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By விவசாயி விக் · பதியப்பட்டது
The homeless drug addict who became a professor 11 hours ago By Sarah McDermott BBC World Service Jesse Thistle, wearing a beaded thistle around his neck Jesse Thistle spent more than a decade on the streets and in jail. But despite this he has managed to become an expert on the culture of his Indigenous Canadian ancestors - with the help of his mother, from whom he was separated as a young child. Sometimes, at night, feeling humiliated after a day of begging, Jesse Thistle would walk up to the fountain on Ottawa's Parliament Hill. Sitting on the edge of the monument, he would plunge his hands into the cold water, to fish out the coins visitors had thrown in for luck. The policemen on duty always saw Jesse coming. They'd watch as he shovelled handfuls of wet change into his pockets, then chase him away. Jesse was 32 and had recently relapsed from rehab, but he'd been living on the streets, on and off, ever since his grandparents kicked him out when he was 19. "My grandfather was a disciplinarian - old school - he believed in work, really hard work, and he would hit us if we did bad stuff," Jesse says. "He would say, 'If I ever catch you doing drugs, I will disown you, it's that simple,' and he meant what he said." So the day that Jesse's grandmother saw a bag of cocaine fall out of Jesse's pocket, he was told to pack his things and leave. "It was like my world had ended," he says. "I could see on their faces that I'd broken their hearts." Jesse's life had been chaotic from the start. His father, Sonny, had got into trouble with the law in Toronto and had run away to northern Saskatchewan, where he met a teenager from the Métis-Cree Indigenous group. Blanche Morrissette aged 14 in 1972, the year before she met Sonny Her name was Blanche and she gave birth to three sons one after the other, Josh first, Jerry, and then Jesse. Sonny drank and used heroin, and was often violent, so eventually Blanche ran away, taking the boys with her. For a while they lived in Moose Jaw, sleeping on proper beds rather than piles of laundry and eating three meals a day. Then Sonny turned up again and told Blanche he had an apartment and a job in Toronto. Blanche was studying as well as working, and he persuaded her to let him take the boys for a few months, to give her a break. Blanche and her three sons pictured in 1980 - "before our family fell apart," Jesse says But there was no new job, and Sonny hadn't overcome his addictions. He'd disappear for days at a time, leaving the boys - all aged under six - alone in the apartment. There was little food when Sonny was there and none when he wasn't. He taught the boys how to beg, how to shoplift, and how to roll him cigarettes by harvesting tobacco from butts picked up off the streets. Sonny with his three sons, Christmas, 1979 It was a few months before a neighbour alerted Child Services, and police came and took the boys away. Jesse was by now aged four, and he and his brothers would never see their father again. After a period in an orphanage and a foster home, they were sent to live with Sonny's parents. "I assume Child Services never called my mom because back then Indigenous women were thought of as unclean, unfit and derelict of their positions as mothers," Jesse says. "When Indigenous kids came across Child Services' desks, their natural inclination was to put them in white homes because white people were seen as prosperous and responsible. It was called the Sixties Scoop - thousands and thousands of Indigenous kids were taken that way - it was endemic." The Sixties Scoop Despite its name, the Sixties Scoop started in the late 1950s and persisted for more than 20 years About 20,000 Indigenous Canadian children were removed from their homes by child welfare agencies and placed with non-Indigenous families These children lost their names, their languages, and their cultural identity Jesse's grandparents barred Blanche from coming to see her children for a few years, and Jesse grew up with little knowledge of his Métis-Cree heritage. "We knew we were 'Indian' and my brother remembers living in a tipi one summer in Saskatchewan," Jesse says, "but he went around and told all the kids that, and I gotta tell you, there's no faster way to get beat up in grade school in Canada than looking native and telling white kids that you lived in a tipi." Jerry, Jesse and Josh in Cape Breton, 1980 Other families in the neighbourhood were reluctant to let their children play with the brothers, and at some stage Jesse decided that it would make his life easier if he pretended to be Italian. "I was denying who I was," he says. "I started to hate my heritage, hate myself and hate her [my mom] because she wasn't around. I felt like she had ditched us." At school Jesse was always fighting, was held back because of his poor grades, and never learned how to read or do maths properly. Then he joined a