All posts tagged: Diego

San Diego man survives encounter with grizzly bear at national park

San Diego man survives encounter with grizzly bear at national park

Published by Sam Flores

A San Diego man is recovering after surviving a grizzly bear attack while hiking in Montana’s Glacier National Park, an encounter he says he was fortunate to escape with his life. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content. Daniel Crago, an avid outdoorsman, was hiking along the Grinnell Glacier Trail on May 28 during what was supposed to be the final day of a weeklong vacation filled with outdoor adventures. “My love for nature kind of started when I was young,” Crago said. After more than 20 miles of hiking throughout the week, Crago was nearing the end of his trip with his friend when he encountered a bear cub near the trail. “Something catches my attention off to the left. I look over and it was a smaller cub,” he recalled. Moments later, he spotted a larger grizzly bear nearby. “No more than 15 feet above on the hill and on the same snow patch was a larger grizzly bear,” Crago said. Recognizing the danger, he …

Met Music Director Says New ‘Frida y Diego’ Show Is Proof Timothée Chalamet Was Wrong About Opera

Met Music Director Says New ‘Frida y Diego’ Show Is Proof Timothée Chalamet Was Wrong About Opera

Published by Sam Flores

Our conversation was briefly interrupted when a Met staffer opened the boardroom door, saw us, and swiftly closed it as Nézet-Séguin whipped around to investigate the breach. “Oh, that was Timothée Chalamet,” I wisecracked. “He was just coming in to say he’s sorry about everything.” “Oh my God, what a fantasy,” Nézet-Séguin said of the opera-eulogizing star with a laugh, before he debunked Chalamet’s claim that “no one cares about [opera] anymore.” The situation is the opposite, he said, with an audience that’s growing and diversifying, not shrinking. “I see a different kind of audience, an audience that, of course, is different through the way they look, but also the way they dress and the way they come…There’s something incredible that now the average age is in the 40s of the operagoer, as it was in the 60s not so long ago.” The Met Opera’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, said the audience is “growing and diversifying, not shrinking.” Marty Sohl/Met Opera His words might as well apply to conductors—at least, a conductor like him. Nézet-Séguin, …

San Diego mosque shooting shows importance of teaching pluralism

San Diego mosque shooting shows importance of teaching pluralism

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — This week, Muslims around the world are celebrating Eid al-Adha, a sacred holiday rooted in sacrifice — the willingness to give what is most precious in service of faith and love. On May 18 at the Islamic Center of San Diego, three Muslim men embodied that devotion when they gave their lives to protect children and their community. A security guard and congregants of the mosque chose courage in the face of violence and saved many lives. But the community that calls this mosque home is grieving the loss of its members’ safety, their sanctuary and three beloved lives taken from them at the hands of two teenagers. This shooting was not just an attack on a sacred space — it was an attack on the very idea that all of us, across our differences, deserve to live in safety and dignity. As a Muslim, as a mother and as someone who has spent my life building bridges across lines of faith and identity, I felt the news like a blow to the …

San Diego mosque shooting reflects how online rhetoric, media depictions and political discourse contribute to increased Islamophobia

San Diego mosque shooting reflects how online rhetoric, media depictions and political discourse contribute to increased Islamophobia

Published by Sam Flores

(The Conversation) — Many Muslim Americans are fearful following a shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego that left three worshipers dead. Investigators reportedly found hate speech and anti-Islamic writing inside the vehicle of the suspected shooters, who killed themselves soon after the attack. The director of the Islamic Center, Taha Hassane, condemned the attack while also encouraging individuals to respond with tolerance and love. “All of us are responsible for spreading the culture of tolerance, the culture of love,” he said, while lamenting the conditions that had led to such violence. The attack comes just one week before the celebration of Eid al-Adha, an annual festival celebrating the Prophet Abraham’s – Ibrahim in Arabic – willingness to sacrifice his son in obedience to God, and the conclusion of the annual Hajj – the pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the five pillars of Islam. It also comes on the heels of ongoing tensions in the Middle East and increasing political rhetoric in the United States. Republicans in Congress held hearings during the week of …

The teens who attacked the Islamic Center of San Diego were latest to cite prior atrocities

The teens who attacked the Islamic Center of San Diego were latest to cite prior atrocities

