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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken performed Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” on the electric guitar on Tuesday night in Kyiv, Ukraine, as part of a solidarity visit to boost morale in the embattled former Soviet republic. Blinken played rhythm guitar with The 1999 band at the Barman Dictat, a nightspot in the Ukrainian capital. “I know this is a really, really difficult time,” Blinken said. “You need to know the United States is with you.”

High school English teachers today face prison in Florida if they have their class perform a Shakespeare play in period dress. Every Shakespeare play at the Globe required cross-dressing.Women were not allowed on English stages 400 years ago, so women’s roles were played by cross-dressing men, whether at The Globe, the Blackfriars or, what was it called? O, yeah, the Roxy. This led to the delightful scene in “The Merchant of Venice” in which Portia, played by a cross-dressing man, criss-cross-dresses as a woman playing a man, to save his/her/its friend’s friend Antonio. Right: a man playing a woman playing...

President Biden on Friday paid tribute to Oscar-winning actor Sidney Poitier after news of his death, recognizing him as a trailblazer who “changed the way America saw itself.” “With unflinching grandeur and poise — his singular warmth, depth, and stature on-screen — Sidney helped open the hearts of millions and changed the way America saw itself,” Biden said in a statement. “The son of tomato farmers in the Bahamas, Sidney became the first Black man to win the Academy Award for Best Actor — but the trail he blazed extended leaps and bounds beyond his background or profession. He blazed...

It might be a year or longer before we're able to safely go to theaters again, infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci told actor Jennifer Garner in a recent Instagram Live conversation. "When are we going to be able to sit in a theater and watch our favorite performers up on stage again?" Garner asked Dr. Fauci, who replied, "I think it's going to be a combination of a vaccine that has been around for almost a year and good public health measures." Fauci admits that there are still a lot of variables, including the strength of the vaccine. You...

It’s absurd to claim Cotton was saying Shakespeare was American simply because he said Chinese students should learn about the playwright 'from America.' Shakespeare understood ordered liberty. To repurpose words from “Macbeth,” social media and politics are “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” For proof, look no further than the response to Sen. Tom Cotton’s claim that Chinese students who study in American universities should not be taught quantum computing.Instead, Cotton said, “If Chinese students want to come here and study Shakespeare and the Federalist Papers, that’s what they need to learn from America.” He called it a scandal that American...

I had admired Mr. Dennehy — who died on Wednesday, at 81 — as a smart, risk-taking and undersung actor onstage and onscreen. He was a heartbreakingly sensitive lout as the parvenu Lopakhin — a brute with a touch of the poet — in Peter Brook’s production of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” (1988) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. His performance as the serial murderer John Wayne Gacy in the 1992 television film “To Catch a Killer” was a penetratingly human portrait of a monster, and it haunted my nightmares for a long time. But nothing I had seen Mr....

Remember in the late sixties and early seventies on Saturday mornings or possibly Sunday mornings real early (around maybe 5 or 6 a.m.) there used to be a type of playhouse 90 Christian drama that was staged on live sets? There was 50s type of jazz music playing for background. A contemporary Christian setting in that they were depicting people living in cities in modern times that had issues that were biblical nature. Does anybody remember those shows? And if so do you remember the name of those programs? And if they are available to view online anywhere? I think...

You know he’s getting desperate. (NYT) — For nearly three years, Republicans have attacked Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on national security and civil rights issues. For months, they have criticized him over a gun-trafficking investigation gone awry, with dozens of leaders calling for his resignation. Last week, more than 75 members of Congress co-sponsored a House resolution expressing “no confidence” in his leadership. [...] In the interview, Mr. Holder offered a glimpse of how he viewed the criticism. He said he thought some critics — like Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who favors allowing the military...

Stimulating the economy at clubhouses across America... VINEYARD HAVEN, Mass. (AP) — President Barack Obama has once again hit the golf trifecta as he vacations on Martha’s Vineyard. He spent more than two hours at Mink Meadows Golf Club on Tuesday, a semi-private, nine-hole club on the island’s north shore. It was Obama’s fourth outing since he arrived last week for a 10-day vacation. His golf partners included his friend Eric Whitaker and White House chef Sam Kass.

President Obama is extending full constitutional due-process rights to a Somali terrorist. This sets a troubling precedent. Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame was captured sometime in April on a boat traveling between Yemen and Somalia. He was detained on board a U.S. warship for two months and interrogated by intelligence officials. He reportedly revealed a great deal of valuable information regarding his connections to the Somalia-based al-Shabab militant group and the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. So far, so good. (Snip) The Warsame indictment is an end run around Congress, which last year voted to bar the transfer of terrorist

INTERNET GRABBERS House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa continues to demand answers from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski over why the head of a supposedly independent federal agency visited the White House 81 times between January 2009 and November 2010. It was during this time that Genachowski and his staff were developing a regulatory scheme that would ultimately place control of the Internet in the hands of the FCC. Of special interest to Issa is a meeting held September 17, 2009, which took place four days before Genachowski made a speech at the Brookings Institute laying out the broad...