gang in high school and really started getting into trouble. "We were drinking, partying, going to raves and using drugs, and that soon became my identity," Jesse says. "I would lose myself on MDMA, ketamine and crystal meth for three, four and five days in a row." And then his grandparents kicked him out. Jesse, aged 19, just before things started going downhill Jesse hitched a lift with a friend across the country from Toronto to Vancouver, where his brother Josh, now a policeman, let him stay. He'd borrow Josh's police badge to avoid paying on public transport, and use it to pick up girls - "Girls love the police" - or to blag free food in restaurants. But the day Josh returned from work to find his younger brother using drugs in the house, Jesse had to leave, and this time he had nowhere else to go. At the age of 20, he was homeless. Jesse Thistle spoke to Outlook on the BBC World Service Download the podcast for more extraordinary stories Jesse slept for four months in a car parked by the Fraser River just outside Vancouver, surrounded by other homeless people - the majority of them also Indigenous. "It was horrible. It broke my heart to see all these Indigenous people with addiction issues there - and nobody cared," he says. He sold everything he owned apart from the clothes he stood up in, but still he was starving. After hitching back to Toronto, he drifted from sofa to bus shelter to refuge, begging to get enough money together to buy drugs and go to raves. And when a friend introduced him to crack, he was hooked from the first lungful. It was New Year's Eve, 1999. Jesse, by now 23, had been out partying all night. The following day he went over to a friend's house. There were some people there he vaguely knew, who asked if he wanted to share a joint and if he could help them find a lift to travel out west. They said they'd buy him a pizza if he could order one for them and they'd give him a new jersey in return for his efforts. Thinking this was the easiest work he'd ever had, Jesse, wearing his new jersey, then returned to his Uncle Ron's place - where he'd been crashing since all of his belongings were stolen from the last hostel. Jesse and Ron sat down to watch a movie, but when a breaking news alert flashed across the screen announcing that a cab driver had been murdered in the neighbourhood the previous night and describing the two suspects, both in their late teens or early 20s, Jesse felt sick. "They had given me the clothes that they'd done it in. They were trying to frame me for this murder that they had committed," he says. "And so I was left with a choice - keep my mouth shut - that's the code of the streets, you don't tell on people - or stand up for justice and do the right thing." Jesse considered taking off - "running away was my way of dealing with life" - but instead went to the police. The two men who had tried to frame him were later jailed for murder. But word got out that Jesse was an informer. "And I became a dead man walking," he says. Old friends wanted nothing to do with him, people would lure him places so that they could ambush him, someone tried to knife him in an alley, and he was beaten so badly with a baseball bat he could barely walk. "I was always on the run, always fearful for my life, always on high alert," he says. "They call it hyper-vigilance - I just had to survive and bounce from place to place." In despair, Jesse stole a large quantity of painkillers from a pharmacy and swallowed them all before he could think twice about it. This led to a spell in hospital, but no change in his behaviour. A few of Jesse's police mug shots One evening after becoming locked out of his brother Jerry's apartment in Toronto, Jesse fell three-and-a-half storeys to the ground while trying to break in. He survived and landed on his feet, but his right heel was shattered, his right ankle joint destroyed and both his wrists broken. Doctors couldn't believe that Jesse hadn't been killed. But his real problems began after he was discharged from hospital, when infection set in. Jesse was smoking crack to dull the pain in his leg, but when his toes started turning black and his toenails began falling off he realised he needed help. "My leg had rotten flesh, it was starting to go necrotic and it was gangrenous," he says. He vaguely remembers doctors telling him that his leg may have to be amputated, and that if the infection spread to his heart or brain it could kill him. In panic, Jesse fled. "I wanted to hide from the world and from my addictions, from all the mistakes and all the people that I'd hurt along the way. I just wanted to rot away and die," he says. "I thought, 'Why don't I do a crime and go to jail? I'll be safe in there, have a place to rest, access to food and medication.'" So he held up a convenience store and helped himself to the takings - but instead of waiting to be arrested, as he'd planned, he jumped into a large rubbish bin at the back of the shop