Published by Sam Flores

___ EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. ___ In rambling writings full of vitriol against a wide range of people, the teenagers who attacked the Islamic Center of San Diego this week, killing three men and themselves, left little doubt about the models for their violence. Chief among them: the shooter who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019. Researchers who study extremism have long noted the resonance of the Christchurch attack among far-right assailants, attributing it to the extent of the violence, the document the killer posted concerning his views and actions, and — especially — his decision to livestream the massacre. Among those who apparently modeled attacks after Christchurch was a shooter who months later killed 22 people in a Texas Walmart. “Part of what we’re seeing in violent extremist communities online is wanting to emulate the attacks that have had the …

After years fostering interfaith ties, San Diego mosque finds allies in grief

After years fostering interfaith ties, San Diego mosque finds allies in grief

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — For years before Monday’s deadly shooting, the Islamic Center of San Diego stood out as a place that welcomed anyone through its doors — Muslim or not. The mosque’s imam, Taha Hassane, spent decades cultivating relationships with clergy, neighbors and community activists from across the city.  Hassane told RNS in an interview he believes in showing up for others and “trying to make our society the best in terms of acceptance, tolerance.”  In the hours after the shooting that killed three members of the mosque, interfaith leaders and allies started crowding vigils to stand in solidarity with Hassane and his community. Their response to the tragedy, Muslim community members said, offered a strong rebuke to the anti-Muslim rhetoric that has escalated in recent months and has shadowed the mosque for decades.  The shooting, which is being investigated as a hate crime, shattered what had long felt like a safe haven for worshippers and neighbors alike. But mosque leaders insist it will remain a place for everyone. At the first press conference hours after …

Diego Luna, ‘Andor’ Star, Richard Ayoade

Diego Luna, ‘Andor’ Star, Richard Ayoade

Published by Daniella Wilson

A new and star-studded immersive experience at London’s Barbican Centre invites us to explore “imagined futures for our planet, rooted in real technology and climate-based possibilities,” and imagine a better one. The voice of Diego Luna (Rogue One, Andor, Y tu mamá también) takes us out of everyday life with a prologue to In Other Worlds, created by designer, director, and producer Liam Young (Planet City), in collaboration with leading voices from film, TV, literature and science. And Luna’s voice also sends us back to it with an epilogue at the end of the interactive exhibition. On the journey through six worlds, you can experience audio stories, displays of films on LED walls, tapestries, costumes, installations, soundscapes, huge-scale projections, as well as set design, movie miniatures and speculative artefacts. Among the other famous voices you can hear are those of Jeffrey  Wright (American Fiction, Casino Royale), Maxine Peake (I Swear, Shameless), Adam Young (Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power), Denise Gough (Andor), Finnish actress Alma Pöysti (Fallen Leaves), Australian actress Natasha Wanganeen (Rabbit Proof …

Teacher’s assistant at San Diego mosque recalls students’ bravery as gunmen banged on doors

Teacher’s assistant at San Diego mosque recalls students’ bravery as gunmen banged on doors

Published by Sam Flores

SAN DIEGO — Like schools across the U.S., the Islamic Center of San Diego had sought to prepare its students for the possibility that a gunman could breach its walls. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content. When two armed teenagers stormed the mosque Monday — and those “active shooter” drills were put to the test — the young students in one classroom did exactly as they had practiced and “went straight to business,” their teacher’s assistant told NBC News. “If they didn’t, then this could have been a different outcome,” said the assistant, Imani, who teaches second and third graders and asked to go by her first name. Authorities have said the three people gunned down at the mosque, described on its website as San Diego County’s largest, were all outside. No one who was inside the center at the time — including dozens of students attending school — was injured, San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl has said. One of the victims, security guard Amin …

San Diego Mosque Killings Were Mass Murder as Fandom

San Diego Mosque Killings Were Mass Murder as Fandom

Published by Sam Flores

The two teenagers who walked into a San Diego mosque with assault rifles on Monday evening wore patches displaying the Black Sun—a neo-Nazi iteration of the swastika—and had scribbled white-supremacist symbols in white correction fluid on their guns. They started shooting, killing three. Then they fled in a BMW one had stolen from his mother. In the car, 17-year-old Cain Clark apparently shot his accomplice, Caleb Vasquez, before shooting himself in the head. We know much of this, in graphic detail, because, within hours, Clark and Vasquez’s video-recorded rampage seems to have been posted on the messaging platform Discord, then on a website called Watch People Die. The tragedy at the Islamic Center of San Diego in many ways followed an all-too-common script. With horrifying regularity, a young man carries out a mass shooting with weapons bearing neo-Nazi or hateful references scrawled in white. The shooter typically wears paraphernalia designed to promote accelerationism: the concept that only the collapse of society can usher in an Aryan utopia. There may also be a manifesto pulling from …