Skateboarders soar out of the concrete bowl beneath London’s Southbank Center, as they have done for the past 40 years, while hiphop beats stoke up the party atmosphere.
But this is no party — it’s a protest. These knights of the pavement are jousting with authorities to save one of the world’s most iconic skateparks from being converted into a stretch of chain stores and cafes.
“It’s world renowned. People literally come all the way from America or Europe just to see this place,” says Henry Edwards-Wood, 25, a professional skateboard cinematographer and spokesman for the “Long Live Southbank” campaign.
To support their campaign skateboarders held a three-day “jam” over the May bank holiday weekend and have launched an online petition which has gathered more than 28,000 names from across the globe.
And this clash between counterculture and consumerism is also going legal. Lawyers acting for the Long Live Southbank campaign have filed an application to protect it as a community space in the way that Britain’s famed village greens are sacred.
“This is a big tourist attraction for people who come to London. Who’s going to come here to see a Starbucks or another Wagamamas?” said Edwards-Wood, as skateboarders in hoodies and backwards baseball caps whizzed past.
The dingy “undercroft” where the skateboarders are based sits beneath the brutalist Southbank Center on the River Thames, home to renowned arts venues such as the Hayward Art Gallery, the Queen Elizabeth Hall, and Purcell Room.
In the 1970s it became the birthplace of skateboarding in Britain and has since won a name as a mecca for skaters around the globe, featuring in numerous videos and in the best-selling computer game Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4.
It has also provided a refuge for BMXers and graffiti artists.
Earlier this year, however, the Southbank Center unveiled plans for a new Festival Wing which would involve the destruction of the undercroft and the building of a new skatepark under a nearby bridge.
The £ 120 million ($ 186 million) facelift includes new space for performances and exhibitions and has special arts facilities for young people.
Southbank Center Director Mike McCart says the spot now colonized by the skateboarders is a prime location for cafes and restaurants — the rent from which would fund the plan.
“If we’re unable to use commercial retail in this location it would fundamentally undermine the project as a whole,” he said.
McCart said the proposed new site under the Hungerford Bridge about 200 meters (yards) along the river would be the same size and area as the current spot.
“We’ve kept it absolutely raw, so it’s a found space very similar to the ones the skaters inherited in the Seventies.”
The leader of Lambeth council, Lib Peck, said they would “like to see skateboarding kept on the South Bank.”
“We are confident that a satisfactory solution can be found,” Peck said.
But the Southbank skaters are not giving up without a fight.
At the jam on the first weekend of May, hundreds of tourists and passersby lined up behind the fences that surround the skating area to watch a skateboard contest, while music blared over a sound system.
Volunteers sold black and white “Long Live Southbank” T-shirts and cupcakes to raise money for the campaign. Skaters gave beginners lessons to children and adults alike — making sure their pupils put on the safety helmets that they themselves refuse to wear.
As night fell it got nostalgic with classic skate movies shown on a big screen and photos of Southbank from the 1970s to the present day taped to a wall.
Nick Jensen, a professional skateboarder who has frequented Southbank for years, said it was a “mecca for skateboarding.”
“It’s like threatening to take a part of your upbringing or part of who you are away,” he said of the closure plan.
Their campaign has won heavyweight support at home and abroad.
British lawmaker and former culture minister Ben Bradshaw said he was “really sad” at the plan to close the “iconic cultural landmark in London” while respected broadcaster and journalist Libby Purves wrote in The Times newspaper that to replace the skate spot to build more shops and cafes would be “cultural vandalism.”
Mark Gonzales, an American professional skateboarder and artist named the most influential skateboarder of all time by Thrasher magazine, the industry bible, called for the preservation of the spot.
“It’s a place where skaters from all around the world can go and they can meet other skaters from other countries,” he said in a video statement for the campaign.
Tom “Blondey” McCoy, a 15-year-old sponsored skater, said that building a new park nearby as the Southbank Center had suggested would not have the same “vibe.”
“It’s just a completely irreplaceable thing — and the way I see it retail is the most replaceable thing,” he said.
“It’s as important to us as a part of our lives as our homes.”