and hid. "I was in the garbage bin, thinking, 'I can't even rob a store properly,'" Jesse says. He later discovered he'd taken less than $40 (Canadian dollars), and after a few weeks of drug-aggravated paranoia - imagining that he was about to be arrested at any minute - he turned himself in. "I did it," he told the police, "I'm the guy who robbed the store. Now lock me up and throw away the key." Prison was an unlikely turning point for Jesse. He received the medical help he so urgently needed for his leg, which quickly began to improve. But there was no support to come off the drugs and alcohol he'd been addicted to since he was a teenager, and he went through a "horrible, horrible" withdrawal, involving agonising seizures in solitary confinement. Surprisingly, the experience spurred him to resume his education. "To fight the cravings from crack I started re-teaching myself how to read and write properly," he says. After his release from prison, Jesse went into rehab to continue this work, while also dealing with his addictions. "I'd stay up late every night looking over encyclopaedias and my grades started topping the charts. I took etiquette courses to re-teach me how to eat at a table and take care of my hygiene - all the things that I'd forgotten because I'd been drifting around so long. I felt good about myself for the first time in many, many years." It wasn't plain sailing. He relapsed at one point, returning to the streets to beg - and take money from the Parliament Hill fountain - only managing to get back on track after he was sentenced to a one-year stint back at the same rehabilitation centre. While there he received a strange email - a woman was looking for him, it said, and there was a number to call. It turned out to be his mother, whom he'd seen on only a handful of occasions since she'd let Jesse and his brothers go with their father to Toronto as small children. Shaking and through tears, Jesse called Blanche but was so overwhelmed that he had to hang up several times while they were talking. "I was just terrified of being rejected and terrified of love," he says. "But it was a beautiful conversation - it was like a rain quenching the prairies after a long drought, that's what it felt like." Then more unexpected family news came, a message from his grandmother - the first contact he'd had with her since being banished from his grandparents' home years previously. She was dying, she said, and asked Jesse to visit her. "She gave me a tongue-lashing," Jesse says. "She was like, 'I'm really disappointed in you. I want you to make me a promise - follow through with this education, go to university, and go as far as you can.'" Jesse swore that he'd do as his grandmother asked. He urged her to get better and they hugged before Jesse returned to rehab. Two weeks later she died. The day after his grandmother's death, Jesse received a message of condolence from an old school friend of one of his brothers. "I think I fell in love with Lucie at that moment just because she was kind," Jesse says. "I light up thinking about it even now." Jesse and Lucie started talking often, sometimes for hours at a time on the phone, and they'd Skype one another regularly. A picture Lucie sent Jesse while he was in rehab "I had this wall of about 100 different shampoos, soaps and body cleansers that I'd put behind me to show her that I was clean and that I could take care of myself," he says. "I was really insecure because of the life that I had lived and I wanted to impress her." When Jesse finally left rehab in 2009 Lucie gave Jesse a place to stay and eventually they became a couple. "I thought I'd won the lottery - I was just a street guy, I don't know what she saw in me," Jesse says, "but when someone loves and trusts you that way, you just want to give it your all." Jesse and Lucie's wedding day, 2012 Lucie helped Jesse find a restaurant job, cutting French fries - "I made sure I was the best damn fry cutter in the whole city," he says - and within two-and-a-half years they had married. Jesse started a history degree at Toronto's York University that same year, aged 35. "It was terrifying. I'd brought a pen and a pad of paper to take notes, and I looked around me in the lecture hall and all these kids had laptops and smartphones," he says. "I remember being the old man among all these young kids that were way, way smarter than me. I sat at the front and nobody wanted to talk to me." In his second year, Jesse was set an assignment to research his family history and reached out to one of his aunts in Saskatchewan who'd been doing a lot of research. "She sent me her link to ancestry.com, and I saw that I came from a long line of chiefs, political leaders and resistance fighters, and that filled me with such pride that it fired me up to want to know more and more," he says. "I knew that the key back to myself was through this assignment - I poured my heart into it." Jesse wrote about his Métis