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en:ecrit:articles-en [2025/03/12 07:57] – [Key Oscar moments, from Zoe Saldaña's emotional win and 'Oz' opening to Kieran Culkin's baby wish] natashaen:ecrit:articles-en [2025/05/20 07:16] (current) – [Sleep training is no longer just for babies. Some schools are teaching teens how to sleep] natasha
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-===== Trump signs order designating English as the official language of the US =====+===== Austria welcomes JJ back home with cheers, hugs and roses after he wins the Eurovision Song Contest =====
  
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-{{:en:ecrit:ap25058636745273.jpg?270 |}}+{{:en:ecrit:ap25138550453745.jpg?300 |}}
  
-By MICHELLE L. PRICE Associated Press+By PHILIPP JENNE and KIRSTEN GRIESHABER Associated Press
  
-President Donald Trump signed on Saturday an executive order designating English as the official language of the United States.+VIENNA (AP) — Austrian fans enthusiastically welcomed classically trained singer JJ back home at Vienna airport on Sunday after he won the 69th Eurovision Song Contest with "Wasted Love."
  
-The order allows government agencies and organizations that receive federal funding to choose whether to continue to offer documents and services in language other than English.+As JJ walked through the gate, hundreds of fans cheered, some played his song and others surrounded the new star, hugging him and asking for autographs.
  
-It rescinds a mandate from former President Bill Clinton that required the government and organizations that received federal funding to provide language assistance to non-English speakers.+The 24-year-old countertenor, whose winning song combines operatic, multi-octave vocals with a techno twist, and who also sings at the Vienna State Opera, held up his trophy in one hand and a big bouquet of roses in the other. He smiled, wiped away tears and told the crowd "that victory is for you."
  
-"Establishing English as the official language will not only streamline communication but also reinforce shared national values, and create a more cohesive and efficient society," according to the order.+JJ, whose full name is Johannes Pietsch, was Austria's third Eurovision winner, after bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst in 2014 and Udo Jürgens in 1966.
  
-"In welcoming new Americans, a policy of encouraging the learning and adoption of our national language will make the United States a shared home and empower new citizens to achieve the American dream," the order also states. "Speaking English not only opens doors economically, but it helps newcomers engage in their communities, participate in national traditions, and give back to our society."+"This is beyond my wildest dreams. It's crazy," said the singer when being handed the microphone-shaped glass Eurovision trophy after his win in the Swiss city of Basel on Saturday night.
  
-More than 30 states have already passed laws designating English as their official language, according to U.S. English, a group that advocates for making English the official language in the United States.+On Sunday night, JJ told reporters in Vienna that "I don't think you'll realize that you did it at all until you're on your deathbed."
  
-For decades, lawmakers in Congress have introduced legislation to designate English as the official language of the U.S., but those efforts have not succeeded.+**'All of Austria is happy'**
  
-Within hours of Trump's inauguration last month, the new administration took down the Spanish language version of the official White House website.+Austria's president, Alexander van der Bellen, celebrated JJ in a video posted on X.
  
-Hispanic advocacy groups and others expressed confusion and frustration at the change. The White House said at the time it was committed to bringing the Spanish language version of the website back online. As of Saturday, it was still not restored.+"What a success! What a voice! What a show!" he exclaimed. "All of Austria is happy."
  
-The White House did not immediately respond to a message about whether that would happen.+Chancellor Christian Stoecker wrote on X: "What a great success — my warmest congratulations on winning #ESC2025! JJ is writing Austrian music history today!"
  
-Trump shut down the Spanish version of the website during his first term. It was restored when President Joe Biden was inaugurated in 2021. +The Vienna State Opera also expressed joy over the win. "From the Magic Flute to winning the Song Contest is somehow a story that can only take place in Austria," opera director Bogdan Roscic told the Austrian press agency APA.
-===== How a canoe helped turn Hawaiian culture into a source of pride and even influenced Hollywood =====+
  
-----+Several Austrian cities were quick to show their interest in hosting next year's contest. Innsbruck Mayor Johannes Anzengruber told APA that "not everything has to take place in Vienna. ... Austria is bigger than that," and the towns of Oberwart in Burgenland and Wels in Upper Austria also threw their hats into the ring.
  
-{{:en:ecrit:ap25068028178507.jpg?300 |}}+JJ himself said he hoped that Vienna would get the next ESC which he would love to host together with his mentor, Conchita Wurst.
  
