Elizabeth Barber

The famous saxophonist's visit prompted officials to reiterate their calls for foreigners to keep out of China's affairs

Kenny G is striking all the wrong notes in Hong Kong, the Chinese government says.

The Chinese foreign ministry has hinted that Kenny G, the American juggernaut of smooth jazz, might well be among the so-called “foreign influences” meddling in China’s affairs, after the top-selling saxophonist turned up at the main democracy protest site in Hong Kong’s Admiralty district, Reuters reports.

The city has been beset by protests for three weeks, with demonstrators furious over the tight restrictions China has put on local elections.

In photos making the rounds on social media, the curly-haired saxophonist is also seen making the peace sign at the barricades with patently delighted protesters.

But the tweet was apparently seen by Chinese officials not as a simple update on the musician’s whereabouts, but as an expression of support for Hong Kong’s protesters, who Beijing has resoundingly condemned.

“Kenny G’s musical works are widely popular in China, but China’s position on the illegal Occupy Central activities in Hong Kong is very clear,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a daily news briefing in Beijing.

“We hope that foreign governments and individuals speak and act cautiously and not support Occupy Central and other illegal activities in any form,” she said.

Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, Leung Chun-ying, has alleged that “foreign influence” is involved in the massive challenge to his government that the protests pose, but has declined to name such influence until the “appropriate time.” He has never mentioned saxophonists as possible meddlers.

Interestingly, one of the artist’s songs, “Going Home,” is universally used in China at malls and events to gently let people know that it’s closing time and that they have to leave. Conspiracy theorists might see a hidden message for the protesters here.

The Giants' win knocks the Royals off course to best the Yankees' all-time winning streak

The San Francisco Giants thrashed the Kansas City Royals in the opener to the 2014 World Series, stealing a 7-1 win and disappointing Royals fans who have waited 29 years to see their team in the championship.

The much anticipated Game 1, played at Kansas’ Kauffman Stadium, boasted an intriguing mix of odds for the two wild-card teams: the Royals were the slight favorite to take the World Series title in the seven-game series, but the Giants were the favorite in Game 1, despite the Royals’ home-field advantage, USA Today reports.

Snatching an early lead, the Giants scored twice in the top of the first inning — a predictable start, since the team has taken the first point in seven straight World Series games. San Francisco then sailed through the rest of the game, albeit for a brief Royals rebuttal in the top of the 6th, with Salvador Perez home-running to the team’s first and last point. SB Nation reported that two Royals fans fell asleep in their up-to-$1,000 seats during the home team’s somnolent game.

The winner of Game 1 bats good odds at the World Series title: Game 1 winners have nabbed 69 of the 109 World Series titles, plus have won 15 of the last 17 series.

Still, the odds bode less well for San Francisco when broken down by road vs. home teams: the Giants are the 46th road team to win World Series Game 1, and just a third of the previous 45 winning road teams went on to win Game 2.

The loss put a stop to the Royals postseason winning streak at 11 wins, falling short one win of the all-time record held by the Yankees.

The teams will face each other again on Wednesday night in Game 2.

This chart-topping, ’70s-themed soundtrack is getting a period-appropriate release on cassette

The Guardians of The Galaxy soundtrack is getting a rerelease on cassette Nov. 17, giving film fans their own version of the ’70s mix tape the film’s star, played by Chris Pratt, is never without.

The Marvel film’s soundtrack — previously released on digital download, CD and vinyl — impressively topped the Billboard 200 over the summer, even though it has no original songs — everything on this tape is from the ’70s. Tracks include Blue Swede’s “Hooked on a Feeling” and David Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream.”

Meanwhile, Guardians of the Galaxy topped foreign box offices this week after a big release in China. The sci-fi movie has racked up some $732.6 million globally.

[Billboard]

There are no leaders, but everything, from the supply tents to the recycling stations, runs just beautifully

Billy Fong is out of a job.

Until recently, this high school student had found a purpose helping Hong Kong’s demonstrators over the high median dividers cutting through their encampment in the city’s Admiralty district.