Skateboarders fight to save famed London spot
Skateboarders fight to save famed London spot
Thousands turn out for Thai royal barge pageantry
- Royal barge processions date back hundreds of years, but are held rarely, saved for the most significant occasions
BANGKOK: Thousands of well-wishers lined the banks of Bangkok’s Chao Phraya River Sunday to watch King Maha Vajiralongkorn ride a glittering royal barge procession to mark his 72nd birthday.
A flotilla of 52 ornately decorated boats, paddled by more than 2,000 oarsmen decked out in scarlet and gold, carried the king and Queen Suthida in formation through the heart of the Thai capital to a Buddhist ceremony at Wat Arun, the city’s ancient Temple of Dawn.
The king, officially regarded as semi-divine but who came in for unprecedented criticism in street protests in 2020 and 2021, took his place on a century-old royal barge known as the “Golden Swan” to deliver robes to monks in a ceremony marking the end of Buddhist Lent.
Royal barge processions date back hundreds of years, but are held rarely, saved for the most significant occasions — most recently, the king’s coronation in 2019.
During the 70-year reign of the previous king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, only 16 barge processions were held.
King Vajiralongkorn turned 72 in July, completing his “sixth cycle” in the 12-year astrological calendar — a milestone regarded by Thais as important and auspicious.
Normally the intricately ornamented barges — their prows decorated with garudas, nagas and other mythical creatures from Buddhist and Hindu mythology — are kept in a museum.
But on days of national importance, navy oarsmen in sarongs, red tunics and traditional hats propel them through the water to the banging of drums, as perfectly coordinated golden paddles break the waters.
Only four of the barges are actually deemed “royal,” while the others are officially royal escort vessels.
The barge procession dates back to Thailand’s 1350-1767 Ayutthaya period. When Bangkok was built more than 250 years ago, kings used the boats to travel through the capital’s network of canals.
As Thailand modernized, the barges fell out of use, but king Bhumibol revived the tradition in 1957 to celebrate the 25th century of the Buddhist era.
Scammers swipe 22 tonnes of cheddar in UK cheese ‘heist’
LONDON: British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver on Saturday urged cheese lovers to help police catch scammers who conned a London dairy out of 22 tonnes of English and Welsh Cheddar.
Oliver described the theft as a “brazen heist of shocking proportions.”
He told followers on Instagram to be alert if they heard anything about “lorry loads of very posh cheese” being offered “for cheap,” adding that the cheddar would have originally been worth around £300,000 ($388,000).
The appeal comes after the Neal’s Yard Dairy said it delivered more than 950 wheels of cheddar to the alleged fraudster posing as a wholesale distributor for a major French retailer before realizing it had been duped.
The company, a leading UK distributor and retailer of British artisan cheese, said it had still paid Hafod, Westcombe and Pitchfork, the small-scale producers of the stolen cheese, so they would not have to bear the cost.
It added that it was working with London’s Metropolitan Police to identify the perpetrators.
The Met said in a statement Friday it was investigating a “report of the theft of a large quantity of cheese” from the London outlet.
“Enquiries are ongoing into the circumstances,” it said, adding that no arrests had been made so far.
The dairy is calling on to cheesemongers around the world to contact them if they suspect they have been sold the stolen cheese, particularly clothbound cheddars in a 10kg or 24kg (22 pound or 52 pound) format with the tags detached.
Erik and Lyle Menendez are a step closer to leaving prison, but freedom won’t come quickly
- The brothers were convicted in the 1989 killings of their parents at the family’s Beverly Hills mansion
- A judge will need to go along with Los Angeles DA George Gascón’s recommendation and then a parole board must approve
LOS ANGELES: Erik and Lyle Menendez still have a long way to go before they can walk out of prison, even though the Los Angeles County district attorney has recommended their life-without-parole sentences be thrown out and the brothers be resentenced and immediately eligible for parole.
The brothers, convicted in the 1989 killings of their parents at the family’s Beverly Hills mansion, will need to get a judge to go along with the recommendation Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón made Thursday and then a parole board must approve their release. The final stop is with Gov. Gavin Newsom, who could reject the board’s decision.
It’s an uncertain process likely to stretch out over months.