-By AUDREY McAVOY Associated Press+**A nail-biting final** 
 + 
 +Israeli singer Yuval Raphael came second at an exuberant celebration of music and unity - JJ won after a nail-biting final that saw Raphael scoop up a massive public vote from her many fans for her anthemic "New Day Will Rise."  
 + 
 +At a post-victory press conference, JJ said the message of his song about unrequited romance was that "love is the strongest force on planet Earth, and love persevered. 
 + 
 +"Let's spread love, guys," said JJ, who added that he was honored to be the first Eurovision champion with Filipino heritage, as well as a proudly queer winner. 
 + 
 +**Eclectic and sometimes baffling** 
 + 
 +The world's largest live music event, which has been uniting and dividing Europeans since 1956, reached its glitter-drenched conclusion with a grand final in Basel that offered pounding electropop, quirky rock and outrageous divas. 
 + 
 +Acts from 26 countries — trimmed from 37 entrants through two elimination semifinals — performed to some 160 million viewers for the continent's pop crown. No smoke machine, jet of flame or dizzying light display was spared by musicians who had three minutes to win over millions of viewers who, along with national juries of music professionals, picked the winner. 
 + 
 +Estonia's Tommy Cash came third with his jokey mock-Italian dance song "Espresso Macchiato." Swedish entry KAJ, which had been favorite to win with jaunty sauna ode "Bara Bada Bastu," came fourth. 
 + 
 +The show was a celebration of Europe's eclectic, and sometimes baffling, musical tastes. 
 + 
 +Grieshaber reported from Berlin. Associated Press writer Jill Lawless in Basel, Switzerland contributed to this report. 
 + 
 + 
 +===== The UK and the EU hail a new chapter as they sign fresh deals 5 years after Brexit ===== 
 + 
 +----
  
-KANEOHE, Hawaii (AP) — Hawaii's American colonizers once banned the Hawaiian language in schools. Some Native Hawaiians tried to lighten their skin with lye. Many people believed Polynesian voyagers had simply lucked into finding the islands by drifting on logs.+{{:en:ecrit:ap25139471779226.jpg?300 |}}
  
-But a canoe launched half a century ago helped turn Hawaiian culture from a source of shame to one of pride, reviving the skill of traveling the seas by decoding the stars, waves and weather. That vessel — a double-hulled sailing canoe called the Hokulea, after the Hawaiian name for the star Arcturus — would even influence the Disney blockbuster "Moana" decades later.+By SYLVIA HUI Associated Press
  
-To mark the anniversary, the Hokulea's early crew members gathered Saturday for ceremonial hula and kava drinking at the Oahu beach where the canoe launched on March 8, 1975, and where they began their first training sails.+LONDON (AP) — Britain and the European Union hailed a new chapter in their relationship Monday after sealing fresh agreements on defense cooperation and easing trade flows at their first formal summit since Brexit.
  
-"It's a vehicle of exploration. It's a vehicle of discovery," Nainoa Thompson, the CEO of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, said in an interview. "It's also been our vehicle for justice as Native Hawaiians, as Pacific Islanders, as a very unique, special culture of the Earth."+Five years after the U.K. left the EU, ties were growing closer again as Prime Minister Keir Starmer met European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and other senior EU officials in London for talks.
  
-In 1980, Thompson became the first Hawaiian in six centuries to navigate to Tahiti without a compass or other modern instruments — a span of about 2,700 miles (4,300 kilometers).+The deals will slash red tape, grow the British economy and reset relations with the 27-nation trade bloc, Starmer said, while von der Leyen called the talks a "historic moment" that benefits both sides.
  
-**Hawaiian culture had long been repressed**+"Britain is back on the world stage," Starmer told reporters. "This deal is a win-win."
  
-Thompson, 71, remembers stories from his grandmother, born less than a decade after the U.S.-backed overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893. Teachers beat her for speaking Hawaiian, and her uncle tried to wash the brown off his skin with lye.+He hailed Monday's agreements — the third package of trade deals struck by his government in as many weeks following accords with the U.S. and India — as "good for jobs, good for bills and good for our borders."
  
-When she had children, she didn't teach them Hawaiian.+But Britain's opposition parties slammed the deals as backtracking on Brexit and "surrendering" anew to the EU. "We're becoming a rule-taker from Brussels once again," Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said.
  