ancestors and what had happened at the Battle of Batoche during the North-West Rebellion of 1885 - a violent, five-month insurgency his ancestors fought against the Canadian government, because they believed that their rights, their land, and their survival as a distinct people were under threat. Jesse's assignment was passed to a professor, an expert in Indigenous history, who immediately hired him as her research assistant. Jesse was flown back to Saskatchewan to reconnect with his mother and aunts in 2013. Now aged 37, this was only the fourth time he'd seen his mother since he'd been taken into care at just three-and-a-half or four years old. "It was like a beautiful homecoming," he says. Dr Carolyn Podruchny Blanche and Jesse pictured in 2013 in Fish Creek, Saskatchewan - the site of one of the famous battles of the 1885 North-West Rebellion At the road allowance where his Métis family had settled 150 years earlier, first in tents and later in log cabins, Jesse fell to his knees. "All those memories came rushing back of who I was and who our people were, and it just filled me up in every good way." The road allowance in Park Valley, Saskatchewan, where Jesse's maternal grandparents lived, pictured in the early 1950s Soon Jesse's research was winning awards. He graduated as the top student in his faculty and since then has picked up two competitive doctoral scholarships, has almost finished writing up his PhD, and now teaches Indigenous history as an assistant professor at York University. "I get a lot of Indigenous youth coming into my classroom looking for a connection back to their ancestry," he says. "I help them understand who their ancestors were and why their families have ended up where they are. It's a beautiful thing to watch people get to know their history." And Jesse now hires his mother, Blanche - whose father was a trapper "who hunted and picked berries and fished" - as his own research assistant. "She's an insider and she knows the community, who the elders are and the stories that I need to hear," Jesse says. "I don't think I'd have that access without her. It's great because we can work through our broken relationship as son and mother - it's not always easy, but it's beautiful. We're just joyous to be in each other's company and I say that our research methodology is based on love." Opposite Parliament Hill, Ottawa in 2013 - Jesse and Lucie came here on their first date and return every year, "to remember how far we've come" Although Jesse isn't religious, he believes his grandmother somehow brought Lucie to him, as a lifeline, to help him start again. He often thinks about the men who tried to frame him for the murder and worries about acts of retribution. Deep down he's sorry about what happened, he says, and that he was put in a position where he had to protect himself. But he's lived a good life and if they come for him now, "it is what it is." He still struggles with the legacy of his addictions. "I still fantasise about using crack cocaine, it never goes away. I just have to learn to manage it," he says. "I use a trick. I'll say, 'Yeah, I want a nice, big rock today, but you know what? I'll use tomorrow.' And then when tomorrow comes I'll say that again. I can handle this tomorrow-never-comes scenario - I've been doing it for 12 years - but infinity without the drug is too much to handle." Meanwhile, the pain in his right foot, more than a decade after his fall, reminds him every day that he's lucky to be alive. He now has a partner and a job, has restored his relationship with his mother and reconnected with his roots. But there is still one important thing missing. Cyril "Sonny" Thistle, pictured in 1981 For as long as he can remember, Jesse has always hoped that his father, Sonny Thistle, would come back into his life. But a chance meeting some years ago with an elderly man threw that into doubt. "You could tell this random dude was a street person or from prison, and he's like, 'Nobody told you, son? Whatever trouble your dad was running from, whatever people, they got him - they killed him in 1982.'" Jesse took the news to the police and officially reported his father missing. "There are some hospital records of him in 1982, there's his police contact file, and details of where he was incarcerated, and that's it," Jesse says. "He just evaporates into thin air - he vanishes." Jesse knew that his father was dealing drugs and would rip people off before fleeing to the next town. "And if you do that to someone involved in organised crime, then they make examples of people - that's what they do, that's part of the business," he says. But while it was devastating to learn that his dad might be dead, it was comforting to think that there was a reason why he had never been in touch. "What better excuse is there for a father not coming home than he's dead?" says Jesse. He hasn't given up all hope, though, that his father might still be alive. "There's a possibility that someone somewhere knows something, so we're still looking for him," he says. "Part of me doesn't want to accept that he's gone." Images courtesy of Jesse Thistle, unless otherwise stated Jesse Thistle is the author of a memoir titled From the Ashes https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-55559382 -