Lyle Menendez, then 21, and Erik Menendez, then 18, admitted they fatally shot their entertainment executive father, Jose Menendez, and their mother, Kitty Menendez. The brothers said they feared their parents were about to kill them to stop people from finding out that Jose Menendez had sexually abused Erik Menendez for years.
Prosecutors at the time contended that there was no evidence of molestation. The brothers’ first trial ended in a hung jury, and prosecutors secured a conviction in the second after much of the evidence of abuse was disallowed from the trial. The district attorney’s office also said back then that the brothers were after their parents’ multimillion-dollar estate.
Now, the DA and relatives say the world better understands the role of trauma in sexual abuse cases.
Critics accuse DA of playing politics
Meanwhile, Gascón faces fights over his resentencing recommendation: His opponent in his bid for reelection next month, as well as some of his own prosecutors, have called the latest development in the case politically motivated and the result of a recent Netflix documentary about the notorious crime.
Michele Hanizee, president of the Association of Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys, on Wednesday said Gascón’s decision smacks of “opportunism” to get headlines.
“Throughout his disastrous tenure as DA, Gascón has consistently prioritized celebrity cases over the rights of crime victims, showing more interest in being in the spotlight than in upholding justice,” Hanizee said in a statement.
But the district attorney said he made the final decision only an hour before Thursday’s news conference and it was separate from politics.
Since their sentencing in 1996, the brothers have been model prisoners, Gascón and their attorney say, and committed themselves to rehabilitation and redemption.
“I came to a place where I believe, under the law, resentencing is appropriate,” Gascón said during the news conference.
What comes next?
Gascón’s office filed paperwork Thursday that recommends the brothers — now 54 and 56 years old — receive a new sentence of 50 years to life. Because they were under 26 years old at the time of the crimes, they would be eligible for parole immediately.
“I believe that they have paid their debt to society,” the DA said.
A hearing before a judge could come within the next month or so. If the judge agrees to the resentencing, the state parole board will hold its own proceeding to determine whether they should go free. If the board recommends parole, Newsom would have 150 days to review the case. The governor could green-light parole, or overrule the board and deny their release.
Despite Gascón’s goal of freeing the brothers, Laurie Levenson, a professor of criminal law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, warned that the judge would not likely be a “rubber stamp” due to dissent within the DA’s office.
“That puts the judge actually in a very challenging position,” Levenson said, noting she had not heard of any cases until recently where the head of the office disagreed with other lawyers involved in the case. Ultimately, Gascón chose the “safest route” for his decision — leaving it up to the court and parole board, she said.
Mark Geragos, an attorney for the brothers, has said he’s hopeful the brothers could be freed by Thanksgiving. Levenson called that deadline “awfully hopeful.”
Family largely unites to call for brothers’ freedom
The brothers’ extended family has pleaded for their release. Several family members have said that in today’s world — which is more aware of the impact of sexual abuse — the brothers would not have been convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole.
Anamaria Baralt, a niece of Jose Menendez, said the district attorney’s “brave and necessary” decision means “Lyle and Erik can finally begin to heal from the trauma of their past.”
Not all Menendez family members support resentencing. Attorneys for Milton Andersen, the 90-year-old brother of Kitty Menendez, filed a legal brief seeking to keep the brothers’ original punishment.
“They shot their mother, Kitty, reloading to ensure her death,” Andersen’s attorneys said in a statement Thursday. “The evidence remains overwhelmingly clear: the jury’s verdict was just, and the punishment fits the heinous crime.”
DA’s challenger weighs in
The LA district attorney is in the middle of a tough reelection fight against former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman, who has blamed Gascón’s progressive reform policies for recent high-profile killings and increased retail crime.
Gascón said Thursday that his office has recommended resentencing for some 300 offenders, including people behind bars for murder.
Hochman questioned the timing of the Gascón’s announcement, coming less than two weeks before the election and calling it a “desperate political move.”
He said he is unable to form his own opinion on the case without access to confidential records and relevant witnesses.
“If I become DA and the case is still pending at that time, I will conduct a review consistent with how I would review any case,” Hochman said.
Geragos said the DA took the case seriously before there was any talk of him losing reelection.
New attention to case
The case has gained new traction in recent weeks after Netflix began streaming the true-crime drama ” Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.”