Yet, as the occupation of Harcourt Road enters its fourth week, getting over the concrete walls has become easy: protesters handy with tools have made several sets of wooden stairs for them, complete with handrails.

“I have somehow become useless,” says Fong, 17, standing idly at one such set of steps on a recent evening. “But it’s okay,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Now I have more leisure time.”

Call Fong’s job a casualty of this protest’s maturation from an uncertain settlement to a bona fide village—a transformation that smacks of pure anarchism. Not anarchy, meaning chaos, but classical political anarchism: a self-organizing community that has no leader.

Protesters in Hong Kong share a common goal of getting Beijing to agree to free elections for the Hong Kong government’s top job in 2017 (at the moment, Beijing is insisting on screening candidates). But no one is fully in charge of these demonstrations, and protesters are split over how to get their demand answered. A lack of leadership is widely cited as one reason why the conflict has not come to a resolution.

Yet leaderlessness has not stopped Hong Kong demonstrators from achieving social consensus at their biggest protest site in skyscraper-hemmed Harcourt Road (or Umbrella Square, as the protesters now call it). These days, the six-lane thoroughfare turned tent community is a microcosm of the city that hosts it except for one detail: it does not have a chief executive, as Hong Kong’s leader is called.

“We don’t have a central command to do anything,” says Daris Wong, 30, a paralegal manning a Cantonese-English interpretation booth, the latest in his string of self-appointed protest gigs.

“It’s maybe the not so good thing about these protests,” he says, “but it’s also the most beautiful thing.”

Over the past few days, Harcourt Road has acquired suburbs of camping tents. Most tents have numbers. Some are recognized addresses. A letter was recently delivered by the Hong Kong Post Office to tent 22, according to the Democratic Party’s Facebook page.

Protesters need not bring their own accommodation. Last Friday, Pat, a freelance graphic designer who declined to give her last name, opened registration at 8:30 p.m. for 67 tents donated to the supplies station she helps run. The assembled tents are called the Freedom Quarter, she said, handing a young couple waiting in line a list of rules: cleanliness is a must; checkout time is noon on Saturday.

Protesters bedding-in will find their stay clean, if not necessarily comfortable. Do-gooders ensure that public restrooms around the site are stocked with a mind-boggling assortment of toiletries, from face moisturizer to conditioning shampoo, many of them designer brands. Student volunteers mop out the facilities too, because the municipal cleaners can’t keep pace with the high numbers of people passing through the washrooms every day.

Roving trash collectors meanwhile bring waste to designated recycling areas, where the items are sorted and carted out to the city’s trash-collection stations.

“I saw that it wasn’t being done, and someone has to do it,” says Henry Ip, 23, a college student making one of his twice-daily rounds through the site with a plastic trash bag.

Meanwhile, supply tents — there are several around Harcourt Road — have become bursting emporiums of water, towels, face masks, Oreo cookies and McDonalds takeout.

“It’s messy because I just got here,” says Isaac Hung, 24, a law student who works an informal day shift at one such station, gesturing to a sprawl of snacks and medical supplies. “Every shift, I fix it, and then I come back, and it’s all messy again.”

Hung’s supplies tent has two couches, mats that suffice as carpeting, and lighting fashioned from flashlights and saline solution bottles. A walkie-talkie on the floor crackles insistently. Supply stations use them to call on each other if one runs out of something

Conservation and consideration rule this camp. Wong, the paralegal, says he often tries to pass out lunchboxes to protesters, only to be turned down: “They say, ‘Save it for someone who needs it more,’” Wong says.

“So then I say, ‘O.K., but if you don’t take it, I will give it to the police,’” he adds. “Then, they take it.” As he speaks, students sitting in a sprawling study zone that the protesters have outfitted with desks, lamps, and power outlets, politely decline a volunteer stooping to offer them tiny cakes.