By விவசாயி விக் · பதியப்பட்டது
Sri Lanka Minister who promoted 'Covid syrup' tests positive 22 hours ago AFP Pavithra Wanniarachchi (L) has become the fourth Sri Lankan minister to test positive Sri Lanka's health minister, who endorsed herbal syrup to prevent Covid, has tested positive for the virus. Pavithra Wanniarachchi tested positive on Friday, a media secretary at the Ministry of Health told the BBC. She had promoted the syrup, manufactured by a shaman who claimed it worked as a life-long inoculation against the virus. Sri Lanka recorded 56,076 cases and 276 deaths since the pandemic began, with cases surging in recent months. Ms Wanniarachchi is the fourth minister to test positive. A junior minister, who also took the potion, tested positive earlier this week. The health minister had publicly consumed and endorsed the syrup as a way of stopping the spread of the virus. The shaman who invented the syrup, which contains honey and nutmeg, said the recipe was given to him in a visionary dream. Doctors in the country have quashed claims the herbal syrup works, but AFP news agency reports thousands have travelled to a village to obtain it. The plant being promoted as a coronavirus tonic Is a coronavirus 'cure' being secretly poisoned? Ms Wanniarachchi took two Covid-19 tests and both returned positive results, Viraj Abeysinghe, media secretary at the Ministry of Health told the BBC. The minister has been asked to self-isolate and all of her immediate contacts have gone into isolation. News of Ms Wanniarachchi's positive test came hours after Sri Lanka approved the emergency use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. The first doses are expected to arrive in the country next week. Sri Lanka isn't the only place where people in positions of power have promoted unproven treatments for Covid. Last year, Madagascar's President Andry Rajoelina was criticised for promoting a herbal concoction that he claimed could prevent the virus. He was pictured distributing the tonic to poor communities in the capital. Since the pandemic began, a number of world leaders and cabinet members have contracted Covid. French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former President Donald Trump all caught the virus at various points last year. The people who think Coronavirus is caused by 5G https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55780425 -
By விவசாயி விக் · பதியப்பட்டது
Tse Chi Lop: Alleged Asian drug lord arrested in Amsterdam Published Share image captionTse Chi Lop was arrested at Amsterdam airport on Friday Police in the Netherlands have arrested the alleged head of one of the world's biggest drugs gangs, on a warrant issued by Australia. Tse Chi Lop - a Chinese-born Canadian national - is said to be the head of The Company, which dominates a $70bn illegal drugs market across Asia. Listed as one of the world's most wanted fugitives, Mr Tse was detained at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport. Australia will now seek his extradition to face trial there. The Australian Federal Police (AFP) believe The Company, also known as the Sam Gor Syndicate, is responsible for up to 70% of all illegal drugs entering the country. The 56-year-old has been compared to the Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman because of the scale of his alleged enterprise. How Mexico's drug kingpin fell victim to his own legend Australian police had reportedly been tracking Mr Tse for more than a decade before he was arrested on Friday as he was about to board a flight to Canada. A police statement, which did not name Mr Tse, said the arrest warrant was issued in 2019, with police in the Netherlands acting on an Interpol notice. "He was already on the most-wanted list and he was detained based on intelligence we received," a Dutch police spokesman of the arrest Friday. Reuters published a special investigation into Mr Tse in 2019 - describing him as "Asia's most wanted man". The news agency cited UN estimates as saying the syndicate's revenue from methamphetamine sales alone could have been as high as $17bn in 2018. The effort to arrest Mr Tse, Operation Kungur, involved about 20 agencies from continents across the globe with AFP taking the lead, according to Reuters. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.View original tweet on Twitter Mr Tse is rumoured to have moved between Macau, Hong Kong and Taiwan in recent years. He previously spent nine years in prison after being arrested on drug trafficking charges in the US in the 1990s. Australian media described his arrest as the "most important" for the country's federal police in two decades. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55784104 -