NEW YORK, Jan. 22, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- At the state dinner for Hu Jintao, the pianist Lang Lang played a tune that all Chinese recognize as encouraging hatred of the United States as the enemy of China. Read the beginning of The Epoch Times article below; get the complete story at this link: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/49822/ Read the difference. The Epoch Times publishes in 17 languages and in 33 countries. TheEpochTimes.com. Chinese Pianist Plays Propaganda Tune at White House US humiliated in eyes of Chinese by song used to inspire anti-Americanism By MATTHEW ROBERTSON Epoch Times Staff Lang Lang the pianist says...

After spending the earlier part of this rainy, windy day at his Chilmark retreat, President Barack Obama emerged this afternoon to play some basketball at an area school and later to dine out with his wife Michelle and friends. Obama ate at The Sweet Life Cafe in Oak Bluffs, where he and his wife dined during their 2009 Martha's Vineyard family vacation. Dinner companions include his Chicago friends Eric Whitaker and Cheryl Whitaker and White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, according to White House pool reports from media covering the president. A crowd of several dozen people gathered outside the...

Film director Roland Emmerich, whose last effort was the apocalyptic "2012," has begun shooting "Anonymous." It won't be another disaster movie -- except perhaps for English professors. According to Emmerich, the film is "about how it came to be that William Shakespeare was not the author of his plays," which, he says, turn out to have been written by the "Earl of Oxford." Emmerich calls "Anonymous" a political thriller. "It's about who will succeed Elizabeth and the cause of that thriller, the Essex Rebellion." The film, starring Vanessa Redgrave as Queen Elizabeth...will have "kings, queens, and princes," he adds. "It's...

The World Health Organisation said on Thursday that checks on many of the 30 deaths recorded following mass pandemic flu vaccinations had so far ruled out a direct link to the vaccines.

In life, the playwright August Wilson had an all-but-official rule: No white directors for major productions of his work, which was one reason that a film was never made from his 10 plays about African-American life in the 20th century. “Fences,” one of the two awarded the Pulitzer Prize, foundered in Hollywood because of his insistence on a black director. Yet in the years since Wilson died in 2005, an increasing number of white directors have staged his plays, and last week came a milestone: “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” which opened on April 16, is the first Broadway revival...

MEL Gibson once had close links to the Australian League of Rights, a Far Right group notorious for its anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial. The league claims the world is run by a secret society of Jews. The Hollywood star's foray into Far Right activist politics in Australia occurred in 1987 when he campaigned for a friend, Rob Taylor, who stood unsuccessfully for the northern Victorian federal seat of Indi. Charles Pinwill, a former Queensland state director of the League of Rights, said he knew Gibson's father, Hutton, and said Gibson was interested in the league's ideas. "They were...

WASHINGTON, July 27, 2006 – Soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division's 4th Brigade Combat Team are working to set conditions for the Iraqi government to take charge of essential services and public works within Baghdad. Army Lt. Col. Joe Gandara, commander of Special Troops Battalion, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, meets with neighborhood representatives in the Doura Baladiya, in southwestern Baghdad. Local representatives often detail the most pressing needs of their neighborhoods and communities. Photo by Staff Sgt. Brent Williams, USA  '(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The brigade's Special Troops Battalion has taken the lead in...

Scientists debate role climate change plays in creating civilizations Tuesday, July 04, 2006 BRADLEY T . LEPPER One of archaeology’s "big questions" is explaining the origins of civilization. In anthropology, "civilization" has a technical definition. To qualify as a civilization, a society must have all or most of the following characteristics: cities with large populations; a hierarchical social organization, with a king, pharaoh or president at the top of the organizational chart; an economy based on agriculture; monumental architecture; and a system of record-keeping. The earliest civilizations arose in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley and northern China. Based on this...

WASHINGTON, June 14, 2006 – Josh Gracin, the former Marine who won fame on the TV show "American Idol," performed at the Pentagon for the Army's 231st birthday celebration today. Servicemembers and civilians at the Pentagon enjoy concert by country music star and former Marine Josh Gracin performs at the Army's 231st birthday celebration June 14. Photo by Sgt. Sara Wood, USA  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Gracin was a lance corporal in the Marine Corps when he participated in the second season of "American Idol." He finished fourth place overall, and went on to land a record...