedly said she’s only on the show because she wants an opportunity to leave her hometown of Miami.

A brilliant strategy by Onyeka: Throw another contestant under the bus and blame it on someone who quit the show and can’t refute you! It certainly got in Colton’s head: “My worst nightmare is trusting my gut, getting excited, really giving these relationships my all, and then getting to the end of this and not being loved back,” he said sadly.

Of course, Colton confronted Nicole, who was stunned that he questioned her motives. She denied saying such a thing. “I’m here because I haven’t been able to find love,” she said tearfully. “It just kills me if you were to … take that and believe it.”

Meanwhile, Onyeka spilled this juicy bit of information to her fellow cast members, only to have Tayshia immediately rebut her story. “Well, that’s awkward, ’cause I actually was there for that conversation and Nicole never said any of that,” Tayshia said. “All she said was that you have to take opportunities and they can change your life. She never said that she needs to get out of Miami.”

Uh oh! But Onyeka didn’t back down. “That’s what Elyse told me,” she shot back.

Once again, because Elyse was gone, there was no way to untangle this twisted web of hearsay and miscommunication. A furious Nicole returned and asked Onyeka why she was spreading rumors about her. “I’m not spreading rumors, I’m literally telling him something that I was told,” Onyeka explained.

Things spiraled further later in the episode, when Nicole exacted revenge and told Colton that in fact Onyeka was trouble: Specifically, a mean girl who started a rumor that Nicole was mentally unstable. But Nicole said she refused to give in to a bully.

When Colton took Onyeka aside to discuss this, Onyeka also denied everything and went right back to Nicole. “I asked you if you were emotionally stable to be in a relationship. But when have I ever been like, ‘You’re mentally unstable’? When have I ever said that?” Onyeka asked.

“Honestly, that’s kind of the same thing,” Nicole said.

“No, it’s not. So you lied to him,” Onyeka said flatly. “Mentally unstable means clinically ill, Nicole.”

This went on (and on and on and on) until Colton arrived to try to break things up. It didn’t work, and they kept bickering. Finally, Colton was so frustrated he stood up and left. They each tried to stop him. “I just need time real quick. I need some time alone,” he said. Colton, dazed and angry, walked along the beach by himself. “I’m so over it,” he mumbled. And then, the episode ended on the three most chilling words on any reality-TV show: “TO BE CONTINUED.”

– The weirdest moment

“The Bachelor” is gaslighting us. Seriously! There were two aspects of this week’s episode that made us question our sanity.

First of all, how could “The Bachelor” give Kirpa her overdue and well-deserved screentime and yet pretend that nothing was wrong with her wounded face? Kirpa sported a bandage on her chin for the entire episode, which was never acknowledged by the show in any way whatsoever.

Theories abounded. Was it a leech accident from the Singapore group date? A catfight with one of the mean girls? Did she just trip and fall down or something? WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU, KIRPA, ARE YOU OK?

It must have been a pretty mundane injury. Because had it happened on a date, the producers would have milked it for maximum impact, and every promo for this episode would have featured ambulance lights flashing and Thai paramedics carrying her out on a stretcher. Previous seasons of “The Bachelorette” have, through selective editing, teased minor injures from sporty group dates as having been caused by fights among the contestants, since the men are more likely to get physical.

Even more crazy-making: At one point halfway through the episode, Kirpa appeared for an interview without her bandage, and no scar. These “in-the-moment” interviews are often deployed out of context by producers, so it’s likely that it had been filmed before her injury, but it had the effect of making everyone wonder if their eyes were playing tricks on them.

Probably, the producers knew that the truth of whatever happened to poor Kirpa was too boring, and that they’d get more mileage from leaving us guessing. It worked!

Kirpa’s chin quickly earned its own novelty Twitter account:

And Kirpa is keeping mum about it on her social media channels. She’s still under a nondisclosure agreement, and we wouldn’t be surprised if they’re making us wait until the “Women Tell All” episode to finally reveal the #chingate truth.