By உடையார் · பதியப்பட்டது
உத்தரகண்ட் மாநிலத்தின் ஒருநாள் முதல்வரான ஷிருஷ்டி கோஸ்வாமி ஷிருஷ்டி கோஸ்வாமி ஹரித்துவார், ஹரித்துவார் மாவட்டத்தில், தவுலதாப்பூர் மாவட்டத்தில் வசிக்கும் 19 வயதான மாணவி ஷிருஷ்டி கோஸ்வாமி. அவர் ரூர்கியில் அமைந்துள்ள கல்லூரியில் பி.எஸ்.சி வேளாண்மை பயின்று வருகிறார். தற்போது உத்தரகண்ட் மாநிலத்தின் குழந்தைகள் சட்டமன்ற முதலமைச்சராக பணியாற்றி வருகிறார். கோஸ்வாமியின் தந்தை தொழிலதிபராகவும், தாய் இல்லதரசியாகவும் உள்ளனர். இந்நிலையில் உத்தரகண்ட் மாநிலத்தின் ஒருநாள் முதல்வரான 19 வயது ஷிருஷ்டி கோஸ்வாமி இன்று செயல்பட இருக்கிறார். இன்று ஒருநாள் முதலமைச்சராக பொறுபேற்கும் அவர், அம்மாநிலத்தின் கோடைகால தலைநகரான கெய்சனில் இருந்து மாநிலத்தை நிர்வாகம் செய்ய இருக்கிறார். அரசின் பல்வேறு திட்டங்களை மதிப்பாய்வு செய்யும் அவர், அடல் ஆயுஷ்மான் திட்டம், ஸ்மார்ட் சிட்டி திட்டம், சுற்றுலாத் துறையின் ஹோம்ஸ்டே திட்டம் உள்ளிட்ட பிற திட்டங்களின் பணிகளையும் மேற்பார்வையிட உள்ளார். கோஸ்வாமி பதவியேற்புக்கு முன்பு உத்தரகண்ட் அரசாங்கத்தின் கீழ் உள்ள பல்வேறு துறைகளின் அதிகாரிகள் தங்களின் திட்டம் குறித்து தலா 5 நிமிடம் காணொளி காட்சி மூலம் விளக்கம் அளிக்க உள்ளனர். குழந்தைகளின் மேம்பாட்டுக்காக பல்வேறு நலத்திட்டப் பணிகளில் பங்கேற்று வருவதற்காக கோஸ்வாமிக்கு, ஒருநாள் முதலமைச்சர் என்ற மிகப்பெரிய பொறுப்பை கொடுத்து அம்மாநில அரசாங்கம் கவுரவித்துள்ளது. மேலும், இன்று தேசிய பெண் குழந்தைகள் தினம் என்பதால், அவர்களை ஊக்குவிக்கவும் மாநில அரசு இத்தகைய முயற்சியை எடுத்துள்ளது. மாநில முதலமைச்சராக பதவியேற்பது குறித்து மாணவி ஷ்ருஷ்டி கோஸ்வாமி கூறுகையில், “இதனை தன்னால் நம்பவே முடியவில்லை. என்னால் இயன்றதை செய்வேன். மக்களின் நலனுக்காக இளைஞர்களால் சிறந்த நிர்வாகத்தை கொடுக்க முடியும் என்பதை நிரூபிக்கும் வகையில் எனது பணி இருக்கும்” என்று கூறினார். முன்னதாக தமிழில் வெளியான முதல்வன் படத்தில் அர்ஜூன் ஒருநாள் முதல்வராகவும், இந்தியில் நாயக் திரைப்படத்தில் அனில்கபூர் ஒரு நாள் முதல்வராகவும் நடித்திருந்தது குறிப்பிடத்தக்கது. https://www.dailythanthi.com/News/TopNews/2021/01/24115629/Haridwar-teen-Shrishti-Goswami-to-become-Uttarakhand.vpf -
By nunavilan · பதியப்பட்டது
Thank You, LARRY KING !!! , LARRY KING, அமெரிக்க ஊடகத்துறையில் 63 ஆண்டுகள் கோலோச்சிய ஜாம்பவான். அவருடைய 87வது வயதில் இன்று (January 23, 2021) காலமானார். ஆட்சியாளர்கள் முதல் புரட்சியாளர்கள் வரை, ஆறு தசாப்தங்களில் சுமார் 50,000 நேர்காணல்களூடாக வரலாற்றைப் பதிவுசெய்த சாதனையாளன். 9 வயதிலேயே தந்தையை இழந்த King, பாடசாலைப் படிப்போடு கல்வியை நிறுத்திவிட்டு, ஊடகவியலாளராகும் கனவுடன் பயணப்பட்டார். வானொலியொன்றில் சுத்திகரிப்பாளராகவும், தொட்டாட்டு வேலை செய்யும் ஒருவராகவும் பணிக்குச்சேர்ந்து, திடீரென்று கிடைத்த வாய்ப்பை, தனது திறமையாலும், அர்ப்பணிப்பாலும், உழைப்பாலும், உறுதியாலும் வரலாறாக மாற்றினார். 'LARRY KING SHOW' வாக வானொலியில் பரிணாமம் பெற்ற அவருடைய நிகழ்ச்சி, பின்னர் 'LARRY KING LIVE' ஆக தொலைக்காட்சியிலும், 'LARRY KING NOW' ஆக, DIGITAL பரிணாமமாகவும் வரலாற்றைப் பதிவு செய்தது. 'தனித்துவம்', 'மிடுக்கு', 'கம்பீரம்', 'அழுத்தமான' பேச்சு, 'ஊன்றிய' பார்வை என்று மக்களை வசியப்படுத்திய ஒரு இட்டு நிரப்பமுடியாத ஊடக ஆளுமை 'LARRY KING'. 'வானொலி', 'தொலைக்காட்சி', 'இணையம்' என அத்தனை தளங்களிலும் அவருடைய தடங்கள் பதிக்கப்பட்டாலும், 25 ஆண்டுகளாக அவர் தொகுத்து வழங்கிய, CNN தொலைக்காட்சியின் 'LARRY KING LiVE' நிகழ்ச்சி அவருக்கான தனித்துவமான அடையாளத்தைக் கொடுத்தது. 6000 தொடர் நேர்காணல் நிகழ்ச்சியோடு, 2010 இல் CNN இல் இருந்து அவர் விடைபெற்றாலும், வெவ்வேறு தளங்கள் ஊடாகப் பயணப்பட்டார். 'மார்ட்டின் லூதர் கிங் Jr.', 'நெல்சன் மண்டேலா', 'யசீர் அரஃபாத்' போன்ற புரட்சியாளர்களையும், 'ஜெரால்ட் ஃபோர்ட்' முதல் 'பறாக் ஒபாமா' வரையான அமெரிக்கத் தலைவர்களையும், எண்ணில் அடங்காத வெளிநாட்டுத் தலைவர்கள் மற்றும் விளையாட்டு, சினிமாப் பிரபலங்களையும் அவர் நேர்காணல் செய்துள்ளார். 7 மனைவிகள் 8 முறை திருணங்கள் என்று அசாத்தியங்களையும் சாத்தியமாக்கிய அசகாயசூரன். மாரடைப்பு, இதய சத்திரசிகிச்சை, நுரையீரல் புற்றுநோய், புறொஸ்டேற் புற்றுநோய், பக்கவாதம் என்று அத்தனை உடல் உபாதைகளையும் வதம் செய்து வென்ற போர்க்குணம் மிக்க ஒரு பேராற்றலை, 'கொறோனா' கொன்றுவிட்டது. சுருங்கக் கூறின், அமெரிக்க ஊடக வரலாற்றை, இவரைத் தவிர்த்துவிட்டு எழுதிவிட முடியாது. தொழிலையும், ஒலிவாங்கியையும் நேசித்த Larry King இன் வார்த்தைகள் இவை... ///// "I was in love with what I was doing. You know why it never lets me down. This is my blanket (Microphone)" ///// இந்த வரலாற்றுடல், அவர் விருப்பப்படி பதப்படுத்தப்பட்டால் மகிழ்ச்சி. ஒலிவாங்கியைப் போர்வையாக்கியவனே போய் வா... ஊடக உலகின் உயரம் தொட்ட 'பிதாமகருக்கு' இறுதி வணக்கம் !!! - உதயன் S. பிள்ளை - arry King, renowned television and radio host, dies at 87 CNN broadcaster had conducted an estimated 50,000 on-air interviews The Associated Press · Posted: Jan 23, 2021 3:26 PM ET | Last Updated: January 23 Larry King, renowned television and radio host, dies at 87 19 hours agoVideo 8:39 U.S. talk show legend Larry King, 87, has died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, the production company he founded said Saturday. No cause of death was given, but CNN had earlier reported he was hospitalized with COVID-19. 