-"If her children tried to be Hawaiian, they would get hurt in the new society," Thompson said. "And so you have to become something else."+Here are the main takeaways from the summit:
  
-A resurgence of Hawaiian pride and identity starting in the late 1960s and 1970s set off a cultural renaissance. Artist Herb Kane began painting ancient canoes based on drawings from European explorers and got the idea to build a double-hulled canoe with tall, triangular sails similar to those his ancestors had used hundreds of years earlier.+**Cutting red tape on food trade**
  
-**Debunking the drifting log theory**+Officials said they will remove some routine border checks on animal and plant products and align with EU regulations, which will reduce costs on food imports and exports and make it easier for goods to flow freely across borders.
  
-At the time, many people accepted the notion that Polynesians settled islands by accident.+Businesses have complained about trucks waiting for hours at borders with fresh food that cannot be exported to the EU because of laborious post-Brexit certifications.
  
-Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl had theorized that Polynesians arrived from South America, pushed west by the prevailing winds and currents. In 1947, he set out to prove it by floating from Peru on a log raft. He landed in the Tuamotu Islands north of Tahiti and wrote a best-seller.+The changes will mean the U.K. can sell products like raw British burgers, sausages and seafood to the EU again, officials said. The benefits will apply also to movements between the British mainland and Northern Ireland, where post-Brexit customs checks have been a thorny issue for years.
  
-Heyerdahl's theory took hold even though Hawaiians for generations had passed down stories of people who traveled from the distant lands -- including Kahiki, possibly what is today known as Tahiti — by canoe, bringing with them edible plants such as ulu, or breadfruit.+While the EU is the U.K.'s largest trading partner, the government said the U.K. has been hit with a 21% drop in exports since Brexit because of more onerous paperwork and other non-tariff barriers.
  
-Kane, University of Hawaii archaeologist Ben Finney and Honolulu surfer Tommy Holmes wanted to challenge the drifting log concept. They started the Polynesian Voyaging Society, intent on sailing a canoe to Tahiti without modern instruments.+**Defense procurement pact**
  
-They needed a navigator. Traditional long-distance voyaging skills had all but disappeared, but a Peace Corps volunteer on the isolated atoll of Satawal in Micronesia told them about Pius "Mau" Piailug, who had been taught navigation from childhood. Over about a month in 1976, Piailug guided the Hokulea from Hawaii to Tahiti — about the same distance from Hawaii to California.+A new security and defense partnership will pave the way for the U.K. defense industry to access a new EU loan program worth 150 billion euros ($170 billion.) That will allow Britain to secure cheap loans backed by the EU budget to buy military equipment, in part to help Ukraine defend itself.
  
-Some 17,000 people thronged the Tahitian shore to greet them and witness what one crew member called "the spaceship of our ancestors."+The EU has said that the loan program will help boost the readiness of European defense as well as enable more coordinated support for Ukraine.
  
-Former Hawaii Gov. John Waihe'e was in his 20s then, and a delegate to the 1978 state Constitutional Convention. The Hokulea's success spurred delegates to make Hawaiian an official state language even though few residents still spoke it, he said. They also created the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to improve the well-being of Native Hawaiians.+**Fishing rights**
  
-"It helped us believe in everything that we were doing," Waihe'e said.+The deal included a 12-year extension of an agreement allowing EU fishing vessels to operate in U.K. waters until 2038, which angered U.K. fishermen and their supporters.
  
-Today, two dozen schools have Hawaiian language immersion programs, and Census data show more than 27,000 people in Hawaii, and 34,000 in the U.S., speak Hawaiian at home.+While economically minor, fishing has long been a sticking point and symbolically important issue for the U.K. and EU member states such as France. Disputes over the issue nearly derailed a Brexit deal back in 2020.
  
-**Bringing dignity to the elders**+Elspeth Macdonald, head of the Scottish Fishermen's Federation, called the agreement a "horror show for Scottish fishermen" that was granted in order to secure other objectives. Scottish First Minister John Swinney said the deal was "the direct opposite of what was promised by Brexit."
  
