Latest news with #Alonzo
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Yahoo
San Diego man accused of trying to smuggle 17 exotic birds into the U.S.
(Above: Nexstar Media Wire video on endangered versus threatened species) SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — A man from San Diego appeared in federal court this week after being accused of attempting to smuggle 17 exotic birds into the United States from Mexico. According to a complaint, Ricardo Alonzo, 26, was stopped by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers while trying to cross through the San Ysidro Port of Entry, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of California said. Passenger arrested after alleged bomb threat reported on plane leaving San Diego During a search of his vehicle, officers found four bags with 10 burrowing parakeets, five yellow-crowned Amazon parrots and two red-lored Amazon parrots under the rear seat. The two red-lored Amazon chicks who were in Alonzo's vehicle died and were transferred to a quarantine facility managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, prosecutors stated. The announcement came just about a week after CBP officers announced they recently stopped previous attempts to smuggle 27 parrots and three chickens into the U.S. at both the Otay Mesa and San Ysidro ports of entry. Amazon parrots are a native species to Mexico, the West Indies and northern South America, and burrowing parakeets are native to Chile and Argentina, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. All species of Amazon parrots and the burrowing parakeets are listed as endangered species. If successfully smuggled into the country, authorities deem them dangerous due to the possibility of them carrying and spreading Avian influenza (bird flu), the attorney's office stated. Bird flu is highly contagious and may lead to severe symptoms or death in humans and other birds, including poultry on U.S. farms. Alonzo faces charges of importation contrary to law and a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison plus a $250,000 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
New York Times
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Boston Bets Big on Public Art With a New Triennial
Boston holds an important place in the public imagination for many things: claims to fame include its entrenched Colonial-era stories, like Paul Revere's midnight ride and the Boston Tea Party, and its array of world-class academic and research institutions. But the city has not been known for contemporary art in the way thriving art-world hubs like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami are. A new event, the Boston Public Art Triennial, looks to put the city on the contemporary art map and 'signal who we are as Bostonians in a different way,' said its executive director, Kate Gilbert. On May 22, the opening day of its first iteration, 20 commissioned works will be shown at outdoor and publicly accessible sites across East Boston, Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, Downtown Boston and Charlestown, and at five partnering museums. The Triennial is a reboot of Now + There, a nonprofit founded by Gilbert a decade ago that produced dozens of public art projects in more than 20 Boston neighborhoods over the years. But those one-off commissions never had the critical mass to attract a substantial audience, leading Gilbert to create a citywide exhibition that would happen every three years. 'We wanted to concentrate it in a not-to-be-missed, festival-type experience,' Gilbert said. 'We really want to see a more open and equitable city through people having extraordinary art experiences.' The Triennial cost $8 million to produce and will be on view through Oct. 31. 'Boston's a city of experts,' said Pedro Alonzo, the artistic director of this year's exhibition, titled 'The Exchange.' 'The idea of the Triennial is to give artists access to this amazing pool of talent we have to develop projects that hopefully the public can get behind.' Alonzo and the curator Tess Lukey selected artists including Cannupa Hanska Luger, Swoon, Ekene Ijeoma and Stephen Hamilton who collaborated with local experts on works about Indigenous identity, health and recovery, climate and our shared humanity. Patrick Martinez, an artist known for his neon signs who lives and works in Los Angeles, partnered with Breaktime, an organization helping young people experiencing homelessness. He worked with youths to come up with phrases such as 'People Over Property' and 'One Paycheck Away From Being Homeless' to turn into vibrant neon pieces. They will be installed on abandoned storefronts in the Downtown Crossing district, where Breaktime has its headquarters. In collaboration with the conservation nonprofit Mass Audubon, the Brazilian artist Laura Lima is making sculptures to surround and hang from trees, which urban wildlife can interact with at the Boston Nature Center & Wildlife Sanctuary in Mattapan. She's 'thinking about how we behave on the planet and our relationships with other species,' Alonzo said. The artist Julian Charrière, who lives and works in Berlin, is also engaging with the environment. Working with climate scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he will present a live video feed from the Amazon jungle on a large screen on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston. A speaker in the forest will be linked to a phone booth adjacent to the screen so that people can speak directly to nature. (Boston has a significant Brazilian population.) The curators are making clusters in their treasure hunt across the city. On a trip to East Boston, viewers can visit a storefront where the artist Gabriel Sosa will be producing zines and posters with his community press and then head to the ICA Watershed, a seasonal space run by the city's Institute of Contemporary Art, with an immersive installation by Chiharu Shiota. In the Fenway-Kenmore neighborhood, Yu-Wen Wu's monumental image of transient flowers will grace the facade of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum near Alan Michelson's sculptures of two contemporary Indigenous figures, who appear to be addressing the public from plinths outside the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. At Evans Way Park, a triangle between the museums, Nicholas Galanin, a Lingit and Unangax artist who lives and works in Alaska, will present the sculpture 'I Think a Monument Goes Like This.' Based on a knockoff of an Indigenous totem pole produced for tourists that the artist chopped like firewood and cast in bronze, the stooped figurative piece appears in the process of reassembling itself from pieces on the ground as an act of self-determination. 