8:39 490 comments Larry King, the suspenders-sporting everyman whose broadcast interviews with world leaders, movie stars and ordinary people helped define American conversation for a half-century, died Saturday. He was 87. King died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Ora Media, the studio and network he co-founded, said on Twitter. No cause of death was given, but CNN had earlier reported he was hospitalized with COVID-19. A longtime nationally syndicated radio host, from 1985 through 2010 he was a nightly fixture on CNN, where he won many honours, including two Peabody awards. With his celebrity interviews, political debates and topical discussions, King wasn't just an enduring on-air personality. He also set himself apart with the curiosity be brought to every interview — whether questioning the assault victim known as the "Central Park Jogger" or billionaire industrialist Ross Perot, who in 1992 rocked the presidential contest by announcing his candidacy on King's show. In its early years, Larry King Live was based in Washington, D.C., which gave the show an air of gravitas. Likewise King. He was the plain-spoken go-between through whom Beltway bigwigs could reach their public — and they did, earning the show prestige as a place where things happened, where news was made. Former CNN talk show host Larry King hospitalized with COVID-19, network says King conducted an estimated 50,000 on-air interviews. In 1995 he presided over a Middle East peace summit with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, King Hussein of Jordan and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He welcomed everyone from the Dalai Lama to Elizabeth Taylor, from Mikhail Gorbachev to Barack Obama, Bill Gates to Lady Gaga. Relocated to Los Angeles Especially after he relocated to Los Angeles, his shows were frequently in the thick of breaking celebrity news, including Paris Hilton talking about her stint in jail in 2007 and Michael Jackson's friends and family members talking about his death in 2009. King boasted of never overpreparing for an interview. His non-confrontational style relaxed his guests and made him readily relatable to his audience. Former U.S. president Bill Clinton, right, speaks with Larry King on CNN in New York on Sept. 3, 2002. (Reuters) "I don't pretend to know it all," he said in a 1995 Associated Press interview. "Not, `What about Geneva or Cuba?' I ask, `Mr. President, what don't you like about this job?' Or 'What's the biggest mistake you made?' That's fascinating." At a time when CNN, as the lone player in cable news, was deemed politically neutral and King was the essence of its middle-of-the-road stance, political figures and people at the centre of controversies would seek out his show. Interviewed Sinatra, Brando And he was known for getting guests who were notoriously elusive. Frank Sinatra, who rarely gave interviews and often lashed out at reporters, spoke to King in 1988 in what would be the singer's last major TV appearance. Sinatra was an old friend of King's and acted accordingly. "Why are you here?" King asks. Sinatra responds, "Because you asked me to come and I hadn't seen you in a long time to begin with, I thought we ought to get together and chat, just talk about a lot of things." King had never met Marlon Brando, who was even tougher to get and tougher to interview, when the acting giant asked to appear on King's show in 1994. The two hit it off so famously they ended their 90-minute talk with a song and an on-the-mouth kiss, an image that was all over media in subsequent weeks. 25-run year on Larry King Live After a gala week marking his 25th anniversary in June 2010, King abruptly announced he was retiring from his show, telling viewers, "It's time to hang up my nightly suspenders." Named as his successor in the time slot: British journalist and TV personality Piers Morgan. By King's departure that December, suspicion had grown that he had waited a little too long to hang up those suspenders. Once the leader in cable TV news, he ranked third in his time slot with less than half the nightly audience his peak year, 1998, when Larry King Live drew 1.64 million viewers. His wide-eyed, regular-guy approach to interviewing by then felt dated in an era of edgy, pushy or loaded questioning by other hosts. Meanwhile, occasional flubs had made him seem out of touch, or worse. A prime example from 2007 found King asking Jerry Seinfeld if he had voluntarily left his sitcom or been cancelled by his network, NBC. "I was the No. 1 show in television, Larry," replied Seinfeld with a flabbergasted look. "Do you know who I am?" Always a workaholic, King would be back doing specials for CNN within a few months of performing his nightly duties. Big following on Twitter He found a new sort of celebrity as a plain-spoken natural on Twitter when the platform emerged, winning over more than two million followers who simultaneously mocked and loved him for his esoteric style. "I've never been in a canoe," he said in a typical tweet in 2015. His Twitter account was essentially a revival of a USA Today