Latest news with #Hanan
New Straits Times
03-06-2025
- Climate
- New Straits Times
New RM400,000 bridge brings relief to Orang Asli in Gua Musang
GUA MUSANG: The construction of a new RM400,000 bridge across Sungai Balar in Pos Balar, set to begin this month, has brought much-needed relief to more than 1,000 Orang Asli residents in the area. Orang Asli Village Development and Safety Committee chairman Hanan Anjang said he was grateful that the villagers' difficulties had finally received the attention of the authorities. "We are truly thankful to the Department of Orang Asli Development (Jakoa) for its concern over the plight of the Orang Asli community in this remote area," he said when contacted. Hanan said the original structure, a steel suspension bridge, collapsed three months ago after Sungai Balar overflowed following heavy rain in March. "Since then, crossing the river has been very challenging. "We have had to carry motorcycles by hand just to reach Gua Musang town, and many of our children have been unable to attend school. "Over the past three months, we built two makeshift wooden bridges, but both were swept away by rising river levels during heavy rains," he said. Although construction of the permanent bridge, under a design-and-build contract, is expected to begin this month, Hanan said the villagers have agreed to rebuild a temporary crossing in the meantime. Hanan added that the RM400,000 project is expected to be completed within three months. "To ease movement for now, especially for school children, we will reconstruct a temporary bridge across Sungai Balar," he said. It was reported that Jakoa would expedite the construction of the new bridge to replace the original structure, which was washed away by strong currents on March 9. Jakoa director-general Datuk Sapiah Mohd Nor had said that the location, terrain, and weather conditions would be carefully considered during the construction process.
Boston Globe
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Stephen Mo Hanan, who played three roles in ‘Cats,' dies at 78
'As a matter of fact, I've brought my concertina,' he recalled telling Nunn in an interview with The Washington Post in 1982. 'He said, 'Give me something in Italian.' Well, I've never had a problem with shyness. I sang 'Funiculi, Funicula.'' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Mr. Hanan was ultimately cast in three parts: Bustopher Jones, a portly cat, and the dual role of Asparagus, an aging theater cat, who, while reminiscing, transforms (with help from an inflatable costume) into a former role, Growltiger, a tough pirate, and performs a parody of Giacomo Puccini's 'Turandot.' Advertisement During rehearsals, Hanan kept a detailed journal, which he published in 2002 as 'A Cat's Diary.' In an entry about the second day of rehearsal, he described an assignment from Nunn: to 'pick a cartoon cat we know of, withdraw to ourselves and prepare a vignette of that cat, then return to the circle and each in turn will present.' Advertisement He continued: 'I choose Fritz the Cat,' the Robert Crumb character, 'making a pass at some kitty. Watching the others is a gas -- people's individualities are beginning to emerge.' Mr. Hanan and another cast member, Harry Groener, were nominated for the Tony Award for best featured actor in a musical. They both lost; tap dancer Charles (Honi) Coles won for 'My One and Only.' In the years following 'Cats,' Mr. Hanan's many roles included Moonface Martin in 'Anything Goes,' at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis; the double role of Voltaire and Dr. Pangloss in 'Candide,' at the Huntington Theater in Boston; and another dual role, Mr. Darling and Captain Hook, in 'Peter Pan,' on Broadway and on tour. He also portrayed villainous innkeeper Thenardier in 'Les Miserables' in London. In 1999, Mr. Hanan created a stage role of his own: Al Jolson, the popular vaudevillian who performed in blackface, sang on Broadway, and starred in 'The Jazz Singer,' the pioneering sound motion picture. 'Jolson & Co.,' which Mr. Hanan wrote with Jay Berkow, was staged off-Broadway, at the York Theater Company. Jolson 'was pure id,' Mr. Hanan, who bore a physical resemblance to him, told Harvard magazine in 2002, when the show was revived at the Century Center for the Performing Arts in New York. 'He didn't censor himself, neither his joy nor his rage. With Jolson you can be completely over the top; you have to be. His personality demands that kind of size." 