'This work references the idea of picking yourself up in a world that has discarded you and having to navigate that,' Galanin said. The piece received $100,000 in funding from the 'Un-monument' initiative led by the Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture to create temporary projects that expand the range of who and what is commemorated in public space. The multiyear program, funded by a $3 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, awarded money for research and development to more than 30 projects last year, according to Karin Goodfellow, who oversees the initiative in the Mayor's Office and considers the Triennial a curatorial partner. 'We've been doing this work somewhat quietly, as a city,' but are now getting to a place where those efforts can be shared, Goodfellow said. An augmented reality project by Roberto Mighty that seeks to revive lost African American stories tied to Copp's Hill Burying Grounds in Boston's North End will be started by 'Un-monument' in tandem with the Triennial in May. 'It's been a multiyear journey to make sure we can tell the fuller story of who we have been and who we are today,' said Mayor Michelle Wu, whose office has supported the Triennial with an additional $500,000. The goal of 'The Exchange,' she said, 'is to create an experience that cuts across barriers in the city — geographic, generational, cultural — to really draw everyone in.' Leading the charge for contemporary art in the city for the last 27 years has been Jill Medvedow, who stepped down last month as director of the ICA Boston. 'I recognize, having both done public art here and built two buildings now, that building visibility, building critical mass, building audiences takes time,' she said. 'Whether the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,' she added, 'both in terms of what the artists and the Triennial produce separately and together, it's a great wait-and-see moment.'
Chicago Tribune
15-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: An exceptionally freaky Lon Chaney movie, restored, comes to Chicago this Sunday only
'Gruesome and at times shocking' as well as 'anything but a pleasant story,' according to the 1927 New York Times critic Mordaunt Hall, 'The Unknown' stars Lon Chaney as Alonzo the Armless, a knife-throwing, sharpshooting featured traveling circus performer with a shady past. He's in love with the owner's daughter, Nanon (Joan Crawford), the apple of another's eye: that of the resident strongman. 'All my life, men have tried to put their beastly hands on me,' she confesses to Alonzo backstage, amid the sawdust and manufactured ground fog director Tod Browning and his collaborators plainly adore. (So do I.) Where 'The Unknown' goes from there in its beautifully restored 66 minutes turns a triangular romantic melodrama into its own sinister geometric configuration. Alonzo's faking his armlessness (only confidant Cojo knows the truth) because he has a rap sheet and a highly incriminating second thumb on one hand. This fugitive from Spanish justice – 'The Unknown' takes place in MGM-Hollywood-soundstage-Madrid — apparently has killed before. And in silent superstar Chaney's sixth of 10 assignments with director Browning, a key figure in cinema horror and nightmarish carnival imagery, Alonzo surely will kill, and maim (himself?) and suffer again. Happy V-Day weekend! This Sunday only, the nonprofit Chicago Film Society screens a 35mm print of this recent George Eastman Museum restoration. Shortly after its 1927 run until the discovery of a print at the Cinematheque Française in 1968, 'The Unknown' was considered all but lost, like the majority of all silent films. But here it is, and the Eastman restoration will be preceded by a newly preserved experimental short film, courtesy of the Chicago Film Society: 'Comes to a Point Like an Ice Cream Cone' by Heather McAdams and Chicago musician/songwriter Chris Ligon. An amalgam of carnival, freak-show, and Baraboo, Wisconsin, Circus World archival footage from several different decades, the short is a frenetic whirligig — and the rhythmic opposite of 'The Unknown.' It has been shown in different versions in Chicago dating back to the 1980s, though officially completed in 1997. Hollywood often turned to the rich, colorful, often seedy visual possibilities of circus yarns in the second half of the 1920s, though seldom if ever with the outlandishness and psychosexual tension of 'The Unknown.' Manon cannot bear the touch of any man's hands, and it's implied that she may be a victim of incest. (Things improve for her once her father has left the scenario, shall we say.) Crawford works some startling wonders in this role, and later credited her career fortunes in part to working with Chaney. His fervent dedication to mastering the physical demands of Alonzo, with some help from a stand-in without arms, Paul Desmuke, left an impression on colleagues as well as audiences. All the same, 'The Unknown' was too much to be a real hit. Today, it's remarkable for many reasons, chiefly the opportunity to see Chaney's brilliantly expressive face without terrifying distortions in the name of terror. Is the film's narrative absurd? Extreme? Feverish? Guilty, guilty, guilty. But this is exceptional pulp, and Chaney and Crawford are startlingly effective. This Sunday's screening will be accompanied by a live musical score performed by Whine Cave, aka Kent Lambert and Sam Wagster.