The next moment that made us feel like reality was a construct quickly slipping from our grasp: Cassie’s date to a “private island.” It sounded luxurious and romantic! Until the boat pulled up to what was, literally, a sand bar – an “island” maybe the size of a one-bedroom apartment that was only above water because the tide seemed low. There was nothing on this island. Not even a lone palm tree, like the islands where comic strip characters end up marooned. It. Was. Just. Sand.

But not to Cassie and Colton, who called it “our island” – ahem, your sand pile, guys – and spent their date writhing around and making out on each of its approximately 600 square feet. The boat pulled away and left them! With a cameraman, yes, but with seemingly no food or water. It’s too bad Cassie didn’t go on the survival date the day before, because she certainly could have used some of those skills.

The members of Bachelor Nation, too, could not believe that the show was trying to trick us all into believing that this island that not even crabs would choose to live on was a “private island.” It reminded many people of another charismatic bachelor who tried to invite people to his private island: Fyre Festival founder Billy McFarland. We all know how that turned out.

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump gives his third State of the Union address Tuesday night. (Well, technically his second. The first year’s speech is an address to a joint session of Congress, because the president has been in office only a month at that point, so how can he already give a sweeping speech on what state the union is in?)

This is Trump’s first speech to Congress with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., literally looking over his shoulder. It was originally scheduled for Jan. 29, but Pelosi refused to let Trump use the House chamber while the government was partially shut down. The speech is now occurring during a three-week reprieve in which Congress is supposed to figure out how to fund the government and secure the southern border in a way that both Trump and Democrats can support. That tension hanging over the speech will only add to the already fraught political climate in the room.

Here are six things to watch for during Trump’s speech.

1. Will Trump double down on his demand for a wall?

As congressional negotiators try to avert another shutdown by making a deal on border security, Trump has made it clear that he could declare a national emergency if he doesn’t get a border wall out of it. How much of the speech will be Trump making his case to the American people yet again that the border is in crisis and the only way to solve it is by building a wall?

If he does make a strong case for the wall, how will Republicans respond? Many of them don’t want to have this fight any longer. Will they give a wall a rousing standing ovation as the Democrats sit stone-faced? Or will they just politely clap? That could say a lot about the mind-set of Republicans when it comes to building Trump’s wall.

2. Will Democrats stand and clap for anything?

The Trump White House is touting this State of the Union as a message of unity and bipartisanship. Those are themes that are difficult not to applaud for, but it’s hard to imagine any Democrats standing for anything Trump has to say. Maybe, maybe they’ll stand when he touts passage of the criminal justice bill and opioids package as examples of what can be accomplished when the parties work together.

But when he says, according to an excerpt of his prepared remarks, “Together we can break decades of political stalemate. We can bridge old divisions, heal old wounds, build new coalitions, forge new solutions and unlock the extraordinary promise of America’s future. The decision is ours to make,” will any Democrats give that a standing ovation? The words are likely to ring hollow to most Democrats in the room.

A number of Democrats who boycotted Trump’s speech last year plan to do so again. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., said in a statement: “The thought of spending Tuesday night in the House Chamber listening to the reckless, self-centered man who occupies the White House holds no interest for me. Just like in past years, I plan to skip a speech that will be filled with lies, deception and divisiveness.”

3. What will the expression on Pelosi’s face be?

Pelosi is the consummate professional, and she’s unlikely to show her emotions. But from her perch beside Vice President Pence, staring at the back of Trump’s head and into a sea of her colleagues, will she be able to avoid a smirk, an eye roll or a grimace? She’ll most likely sit there stoically, not betraying her inner monologue. But it’ll be fun to imagine what she’s thinking, especially since she’s still riding high after Trump allowed the government to reopen without his border wall money.