Like any village, this one also has its resident oddballs. One taciturn protester, wearing a skull-print ski mask pulled up to his eyes, passes plastic cups of soup to passerby. Glass bottles of beer bob inside in his big blue cooler. His area, furnished with a vase of sunflowers, is just one photographic opportunity for visitors wandering the protest village.

Art abounds, much of it inspired by the umbrellas that became the symbol of the movement after protesters used them to shield themselves from police pepper spray. There’s a tall statue of a figure holding out an umbrella that’s become the subject of countless Instagrams. A short distance away are exhibitions of photography and ink drawings. Tourists love to gather for photos in front of a long staircase leading up to the Central Government Offices that has become plastered with thousands of brightly colored Post-It notes, each bearing a message of support for the protesters. It’s been christened the Lennon Wall.

Not that life is always colorful here. Prominent pro-democracy figures — in fact anyone with something to say — give frequent lectures to considerable crowds, but “sometimes people get tired of public speeches,” says Ivy Chan, 40, a staffer for a Labor Party legislator and the organizer of nightly documentary screenings. She briefly interrupted a Friday night showing to let the sleepy-looking, supine crowd know she had found someone’s heart disease pills.

Meanwhile, a group of law students manning a tent for legal discussions were finding the hoped-for debates stymied by general agreement among those who stopped in. As Tilly Chow, 19, put it, “the people who are really against us aren’t here, and they don’t want to know what we have to say.” By midnight, the collective had drawn its tent door closed to discuss boiling a 60-something page legal analysis of the situation into something more concise.

Elsewhere, tents were faintly lit with the glow of Facebook’s smartphone app. A young man took a photo on his iPad of a young woman popping her head out of their newly erected tent and waited as she approved the pictures. Many people were already asleep, or at least trying.

Protesters, weathering criticism from conservative Hong Kongers and business owners tired of protests clogging major traffic arteries, have emphasized that this demonstration is not a jubilant sleepover. A sign posted in the main encampment reads: “Not a Party, is a Protest.”

Indeed, as midnight neared, three young women paused at a quiet, unclaimed plot of pavement and began unspooling tarp from a bag, looking anything but party-ready.

“This is not fun,” says Tracy Leung, 28, who works for a retail chain, holding a corner of the rumpled canvas, which she hoped would eventually be a tent, but did not yet look like one.

“No one likes to sleep on the street,” added her colleague, Carol Lee, 26.

But they had a critical role to play in this village, the three friends said.

“I’m here as one more body,” said Leung. “Because for every one less body here, it gets more dangerous for everyone else.”

The staffer does not have any symptoms of illness and is in self-imposed quarantine in a cabin

A Dallas hospital employee, described as possibly having come into contact with fluid samples from the deceased Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan, left the U.S. on a cruise ship on Sunday, the State Department said early Friday morning.

The news follows the announcement of plans to keep at home all health care workers flagged as having encountered Duncan or his fluid samples, in an aggressive effort to contain the virus’ spread in the U.S. after a Dallas nurse was allowed to take a commercial flight just before getting diagnosed with Ebola, the Guardian reports.

Seventy-five staff members at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas—where Duncan was treated and died—have been asked to sign legally binding agreements not to go out in public, Clay Jenkins, the Dallas County judge, told reporters on Thursday.

Any of the workers who refuse the sign the agreement would be subject to a legal control order, Jenkins said, though he added: “These are hometown healthcare heroes…They’re not going to jail.”

The State Department said the hospital employee who boarded a cruise ship from Galveston, TX, did not have direct contact with Duncan, but “may have processed the since deceased patient’s fluid samples.”

The unidentified employee, who was checked by a doctor on the cruise ship and is self-monitoring, does not have any symptoms of illness, according to the State Department. The employee and his traveling companion have agreed to a self-imposed quarantine in their cruise cabin.

“We are working with the cruise line to safely bring them back to the United States out of an abundance of caution,” read the statement.

The employee would have come into contact with the sample 19 days ago, according to the White House. Ebola symptoms can appear 2 to 21 days after initial exposure, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), but on average they manifest 8 to 10 days after the illness is contracted.