Yahoo
31-01-2025
- Yahoo
Tips assist authorities in capture of two of Texas' 10 Most Wanted
Jan. 31—AUSTIN — The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) announces the arrest of two of Texas' 10 Most Wanted. Authorities arrested Texas 10 Most Wanted Fugitive Jrdon Joe — who is also this month's featured fugitive — on January 28, and Texas 10 Most Wanted Sex Offender Marcos Alonzo on January 18. Crime Stoppers rewards will be paid in both arrests. According to a DPS news release, Jrdon Mykel Joe, 23, was taken into custody in Houston. Following up on tip information, DPS Criminal Investigation Division Special Agents assigned to the Texas Anti-Gang (TAG) Center in Houston, along with DPS Region 2 Special Response Team (SRT) members, the DPS Texas Highway Patrol TAG Violent Crimes Unit, U.S. Marshals Gulf Coast Violent Offenders Fugitive Task Force and Harris County Constable's Office Pct. 4 Special Operations Unit, collaborated in this multi-agency fugitive investigation, to locate and arrest him. Joe had been wanted for murder out of Harris Co. since August 2024 following an incident where he allegedly shot a man in a parking lot off IH-45 on July 12, 2024. Joe's criminal history also includes prior arrests for drug and violent offenses. More information on Joe's capture can be found here. Marcos Christopher Alonzo, 47, was taken into custody in Dallas. Following up on tip information, members of the U.S. Marshals Lone Star Fugitive Task Force, including DPS Special Agents, located and arrested him. The Hutchins Police Department assisted in the multi-agency fugitive investigation. According to the release, Alonzo had been wanted since February 2023, when a warrant was issued out of Dallas County for his arrest for failure to comply with sex offender registration requirements. In 2005, Alonzo was convicted of indecency with a child by contact following an incident with a 5-year-old girl. He was subsequently sentenced to five years of confinement in a Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison. In 2011, Alonzo was convicted of failure to register as a sex offender and subsequently sentenced to three years of confinement. More information on Alonzo's capture can be found here. Funded by the Governor's Criminal Justice Division, Texas Crime Stoppers, offers cash rewards to any person who provides information that leads to the arrest of one of Texas' 10 Most Wanted Fugitives, Sex Offenders or Criminal Illegal Immigrants. So far in 2025, DPS and other agencies have arrested six Texas 10 Most Wanted Fugitives, Sex Offenders and Criminal Illegal Immigrants, including one sex offender and two criminal illegal immigrants — with $10,000 in rewards being paid for tips that yielded arrests. To be eligible for cash rewards, tipsters MUST provide information to authorities using one of the following three methods: — Call the Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-252-TIPS (8477). — Submit a web tip through the DPS website by selecting the fugitive you have information about then clicking on the link under their picture. — Submit a Facebook tip by clicking the "SUBMIT A TIP" link (under the "About" section). All tips are anonymous — regardless of how they are submitted — and tipsters will be provided a tip number instead of using a name. DPS investigators work with local law enforcement agencies to select fugitives for the Texas 10 Most Wanted Fugitives, Sex Offenders and Criminal Illegal Immigrants Lists. You can find the current lists — with photos — on the DPS website. Do not attempt to apprehend these fugitives; they are considered armed and dangerous.