4. Who are the guests?

Members of Congress are allowed to bring guests to watch the State of the Union from the wrap-around balcony that overlooks the floor, and usually their invitations are symbolic of current politics. The same is true of the White House’s guests, who are invited to sit with the first lady to watch the address – we’ll get those names Tuesday.

Some of the guests announced by Democrats send a very pointed message to the president. There are two associated with the Parkland, Fla., high school massacre: Cameron Kasky, a student who survived the shooting and became an anti-gun-violence activist, and Manny Oliver, whose son Joaquin was killed. Several lawmakers are bringing transgender service members. There’s an immigrant mother who was separated from her children at the border last summer, individuals furloughed during the shutdown and young immigrant “dreamers.” Washington Post colleague Elise Viebeck has more details about all the guests here.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is bringing Ana Maria Archila, one of the women who, in the midst of the Brett Kavanaugh accusations, confronted Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., as he was getting into an elevator to tearfully describe to him their own experiences with sexual assault. After the encounter, carried live on television, Flake demanded a one-week FBI investigation into Kavanaugh before the Senate voted on his Supreme Court nomination. Flake ultimately supported him, but it was a watershed moment.

Speaking of Kavanaugh …

5. How will lawmakers greet Kavanaugh?

Assuming he attends, as most Supreme Court justices do, Kavanaugh will be in the chamber Tuesday night for Trump’s speech. Now, there’s a good chance he has no direct interaction with any Democrats. Typically, lawmakers who want face time with the principals who parade down the center aisle stake out a seat early in the day. I don’t imagine many Democrats are going to be falling over themselves to get a chance to shake Trump’s hand on national television. But just Kavanaugh’s presence could be uncomfortable for some. Additionally, how will Republicans greet him? Will there be a lot of back slapping and handshakes? And how will Kavanaugh respond to their greetings?

6. Will anything unexpected happen?

State of the Union addresses are pretty straightforward affairs. They follow the same script year after year, no matter who the president is. Trump’s first two joint-session addresses were by and large unexciting, save for when he led an extended standing ovation for a soldier’s recent widow. Otherwise they were cookie-cutter. Trump read from a teleprompter. Republicans clapped. Democrats did not.

But with a new crop of lawmakers in the audience, and a broad spectrum of guests in the gallery with a lot of grievances, it’s not hard to imagine an outburst or other disturbance. Though probably not.

NEW DELHI – An alliance of regional parties in India is working on a combined economic plan, one of its leaders said, in the latest sign that Prime Minister Narendra Modi faces an increasingly united opposition in the upcoming general election.

That plan is likely to include a landmark policy floated by India’s main opposition Congress party to provide the poor with a minimum income if it wins polls due by May, N. Chandrababu Naidu, the politician who helped forge the common front, told Reuters in an interview.

The alliance – consisting of 23 parties that came together in a giant rally in Kolkata last month – would focus on poverty eradication, agriculture, employment and a “minimum income for every family”, he added.

“So many political parties are working (on a) consensus. The farmers’ crisis is the biggest issue, unemployment is the biggest issue,” Naidu said. “The economy (is where) you have to concentrate”.

Modi’s ratings have dropped to their lowest-ever level amid discontent over a lack of jobs for young people and a weak farm economy, according to an India Today poll last month.

Polls have also forecast his ruling alliance will fall short of a majority in the election, which could potentially allow a coalition of regional parties to take a shot at coming to power.

However, there are questions over who could lead the opposition alliance, or whether regional parties would be open to supporting Congress chief Rahul Gandhi should his party emerge with a significant number of seats.

“A prime minister will be decided afterwards with consensus,” Naidu said, ruling out selecting a figurehead before the polls. “First of all we have to win the elections.”

As chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, Naidu has been credited with implementing business-friendly polices that attracted firms like Microsoft to the southern state.

His Telugu Desam Party, one of the largest regional parties in India’s parliament, was part of a coalition led by Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) till last March, when he broke away after disagreements over funding for Andhra Pradesh.