U.S. officials have been rushing to contain the spread of Ebola after two Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital nurses who treated Duncan, Nina Pham and Amber Vinson, tested positive for the illness.

Numerous parties have been trading barbs over where to put blame for the infection of the two nurses and for the growing number of people who are believed to have come into contact with them and Duncan.

National Nurses United, a union not affiliated with Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, has excoriated both the hospital and the CDC for failing to enact proper standards for treating the contagious patient and for keeping the hospital’s nursing staff safe.

Daniel Varga, senior vice president of Texas Health Resources, which owns Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, on Thursday apologized to a House committee for the hospital’s failure to diagnose Duncan with Ebola sooner.

But the hospital has bristled at charges that it failed to protect its nurses and in a statement on Thursday put fault with the CDC for constantly changing its guidelines and failing to set clear protocols for treating Duncan.

U.S. lawmakers at the House hearing on Thursday also chastised the CDC for allowing Vinson, the second Dallas health worker to test positive for Ebola, to fly from Cleveland to Dallas after she self-reported a mild fever but had not yet been diagnosed with the virus.

Meanwhile, the international community is still reeling over how to contain the worldwide spread of Ebola, which has killed 4,493 people and is believed to have infected 8,997 in seven countries, according to the most recent WHO estimates.

The situation in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, is “deteriorating, with widespread and persistent transmission,” the WHO said Wednesday, in its latest status update. Cases have been spiking in the Guinean capital of Conakry, the health organization said.

On Thursday, United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon urged U.N. member states to donate to the world body’s trust fund for Ebola, which currently stands at a lowly $100,000—all of it from just one nation, Colombia, and a pathetic fraction of the $1 billion the U.N. has said it needs to stop the outbreak, the BBC reports.

World governments have in total pledged just $20 million to the fund.

Read next: Here’s Who’s Blaming Who for Ebola

The actress had told her father she was suicidal

Local police said late Thursday night that a body found in a wooded area outside Seattle was believed to that of missing actress Misty Upham.

The 32-year-old August: Osage County actress had been reported missing by her father on Oct. 6. A day earlier, she had told her father she was suicidal, local television station KIRO reports.

Police in Auburn, a suburb near Seattle, said in statement that a person in a search party organized by Upham’s family had found the body at around 1 p.m. on Thursday.

“Because a purse containing identification of Misty Upham was at the scene, the body is presumed to be that of Upham,” the police said.

A spokesperson for the family told Variety that the body has since been positively identified.

Police said there was no initial evidence of foul play, but the body had been turned over to the local medical examiner’s officer for a determination of the cause of death.

It took almost five hours and a 10-person crew to recover the body from “150 feet down a steep embankment near the river heavily covered in brush,” police said.

Upham also had roles in Frozen River and Django Unchained.

In 2012, Pacino wowed audiences as the star of Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning Glengarry Glen Ross

Al Pacino will return to Broadway next fall in a new production by playwright David Mamet, who describes his latest work as “better than oral sex.”

Mamet, who has worked with the Tony and Oscar-winning Pacino on four previous projects, says he wrote the latest play, China Doll, “for Al,” The Hollywood Reporter says.

China Doll, set to open next October at New York City’s Shubert Theater, is “about a wealthy man, his young fiancé and an airplane,” says Mamet, in a statement.

“The man has just bought a new plane as a wedding present for the girl. He intends to go into semiretirement, and enjoy himself,” Mamet continues. “He’s in the process of leaving his office, and is giving last minute instructions to his young assistant. He takes one last phone call…”

“The characters are Mickey Ross, a billionaire; Carson, the assistant, and a telephone,” Mamet says. “It is better than oral sex.”

Pacino said in a statement that China Doll was a chance “to create a new character in the David Mamet canon.”

“So Dave gave me China Doll, a new play he had written for me and it blew me away,” said Pacino, calling his part “one of the most daunting and challenging roles I’ve been given to explore onstage.”

