Flap about Carter’s book prompts board resignations

Atlanta – To protest former President Carter’s new book, which criticizes Israeli policy in the Palestinian territories, fourteen members of an advisory board to his human rights organization resigned.

The resignations from The Carter Center board are the latest backlash against the former president’s book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” which has drawn fire from Jewish groups, been attacked by fellow Democrats and led to the resignation last month of Kenneth Stein, a center fellow and a longtime Carter adviser.

The 200-member board is responsible for building public support for the Carter Center. It is not the organization’s governing board.

Steve Berman, an Atlanta real estate developer among those who resigned, said members had “watched with great dismay” as Carter defended the book, especially as he implied that Americans might be afraid to discuss the conflict in fear of a powerful Jewish lobby.

Belafonte urges students to help shape future

Fairborn, Ohio – Entertainer and activist Harry Belafonte implored college students to help shape the future during a two-hour talk that included stories about the people who have influenced him.

“You are responsible for this generation the way we were responsible for the last one,” Belafonte said Wednesday at Wright State University. “So if you see things that are unacceptable, you have a responsibility to change them. Make a difference. If you don’t, you have no one to blame but yourself.”

Also in attendance was comedian Dave Chappelle, who lives nearby in the southwest Ohio village of Yellow Springs. Chappelle’s mother, Yvonne Seon, is founding director of Wright State’s Bolinga Black Cultural Resources Center and introduced Belafonte to the audience.

Belafonte, famous for his calypso-inspired music, told stories about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and others who have helped inspire him.

“I was born in Harlem but at an early age my mother took us back to her homeland, Jamaica,” Belafonte said. “When I returned to New York at age 13, it was common for me to see Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, W.E.B. DuBois and, the tallest tree in the forest, Paul Robeson.”

Madonna defends O’Donnell in ongoing feud with Trump

New York – Rosie O’Donnell has a powerful ally in her feud with Donald Trump: her close friend Madonna.

“People are giving Rosie a hard time,” Madonna, who starred with O’Donnell in 1992’s “A League of Their Own,” said Thursday on NBC’s “Today” show. “I wish they’d stop. I don’t think it’s fair.”

The 48-year-old pop star told “Today” co-host Meredith Vieira that she’d first heard about the flare-up between O’Donnell and Trump while vacationing “in the middle of the Indian Ocean” and quickly e-mailed O’Donnell.

“I have to hear it from the horse’s mouth,” Madonna said. “Basically, I mean, she’s a stand-up comic. I think all stand-up comics talk about provocative things in their monologues before shows, and I think that’s a commonplace thing.”