column he wrote for two decades full of one-off, disjointed thoughts. Norm Macdonald delivered a parody version of the column when he played King on Saturday Night Live, with deadpan lines like, "The more I think about it, the more I appreciate the equator." King was constantly parodied, often through old-age jokes on late-night talk shows from hosts including David Letterman and Conan O'Brien — often appearing with the latter to get in on the roasting himself. Born and raised in Brooklyn King came by his voracious but no-frills manner honestly. He was born Lawrence Harvey Zeiger in 1933, a son of Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe who ran a bar and grill in Brooklyn, N.Y. But after his father's death when Larry was a boy, he faced a troubled, sometimes destitute youth. A fan of such radio stars as Arthur Godfrey and comedians Bob & Ray, King on reaching adulthood set his sights on a broadcasting career. With word that Miami was a good place to break in, he headed south in 1957 and landed a job sweeping floors at a tiny AM radio station. When a deejay abruptly quit, King was put on the air — and was handed his new surname by the station manager, who thought Zeiger "too Jewish." Larry King recalls Trudeau interview fondly A year later he moved to a larger station, where his duties were expanded from the usual patter to serving as host of a daily interview show that aired from a local restaurant. He quickly proved equally adept at talking to the waitresses and the celebrities who began dropping by. By the early 1960s, King had gone to yet a larger Miami station, scored a newspaper column and become a local celebrity himself. At the same time, he fell victim to living large. "It was important to me to come across as a `big man,"' he wrote in his autobiography, which meant "I made a lot of money and spread it around lavishly." Married 8 times to 7 women King accumulated debts and his first broken marriages (he was married eight times to seven women). He gambled, borrowed wildly and failed to pay his taxes. He also became involved with a shady financier in a scheme to bankroll an investigation of John F. Kennedy's assassination. But when King skimmed some of the cash to pay his overdue taxes, his partner sued him for grand larceny in 1971. The charges were dropped, but King's reputation appeared ruined. King lost his radio show and for several years struggled to find work. But by 1975, the scandal had largely blown over, and a Miami station gave him another chance. Regaining his local popularity, King was signed in 1978 to host radio's first nationwide call-in show. Larry King poses with his wife, Shawn Southwick, and their sons, Chance Armstrong, left, and Cannon Edward, at the premiere of The Country Bears at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood on July 21, 2002. The couple filed for divorce in 2010, rescinded the filing, then filed for divorce again in 2019. (Reuters) Originating from Washington on the Mutual network, The Larry King Show was eventually heard on more than 300 stations and made King a national phenomenon. A few years later, CNN founder Ted Turner offered King a slot on his young network. Larry King Live debuted on June 1, 1985, and became CNN's highest-rated program. King's starting salary of $100,000 a year eventually grew to more than $7 million. A three-packs-a-day cigarette habit led to a heart attack in 1987, but King's quintuple-bypass surgery didn't slow him down. Meanwhile, he continued to prove that, in his words, "I'm not good at marriage, but I'm a great boyfriend." He was just 18 when he married high school girlfriend Freda Miller, in 1952. The marriage lasted less than a year. In subsequent decades, he would marry Annette Kay, Alene Akins (twice), Mickey Sutfin, Sharon Lepore and Julie Alexander. In 1997, he wed Shawn Southwick, a country singer and actress 26 years his junior. They would file for divorce in 2010, rescind the filing, then file for divorce again in 2019. The couple had two sons, King's fourth and fifth children — Chance Armstrong, born in 1999, and Cannon Edward, born in 2000. In 2020, King lost his two eldest children, Andy King and Chaia King, who died of unrelated health problems within weeks of each other. He had many other medical issues in recent decades, including more heart attacks and diagnoses of Type 2 diabetes and lung cancer. Early this year, CNN reported that King was hospitalized for more than a week with COVID-19. Through his setbacks, he continued to work into his late 80s, taking on online talk shows and infomercials as his appearances on CNN grew fewer. "Work," King once said. "It's the easiest thing I do." CBC's Journalistic Standards and Practices|About CBC News Report Typo or Error https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/larry-king-obituary-1.5885208?fbclid=IwAR1pbZMDYTL2k2I-3TXwt8KTZ5OKfvVcOtpvDFp2lVLGj1MzCHLXJO_uf0Q
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