Roy Rossello, a former member of the Latin pop group Menudo, also recently came forward saying he was drugged and raped by Jose Menendez when he was a teen in the 1980s.
Rossello spoke about his abuse in the 2023 Peacock docuseries “Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed.” His allegations are part of the evidence listed in the petition filed last year by the Menendez brothers’ attorney in seeking a review of their case.
Menudo was signed under RCA Records, which Jose Menendez headed at the time.
A melodic greeting between women in Burundi is at risk of being lost
- Akazehe, a traditional form of musical greeting among Burundians, is performed exclusively by women on a range of occasions
- But akazehe is fading, despite its unique status in this central African country that is better known for its world-famous percussionists
NGOZI, Burundi: The hug between the two women looked like it would last forever. A spirited 85-year-old had embraced a younger woman she hadn’t seen for months, and she chanted a number of questions in the peculiar yodeling routine of her ancestors.
How are you? How is your husband? How are the kids? How are your cows? Are you on good terms with your neighbors?
And so on.
Prudencienne Namukobwa paused in the melody to allow the younger woman’s rhythmic affirmation, a pattern she has mastered over the decades.
“Ego,” Emelyne Nzeyimana replied over and over in the local Kirundi language. “Yes.”
A group of neighbors watched in amazement. Many were seeing their first performance of the traditional form of musical greeting, known to Burundians as akazehe. It is performed exclusively by women on a range of occasions.
But akazehe is fading, despite its unique status in this central African country that is better known for its world-famous percussionists. That’s according to cultural officials, teachers and others who say the practice is worth preserving.
They cited the threat from public health measures that discourage unnecessary contact during disease outbreaks, in addition to the perceived failure to promote akazehe among school-going youth.
Among young Burundians, it is hard to find people who know what akazehe means and even harder to find someone who can perform it.
“At a certain time, unfortunately, it was abandoned,” said Sandrine Kitonze, a culture adviser in the office of the governor of Ngozi province.
She said akazehe and its minutes-long embrace “made you feel that the person who greets you loves you.”
Some academics have noted akazehe’s potential role in fostering social cohesion in Burundi, which is now largely peaceful after a period of deadly civil war followed by political instability.
Annonciate Baragahorana, a teacher in the province of Bujumbura, which includes the commercial capital, told The Associated Press that while she was not born in a place where akazehe was widely practiced, she was astonished as a young girl when women embraced and addressed her in the polyphonic way during visits to other regions.
“The women who often did this lived in the central plateau provinces. When we went there during the holidays, a woman from the interior of the country kissed you strongly while wishing you wonders and she hugged you for a long time,” she said with a chuckle. “I wanted her to finish quickly, even if it was sweet words to hear.”
Baragahorana said she feared “tenderness in social relationships will disappear” among Burundians amid threats from contagious diseases such as COVID-19 and Mpox.
“People greet each other from a distance for fear of contaminating each other,” she said. “This will contribute enormously to the demise of akazehe.”
In Ngozi, a hilly province in Burundi’s north, akazehe remains familiar to some locals, and women such as Namukobwa are impressive at performing it.
She lives in a decaying house set in the side of a verdant hill. One recent morning, she was sitting on a mat outside when she glimpsed Nzeyimana, the visiting daughter of a former neighbor. She overcame her bad hip to rise and welcome the woman, whom she addressed as if she were her biological daughter.
“I felt that the first love she had when I was just a girl is kept until now,” said Nzeyimana, a broadcaster in Ngozi. “This means that I am still her daughter.”
Akazehe can seem like a race to perfect accord, a search for harmony, in the interwoven vocalizations. While most questions are routine, some can be unexpected. Nzeyimana said afterward that she had been anxious over possibly facing a question for which she was not ready with a positive response. There was none.
Serena Facci, an Italian scholar at the University of Rome Tor Vergata who has written about akazehe, said that even by 1993, when she went to Burundi for research in ethnomusicology, “this beautiful female greeting wasn’t very common in the ordinary life.” Its continuing disappearance could be due to changing lifestyles, she said.
A custom such as akazehe should be preserved at all costs because of its role in protecting families, said Isaac Nikobiba, an anthropologist in Bujumbura. Among communities that practiced it, women could alert mother figures to any turbulence at home, triggering supportive measures from the extended family, he said.