'Jolson & Co.' re-creates a 1946 radio interview with Barry Gray as a way of looking back on his remarkable life. Mr. Hanan sang many of the songs Jolson was known for, including 'Swanee' and 'California, Here I Come.' Advertisement Reviewing the show in New York magazine, John Simon praised Mr. Hanan's performance as 'mostly impersonation but, as such, unbeatable.' He added, 'On top of the Jolson looks, the incarnator has absorbed all the vocal, facial, and kinetic mannerisms as if he had stolen the man's very soul.' Stephen Hanan Kaplan was born on Jan. 7, 1947, in Washington. His mother, Lottie (Klein) Kaplan, was a high school English teacher; his father, Jonah Kaplan, was a pharmacist. While attending Harvard College, Stephen performed in theatrical productions at the Loeb Drama Center and with the Hasty Pudding Club. He acquired the nickname Mo on a trip to Bermuda during college, after a friend, future Broadway librettist John Weidman, observed that his outfit made him look like 'some guy named Mo who cleans cabanas in the Catskills,' Mr. Hanan told the website TheaterMania in 2002. After graduating in 1968 with a bachelor's degree in English literature, he studied for a year at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art on a Fulbright fellowship. Back in New York, he had difficulty landing roles, so in 1971 he moved to San Francisco, where he lived on a commune and spent six years singing for money, mostly at the ferry terminal, which earned him enough to spend winters in Mexico and Guatemala. Once, outside the stage door at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, he encountered Luciano Pavarotti, who had just performed in Giuseppe Verdi's 'Un Ballo in Maschera,' and summoned the nerve to sing for the great tenor. 'I raced to the money note and he, exclaiming 'Che voce d'oro' -- or 'What a golden voice' -- beckoned me over amid applause,' Mr. Hanan wrote in an unpublished essay. Advertisement After returning to New York, he landed small parts in New York Shakespeare Festival productions of 'All's Well That Ends Well' and 'The Taming of the Shrew' in Central Park in 1978. (Around that time, he dropped his surname and began using his middle name instead, because there was another actor with a similar name.) In 1980, director Wilford Leach cast him as Samuel, the second in command to Kline's Pirate King, in the Shakespeare in the Park production of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operetta 'The Pirates of Penzance,' which also starred Linda Ronstadt. Mr. Hanan stayed with the show when it moved to Broadway in 1981. In 2006, Mr. Hanan moved up in rank to play the Major-General in a Yiddish-language version of 'Pirates' (called 'Di Yam Gazlonim!'), put on by the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene at the Jewish Community Center in New York (now the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan). Allen Lewis Rickman, the director, recalled that Mr. Hanan did not know Yiddish and had to learn his lines phonetically. 'He was quite a character and very entertaining, one of those people who you know is a real pro,' Rickman said in an interview. 'He had a clownish streak -- that was his first instinct -- but not in a scene-stealing way.' This article originally appeared in
New York Times
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Stephen Mo Hanan, Who Played Three Roles in ‘Cats,' Dies at 78
Stephen Mo Hanan, a vibrant performer who sang arias and other music as a busker in San Francisco before playing Kevin Kline's lieutenant in the acclaimed 1981 Broadway production of 'The Pirates of Penzance' and three felines in the original Broadway cast of 'Cats,' died on April 3 at his home in Manhattan. He was 78. Gary Widlund, his husband and only immediate survivor, said the cause was a heart attack. At his audition for 'Cats,' Mr. Hanan (pronounced HAN-un) told Andrew Lloyd Webber, the composer, and Trevor Nunn, the director, that he had spent several years singing and accompanying himself on a concertina at a ferry terminal at the foot of Market Street in San Francisco. 'As a matter of fact, I've brought my concertina,' he recalled telling Mr. Nunn in an interview with The Washington Post in 1982. 'He said, 'Give me something in Italian.' Well, I've never had a problem with shyness. I sang 'Funiculi, Funicula.'' Mr. Hanan was ultimately cast in three parts: Bustopher Jones, a portly cat, and the dual role of Asparagus, an aging theater cat, who, while reminiscing, transforms (with help from an inflatable costume) into a former role, Growltiger, a tough pirate, and performs a parody of Puccini's 'Turandot.' During rehearsals, Mr. Hanan kept a detailed journal, which he published in 2002 as 'A Cat's Diary.' In an entry about the second day of rehearsal, he described an assignment from Mr. Nunn: to 'pick a cartoon cat we know of, withdraw to ourselves and prepare a vignette of that cat, then return to the circle and each in turn will present.' He continued: 'I choose Fritz the Cat,' the Robert Crumb character, 'making a pass at some kitty. Watching the others is a gas — people's individualities are beginning to emerge.' He