-In 1978, an ill-prepared crew set out for Tahiti in poor weather, and the Hokulea capsized just hours after leaving port. Crew member Eddie Aikau paddled his surfboard to get help. The Coast Guard rescued the canoe, but Aikau was never found.+**Easing movement for young people**
  
-The voyaging society overhauled itself in response, setting clear goals and training requirements. Thompson studied at a Honolulu planetarium and spent over a year under the tutelage of Piailug. In 1980, he navigated to Tahiti.+Post-Brexit visa restrictions have hobbled cross-border activities for professionals such as bankers or lawyers, as well as academic and cultural exchanges, including touring bands.
  
-Thompson said he felt a deep obligation to fulfill Aikau's wish to follow the path of his ancestors and "pull Tahiti out of the sea." But he didn't celebrate when the Hokulea got there.+The U.K. and EU said they agreed to co-operate on a youth mobility plan that's expected to allow young Britons and Europeans to live and work temporarily in each other's territory, though no details were provided.
  
-"I just went into a quiet, dark place and just told Eddie we pulled it out of the sea," Thompson said. "There's no high fives. It's too profound."+British officials insisted that numbers would be capped and stays would be time-limited.
  
-In decades since, the society has sailed the canoe around the Pacific and world, including New Zealand, Japan, South Africa and New York.+The free movement of people remains a politically touchy issue in the U.K., with the youth mobility plan seen by some Brexiteers as inching back toward completely free movement for EU nationals to move to the U.K. The U.K. has similar youth mobility arrangements with countries including Australia and Canada.
  
-It inspired other Pacific Island communities to revive or newly appreciate their own wayfinding traditions.+**Cutting airport waits**
  
-In Rapa Nui, Chile — also known as Easter Island — islanders have embarked on long-distance canoe voyages. The University of Guam has a navigation program. Similar trends have surfaced in the Cook Islands, French Polynesia, Samoa and Tonga, said Mary Therese Perez Hattori, the director of the Pacific Islands Development Program at the East-West Center.+British passport holders will be able to use e-gates at more European airports as part of the deal.
  
-"We come from very, very ancient societies," said Hattori, who is Chamorro, the Indigenous people of the Mariana Islands. "Hokulea sort of helped us remind the world of this."+Since Brexit, many British travelers cannot use automated gates when they arrive at EU airports. The new measure will end "the dreaded queues at border control," officials said.
  
-**Hollywood makes a blockbuster**+**Opposition objects to a 'surrender'**
  
-Hokulea's influence spread in 2016 when Disney released "Moana," an animated film about a 16-year-old girl who learns wayfinding about 3,000 years ago.+Britain's opposition parties have criticized Starmer's bid to reset relations with the EU. The pro-Brexit and anti-immigration Reform U.K. party, which recently won big in local elections, and the Conservatives have called the trade-offs in the deals a betrayal of Brexit.
  
-Thompson spoke to hundreds on the movie's creative team about wayfinding and the importance of canoes to Pacific culture, said Aaron Kandell, a Hawaii-born writer who worked on the movie.+Starmer is "taking us backwards. We left the European Union. That was settled, we drew a line under that," said Badenoch, the Conservative leader. "This deal is taking us to the past and that is why we call it surrender."
  
-Kandell, who is not Native Hawaiian, spent a year studying navigation with the Polynesian Voyaging Society during his 20s and incorporated that into the script, including where Moana learns to use her outstretched hand to track the stars and runs her hand in the ocean to feel the currents.+Starmer stressed that he did not violate his "red lines": The U.K. won't rejoin the EU's frictionless single market and customs union, and will not agree to the free movement of people between the U.K. and the EU.
  
-Crew members taught animators about coconut fiber ropes so they would look right when Moana pulls on them, Kandell said.+David Henig, a U.K. trade policy expert at the European Centre for International Political Economy, suggested that while some will continue to argue against agreeing to EU regulations, most Britons likely believe it's time to move forward.
  
-The Polynesian Voyaging Society's initial plan was to sail to Tahiti once, supporting a documentary, book and research papers. Thompson remembers pushing Hokulea's hull into the water with the crew back in 1975.+"Simply following EU rules in some areas is going to be controversial to those who thought that Brexit means casting off all influence from the EU entirely," he said. "That wasn't realistic for a trading nation like the UK., where 50% of our trade is with the EU."
  
-"It was really a moment — I didn't recognize it — but this was going to change everything," he said.+Pan Pylas and Jill Lawless in London and Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed reporting.
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