Nikobiba called the potential disappearance of akazehe symptomatic of wider cultural losses stemming from modernization.
“Normally, before starting a home in traditional Burundi, the girl would first receive advice from her paternal aunt who would tell her, ‘I will come to greet you after a certain time. If you notice an anomaly in the home, you will have to tell me everything,’” he said. “In short, if she does not find someone to whom she can confide her marital intimacies, she spends all the time in a very bad psychological atmosphere.”
Floride Ntakirutimana was among the small group of women who gathered to witness the spectacle of Namukobwa greeting Nzeyimana. She said she grew up in a farming community where no mother could perform akazehe, and only heard of it through radio programs.
The exchange she watched left her feeling she wanted to learn akazehe herself.
“I feel better, and I saw that it was good,” Ntakirutimana said.
King Charles sips narcotic kava drink, becomes Samoan ‘high chief’
- The British monarch is on an 11-day tour of Australia and Samoa, both independent Commonwealth states — the first major foreign trip since his cancer diagnosis earlier this year
APIA: King Charles III took part in a traditional kava-drinking ceremony before a line of bare-chested, heavily tattooed Samoans and was declared a “high chief” of the one-time Pacific island colony Thursday.
The British monarch is on an 11-day tour of Australia and Samoa, both independent Commonwealth states — the first major foreign trip since his cancer diagnosis earlier this year.
Wearing a white safari-style suit, the 75-year-old king sat at the head of a carved timber longhouse where he was presented with a polished half-coconut filled with a narcotic kava brew.
The peppery, slightly intoxicating root drink is a key part of Pacific culture and is known locally as “ava.”
The kava roots were paraded around the marquee, prepared by the chief’s daughter and filtered through a sieve made of dried bark.
Once ready, a Samoan man screamed as he decanted the drink, which was finally presented to the king.
Charles uttered the words: “May God Bless this ava” before lifting it to his lips.
Charles’s wife, Queen Camilla sat beside him, fanning herself to ease the stiffing tropical humidity.
Many Samoans are excited to host the king — his first-ever visit to the Pacific Island nation that was once a British colony.
The royal couple visited the village of Moata’a where Charles was made “Tui Taumeasina” or high chief.
“Everyone has taken to our heart and is looking forward to welcoming the king,” local chief Lenatai Victor Tamapua told AFP ahead of the visit.
“We feel honored that he has chosen to be welcomed here in our village. So as a gift, we would like to bestow him a title.”
Tamapua raised the issue of climate change and showed the king and queen around the local mangroves.
“The high tides is just chewing away on our reef and where the mangroves are,” he told AFP, adding that food sources and communities were being washed away or inundated.
“Our community relies on the mangrove area for mud crab and fishes, but since, the tide has risen over the past 20 years by about two or three meters (up to 10 feet).”
The king is also in Samoa for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, and will address a leaders’ banquet on Friday.
The legacy of empire looms large at the meeting.
Commonwealth leaders will select a new secretary-general nominated from an African country — in line with regional rotations of the position.
All three likely candidates have called publicly for reparations for slavery and colonialism.
One of the three, Joshua Setipa from Lesotho, told AFP that the resolution could include non-traditional forms of payment such as climate financing.
“We can find a solution that will begin to address some injustices of the past and put them in the context happening around us today,” he said.
Climate change features heavily on the agenda.
Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Fiji have backed calls for a “fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty” — essentially calling for Australia, Britain and Canada to do more to lower emissions.
Pacific leaders argue the trio of “big countries” have historically accounted for over 60 percent of the 56-nation Commonwealth’s emissions from fossil fuels.
Vanuatu’s special envoy for climate change Ralph Regenvanu called on other nations to join the treaty.
“As a Commonwealth family, we look to those that dominate fossil fuel production in the Commonwealth to stop the expansion of fossil fuels in order to protect what we love and hold dear here in the Pacific,” he said.
Australia’s foreign minister Penny Wong said her gas and mineral-rich nation was working to be cleaner.
“We know we have a lot of work to do, and I’ve been upfront with every partner in the Pacific,” she said.
Pacific island nations — once seen as the embodiment of palm-fringed paradise — are now among the most climate-threatened areas of the planet.