and another cast member, Harry Groener, were both nominated for the Tony Award for best featured actor in a musical. They both lost; the tap dancer Charles (Honi) Coles won for 'My One and Only.' In the years following 'Cats,' Mr. Hanan's many roles included Moonface Martin in 'Anything Goes,' at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis; the double role of Voltaire and Dr. Pangloss in 'Candide,' at the Huntington Theater in Boston; and another dual role, Mr. Darling and Captain Hook, in 'Peter Pan,' on Broadway and on tour. He also portrayed the villainous innkeeper Thenardier in 'Les Miserables' in London. In 1999, Mr. Hanan created a stage role of his own: Al Jolson, the popular vaudevillian who performed in blackface, sang on Broadway and starred in 'The Jazz Singer,' the pioneering sound motion picture. 'Jolson & Co.,' which Mr. Hanan wrote with Jay Berkow, was staged Off Broadway, at the York Theater Company. Al Jolson 'was pure id,' Mr. Hanan, who bore a physical resemblance to him, told Harvard magazine in 2002, when the show was revived at the Century Center for the Performing Arts in Manhattan. 'He didn't censor himself, neither his joy nor his rage. With Jolson you can be completely over the top; you have to be. His personality demands that kind of size.' 'Jolson & Co.' recreates a 1946 radio interview with Barry Gray as a way of looking back on his remarkable life. Mr. Hanan sang many of the songs Mr. Jolson was known for, including 'Swanee' and 'California, Here I Come.' Reviewing the show in New York magazine, John Simon praised Mr. Hanan's performance as 'mostly impersonation but, as such, unbeatable.' He added, 'On top of the Jolson looks, the incarnator has absorbed all the vocal, facial, and kinetic mannerisms as if he had stolen the man's very soul.' Mr. Hanan was born Stephen Hanan Kaplan on Jan. 7, 1947, in Washington. His mother, Lottie (Klein) Kaplan, was a high school English teacher; his father, Jonah Kaplan, was a pharmacist. While attending Harvard College, Stephen performed in theatrical productions at the Loeb Drama Center and with the Hasty Pudding Club. He acquired the nickname Mo on a trip to Bermuda during college, after a friend, the future Broadway librettist John Weidman, observed that his outfit made him look like 'some guy named Mo who cleans cabanas in the Catskills,' Mr. Hanan told the website TheaterMania in 2002. After graduating in 1968 with a bachelor's degree in English literature, he studied for a year at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art on a Fulbright fellowship. Back in New York, he had difficulty landing roles, so in 1971 he moved to San Francisco, where he lived on a commune and spent six years singing for money, mostly at the ferry terminal, which earned him enough to spend winters in Mexico and Guatemala. Once, outside the stage door at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, he encountered Luciano Pavarotti, who had just performed in Verdi's 'Un Ballo in Maschera,' and summoned the nerve to sing for the great tenor. 'I raced to the money note and he, exclaiming 'Che voce d'oro' — or 'What a golden voice' — beckoned me over amid applause,' Mr. Hanan wrote in an unpublished essay. After returning to New York again, he landed small parts in New York Shakespeare Festival productions of 'All's Well That Ends Well' and 'The Taming of the Shrew' in Central Park in 1978. (Around that time, he dropped his surname and began using his middle name instead, because there was another actor with a similar name.) In 1980, the director Wilford Leach cast him as Samuel, the second in command to Mr. Kline's Pirate King, in the Shakespeare in the Park production of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operetta 'The Pirates of Penzance,' which also starred Linda Ronstadt. Mr. Hanan stayed with the show when it moved to Broadway in 1981. Rex Smith, who played Frederic, the male romantic lead, said in an interview that Mr. Hanan 'embodied all that was required to be the Pirate King's lieutenant, and for that you had to stand and deliver every night — if you're not going to be keelhauled.' In 2006, Mr. Hanan moved up in rank to play the Major-General in a Yiddish-language version of 'Pirates' (called 'Di Yam Gazlonim!'), put on by the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene at the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan (now the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan). Allen Lewis Rickman, the director, of that show recalled that Mr. Hanan did not know Yiddish and had to learn his lines phonetically. 'He was quite a character and very entertaining, one of those people who you know is a real pro,' Mr. Rickman said in an interview. 'He had a clownish streak — that was his first instinct — but not in a scene-stealing way.'