Since then, he has emerged as one of the main architects of an informal alliance seeking to unseat the BJP.

“I’m telling you anybody is better than Narendra Modi because he won’t listen to anybody,” Naidu said. “He doesn’t have any comprehensive position.”

Anokha, the University of Maryland’s South Asian a cappella team took home the $1,000 prize after winning the second South Asian singing competition called Sahana, at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA).

The competition was hosted by Naya Zamaana the South Asian a cappella group at UCLA, who chose nine teams to participate in the competition out of the 23 that auditioned, according to a Daily Bruin report.

The competition brought together a cappella teams from different universities such as Purdue University, Stanford University and the University of Miami.

Before each team performed a 12-minute set, which consisted of Bollywood and traditional Indian songs, as well as popular Western songs along with choreography, an intro video was shown to introduce them.

In their intro video, Anokha gave a few statistics about human trafficking and female victims.

The songs they performed on, all featured lyrics that empower women and their choreography implied the same, the report added.

Once all of the a cappella teams had performed, UCLA South Asian dance groups Bataaka Nu Shaak and Taara came to perform on stage.

At the end of the night, the teams came back on stage for an ultimate beat-boxing battle.

According to UCLA’s clubs and activities website, Naya Zamaana was founded in 2006 and it celebrates the diversity among the young Indian American community.

Since then, the team has performed in several competitions but has always wanted to create and host an event of their own.

University of Maryland’s Anokha will now be competing in the All-American Awaaz finals in April, where they will have a chance to be named the national champions of the South Asian a cappella teams.

A Middlesex County, New Jersey, man of Indian origin, was arrested this morning  (Feb. 5) for allegedly submitting 11 fraudulent H-1B visa applications as well as fraudulently procuring his own citizenship, U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, Craig Carpenito announced.

Neeraj Sharma, 43, of Piscataway, New Jersey, is charged by complaint with one count of visa fraud and one count of naturalization fraud. Sharma was scheduled to make his initial appearance the same day before U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael A. Hammer in Newark federal court.

The charges and allegations contained in the complaint are merely accusations, and Sharma is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. The visa and naturalization fraud charges carry a maximum potential penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:

Sharma recruited foreign workers who were supposed to have IT expertise and looking to work in the United States. When submitting their H-1B visa paperwork to U.S. Citizenship and Immigrations Services, Sharma is accused of falsely representing that the foreign workers had full-time positions awaiting them at a national bank, a prerequisite to securing their visas.

In fact, prosecutors allege, Sharma had never secured work for the applicants and submitted phony letters to USCIS on the bank’s letterhead with forged signatures of bank executives.

The H-1B program applies to employers seeking to hire non-immigrant aliens as workers in specialty occupations or as fashion models of distinguished merit and ability.

BOSTON – Hundreds of thousands of football fans packed into Boston’s streets on Tuesday to catch a glimpse of the New England Patriots after their record-tying sixth Super Bowl win.

A parade of World War Two-era amphibious duck boats blasted confetti into the sky, while players including quarterback Tom Brady, linebacker Dont’a Hightower and famously taciturn head coach Bill Belichick, celebrated the team’s 13-3 victory over the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday.

Unseasonably warm weather — with a forecast high of 63 Fahrenheit (17.2 Celsius) — helped swell crowd sizes at the city’s 12th professional sports championship parade since 2001.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh had forecast that the crowd could pass 1 million. Police offered no estimate of the crowd’s size.

Fans packed the route from Boston’s Prudential Tower and down Boylston Street to City Hall, with players including wide receiver Julian Edelman tossing footballs to the crowd.

Patrick Cronin, an 18-year-old high school student, said he was thrilled to cheer a team he said was often doubted during its regular season.

“So consistently everyone was like, ‘They’re too old,’ or they have some stupid reason why Brady is no good,” Cronin said. “It’s so satisfying when they’re so good again.”