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Hit-And-Run Driver Who Killed Conductor Boris Brott Gets Prison Sentence Reduced

“Arsenije Lojovic will serve eight years instead of 10 for dangerous driving causing death, failing to remain at the scene and breach of probation, according to a decision by a three-judge panel at the Court of Appeal for Ontario.” Lojovic has bipolar disorder and was having a manic episode when he hit Brott. - CBC

Reckless Tourist At Colosseum In Rome Survives Getting Impaled On Metal Fence

Last Friday, a 47-year-old man scaled a metal fence at an entrance to the ancient landmark, then fell and was impaled on one of the fence’s spikes, which pierced his spine. He screamed in pain and bled until he passed out; it took an ambulance crew 20 minutes to extract him. - Artnet

Dara Birnbaum, Video Artist Who Subverted Media Messages, Is Dead At 78

“Hosts of video artists … owe a debt to Birnbaum, who found clever ways of upending the one-way stream of information that pours forth in the media, and in particular on television. During the late ’70s and ’80s, she began harvesting images from pirated tapes of TV programs, then reediting their images.” - ARTnews

MTT’s Final Concert

With a pioneering sense of eclecticism, he connected the dots between John Cage and James Brown, between Mahler and MTT’s famous grandfather, Boris Thomashefsky, a star of the New York Yiddish theater. - Los Angeles Times

Visionary Director Pierre Audi, 67

Pierre Audi, the stage director and impresario whose transformation of a derelict London lecture hall into the cutting-edge Almeida Theater was the opening act in a long career as one of the world’s most eminent performing arts leaders, died on Friday night in Beijing. - The New York Times

Art Institute Of Chicago Director On Leave After Airplane Incident

During the incident, which occurred on April 18, police were called to United Airlines flight 953 after it landed in Munich from Chicago, following reports that Rondeau had stripped off his clothes. CBS reported that the incident occurred after he drank alcohol and took prescription medication. - The New York Times

Why Pope Francis Pushed Along Sainthood For Architect Antoni Gaudi

If this happens, Gaudí would be the first secular architect in history to be declared a saint. - The Conversation

Comedienne Ruth Buzzi, Mainstay Of “Laugh-In,” Is Dead At 88

“A comedic actress with a high-beam smile who often played sidekicks both wisecracking and wise, (she) scowled her way to pop-culture fame on the comedy-variety show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In playing a matron who wields her purse like a cudgel.” - The Washington Post (MSN)

Novelist Barbara Pym Worked For British Spy Agency, Researcher Says

Former British diplomat Claire Smith argues that, if you look carefully at correspondence from Pym’s wartime work as a censor, you’ll see evidence that she was secretly working for MI5. - The Guardian

The Inherent Contradictions Of Mark Twain

Even when he was at the height of his literary powers, the title “businessman” might have suited Twain better than “author.” Not that avidity bred success. - The New Yorker

Andrew Karpen, Pillar Of U.S. Independent Film Industry, Has Died At 59

He was the COO of Focus Features beginning in 2002 and became president and co-CEO in 2006. In 2014 he left Focus to found the independently-financed distribution and production company Bleecker Street, which has released roughly 70 films since. - IndieWire

The 19-Year-Old Bisexual Diarist Who Became The Literary Sensation Of 1902 America

“Originally titled ‘I Await the Devil’s Coming’, The Story of Mary MacLane records four months in the life of its author. Nothing much happens in the outside world, … but her inner life is full of action, as she desires, dreams, and rants against the injustices of youth and sex.” - The Public Domain Review

Remembering Maio Vargas Llosa

Vargas Llosa “has replaced Gabriel García Márquez” as the South American novelist North American readers must catch up on, Updike wrote in 1986, four years after García Márquez received the Nobel Prize in Literature and 24 years before Vargas Llosa himself would. - The New York Times

How Leni Riefenstahl Hid Her Complicity With Hitler From The World

Riefenstahl, who was full member of the Nazi propaganda machine, spent her entire very long post-WWII life using every tool she had “to deflect from her ideological affinity with nazism.” - The Guardian (UK)

Patrick Adiarte, Of Broadway And The TV Series MASH, Has Died At 82

As a baby, Adiarte was imprisoned by the Japanese during WWII. After his family moved to the U.S., he played a little prince and, eventually, the crown prince of Siam to Yul Brynner in The King and I, on both stage and screen. - The New York Times

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