Arab News
23-03-2025
- General
- Arab News
Filipino Muslims flock to Manila food hub for halal meals during Ramadan
Manila: In the heart of Manila's bustling University Belt, a food street known for its diverse culinary offerings has grown into a go-to spot for Filipino Muslims during Ramadan, as they search for halal food that reminds them of home. The halal eateries along Padre Campa Street, a hub for grub located near the capital's top colleges and universities, have in recent years become a haven for Muslim minorities, including Hanan, who is from Mindanao's Sultan Kudarat province. 'I miss a lot of food from home, especially the ones prepared by my mom for iftar,' Hanan, who gave only her first name, told Arab News. As she spent the holy month in Manila to prepare for a licensing exam, Hanan said finding halal food to break the fast was not as easy as it was back home. 'Fasting here is a bit difficult for us because not all the stores here are certified halal. So, we can only pick certain stores, and this is the only specific store we know is safe for us to eat.' There are about 12 million Muslims in the predominantly Catholic Philippines, making up around 10 percent of its entire population. While most live on the island of Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago in the country's south, the Metro Manila capital region is also home to over 173,000 Filipino Muslims. Along with the government's recent efforts to promote halal cuisine from Mindanao, such food has become increasingly available in the Philippines' largest metropolitan area. But on Padre Campa Street, the presence of halal food stalls has a longer history that can be traced to the owners' desire to cater to the minority Muslim community. 'We serve native delicacies because there are many Muslims in this area,' Ferdanah Talib, who is from Mindanao's Zamboanga Sibugay province, told Arab News. Her brother opened the Halal Avenue food stall in 2017, selling dishes like barbecue chicken and grilled fish, as well as traditional meals like binaki, steamed corn dessert and snacks originating from Mindanao and Cebu. 'It's our way of supporting our fellow Muslims here, especially during Ramadan. Our store opens at 4:30 p.m. until midnight,' Talib said. Mary Ann Serra, a Filipina Christian who had worked in Malaysia and spent time in Mindanao, has kept her food shop halal since she opened it over a decade ago. 'We opened this store in 2012, and from the start, it has always been halal,' Serra told Arab News. 'We noticed that there were many Muslims in the area, but there were no halal places to eat. So, we thought, what if we try opening a halal restaurant? Especially during Ramadan, it's hard for them because there's nothing for them to eat.' While her shop specializes in the delicacies of Tausug, one of the largest Muslim ethnic groups in southwestern Philippines, it also sells simple mainstream dishes. 'What our customers keep coming back for are the chicken barbecue, grilled fish, and squid. We also have dishes like tiyula itum, or black soup,' Serra said. Many Filipino Muslims, even those who are in the capital for a short stay, have grown fond of the food street. 'This is my third time spending Ramadan here in Metro Manila … It really means a lot to us to have a place like this because as Muslims, what we're really looking for is halal food. We don't have many places to go for food,' Arsie Muin, who is from Zamboanga City, told Arab News. 'It's also good because they serve some native delicacies,' he said. 'We are really grateful that this place exists.'