“It’s a special gift to originate a role in the theatre, especially written by such a formidable writer,” he said, “and I haven’t done that in a long, long time.”

[The Hollywood Reporter]

The attack has stunned many in a city fearful for its freedoms under Chinese sovereignty

The U.S. has called for a “swift, transparent and complete” investigation into the beating by Hong Kong police of a political activist that was captured by a local television news crew.

The attack took place in the early hours of Wednesday morning local time, during one of the most violent demonstrations in the almost three weeks of pro-democracy protests that have rocked this increasingly divided Chinese city.

“We renew our call for the Hong Kong government to show restraint, and for protesters to continue to express their views peacefully,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters, adding that Washington was “deeply concerned by reports of police beating a protester.”

British Prime Minister David Cameron also reiterated calls on Wednesday for Beijing to respect the agreement it signed with Britain before Hong Kong, a former British colony, was returned to China in 1997. The agreement, he says, guarantees to Hong Kongers “rights and freedoms, including those of person, of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of travel, of movement, and, indeed, of strike.”

The Hong Kong government has responded to mounting pressure by revisiting the possibility of talks with the Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS), one of the main protest groups. At a press conference Thursday, the head of the government, embattled Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, said the government would negotiate with the HKFS using a vice-chancellor from one of Hong Kong’s universities as a mediator.

This is an abrupt reversal of its position just a week ago, when Leung’s deputy, Chief Secretary Carrie Lam, called off scheduled talks with students, claiming that constructive dialog was “impossible.”

Hong Kong’s protesters have been venting fresh outrage at the police after news video of plainclothes officers assaulting Civic Party member Ken Tsang went viral and photos of his bruised face and chest were shared on social media. In the video, Tsang is arrested before being taken around a corner and beaten while on the ground with his hands bound by a plastic tie.

Public anger has also been galvanized by the arrest of 45 people during the confrontation at which Tsang was arrested, which took place when police prevented demonstrators seeking to barricade a major thoroughfare leading to the main financial district.

A spokesman for the Hong Kong police said at a press conference on Thursday that seven police officers involved in Tsang’s arrest have been suspended and that a criminal investigation into the matter had been launched. Police had on Wednesday reassigned the officers, citing “serious concern” about the videotaped beating, but had also criticized “radical protesters” involved in the early morning confrontation for behaving in “an aggressive manner,” including kicking officers and attacking them with umbrellas.

“Even with their arms raised, this just could hardly be a peaceful means of protest,” police said.

A government statement also attempted to put blame on the protesters for the tumult, saying “protesters threw objects from above, as well as traffic cones” and alleging that some “pushed officers.”

Hong Kong’s protesters are calling on Beijing to grant the territory free elections. At present, Beijing insists on screening candidates for chief executive and on limiting the field to three candidates at most. The incumbent Leung has infuriated protesters by refusing to resign — he is seen as unrepresentative of Hong Kong people — and for saying that their demands have an “almost zero” chance of being realized.

In recent days, Leung has also become embroiled in a financial scandal over millions of dollars in undeclared payments from an Australian engineering company. While he says the payments are legal because they relate to services provided before he took office, the affair has nonetheless further eroded confidence in his leadership.

Meanwhile, protesters continue to hold key commercial arteries for a third week, erecting barricades and tents in what has fast become the most significant political movement in China since the 1989 occupation of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

On Wednesday night, more than a thousand people joined a protest against the beating of Tsang, organized by the Social Workers Union. Standing outside police headquarters on Arsenal Street, just around the corner from the main protest encampment on Harcourt Road, the crowds chanted, “Shame, shame, shame” at a line of police officers and expressed disappointment with a force they felt had let them down.

“I can’t believe it,” said one man, a visibly upset social worker who declined to give his name. “This sort of thing happens frequently in mainland China, but not here,” he added.

“It’s so unjust,” said another protester, Linda To, a social worker. “I can’t really describe the pain of seeing such brutality happen here.”

Katniss, played by Lawrence, is sent back to a devastated District 12