Yahoo
09-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Kurdish officials fear Islamic State revival as US aid cuts loom
Kurdish officials have warned of an Islamic State resurgence if US foreign aid cuts take effect on Monday, which would cripple essential services for tens of thousands of people detained in tented camps in north-east Syria, including suspected members of IS and their families. Blumont, a Virginia-based humanitarian aid group responsible for the management of two of Syria's IS detention camps, al-Hol and al-Roj, was given a stop-work order on 24 January by the US state department. The sudden cessation of services prompted panic in the camps after aid workers failed to turn up for work. Three days later, Blumont was given a two-week waiver to the aid cuts, which unless extended, will expire on Monday. 'We have no idea what will happen tomorrow. It seems as if even the provision of bread will be halted,' said Jihan Hanan, the director of al-Hol camp. The camp holds the relatives of suspected IS fighters and is mostly populated by women and children. Rights groups have for years warned that detainees are held arbitrarily without charges in inhumane and substandard living conditions. No charges have been raised against the camp's population. Despite this, they are unable to leave, with the exception of non-Syrian detainees whose countries agree to take them back. Though IS no longer holds any territory after the group's last stand in March 2019, US and Kurdish officials say the group ideology prevails among former members and that camps and detention facilities are a hotbed of extremist ideology. In the section of the camp where foreign women from at least 40 countries are kept, guards say they are in a constant struggle with women who seek to keep IS alive. 'Even if a normal person enters the camp, they eventually will be psychologically affected. The violent behaviour is really high among the kids and women,' Hanan said, describing incidents of violence against al-Hol's staff. Women there have constructed cloth roofs above their tents and walkways to conceal themselves from guards' view. In once incident, a child as young as six years old waited at the edge of the fenced-off annexe, hurling rocks at passing NGO vehicles with a makeshift sling. It is unclear what will happen on Monday when the brief waiver given to Blumont, which provides the bulk of services in al-Hol, expires. Camp officials are hoping for an 11th-hour exemption from Donald Trump's 90-day global aid freeze, but have been given no assurances from the US administration. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, issued a blanket waiver for 'life-saving assistance', for which humanitarian organisations can apply while the administration reviews which US aid projects will continue. The review process has confused US aid officials, diplomats and humanitarian workers worldwide. When aid was briefly cut off from al-Hol in late January, the camp administration was given no notice. Camp officials had to scramble to secure the most basic of services, as contractors such as Blumont, which normally provided bread and water to the camp, had shuttered their offices. US special forces visited the camp, assuring its director they would help safeguard it in case of any unrest or IS attacks. 'We were able to get bread to the camp by the afternoon. It was 5,000 bags of bread for one day, which was 4bn Syrian lira (£35,000) – the Autonomous Administration [the Kurdish authority of north-east Syria] cannot cover this cost,' Hanan said. Humanitarian conditions in al-Hol are already abysmal. On Thursday, residents shopping at the camp's marketplace moved through mud and puddles as cold winter rain flooded the dirt alleyways of the sprawling complex. Young children, many of whom said they could not remember life outside the camp, darted between the shops, their clothing worn and dirty. 'Everything is bad here. We get food aid every two months and we have to sell most of it. Everyone is tired,' said Taysir al-Husseiniya, a 39-year-old Iraqi woman, sitting in a shop whose shelves were sparsely stocked with lightbulbs and other home goods. Al-Husseiniya said that raising her four children, one of whom was injured by an airstrike during the international campaign against IS, 'was extremely difficult' in the camp's conditions. Her husband was imprisoned by Kurdish authorities in 2019 for being a suspected IS fighter, leaving her to raise her children alone. Human Rights Watch warned on Friday that the Trump aid cuts were 'exacerbating life-threatening conditions, risking further destabilisation of a precarious security situation' in the camps. The future of the US military presence in north-east Syria has also been called into question as the Trump administration seeks to shrink the US military footprint abroad. The US maintains military bases across north-east Syria and has trained, equipped and supported Kurdish forces in their fight against IS since the formation of the US-led international coalition to defeat IS was formed in 2014. The director of the Panorama prison in al-Hasakah, north-east Syria, which houses 5,000 suspected IS fighters, said that a US withdrawal would stretch Kurdish authorities and leave prisons vulnerable to jail breaks. 'If US forces pull out, it will be even worse than 2012. IS sleeper cells in the Syrian desert will emerge and could attack the prison,' the prison director said on Saturday, asking not to be named for fears of being targeted by IS. In al-Hol, there fears that a security vacuum, along with the sudden withdrawal of much of the camp's resources, could provide fertile ground for the radical group's recruitment. 'We will descend into chaos. Maybe the lack of supplies will allow IS sleeper cells to take control of the camp. Maybe there will be attacks on the administration. I can't say what will happen,' Hanan said.
