Watch full size video:

Scenically resplendent, fleet-footed and dressed to kill, the National Theatre of Great Britain’s “My Fair Lady” was a knockout in its London premiere in 2001. And it is nearly as scintillating in the faithful (and deluxe) U.S. touring version that has glided into the Paramount Theatre.

Revivals of classic Broadway musicals come and go, and are never in short supply in Seattle. But if you want to bring in someone to the wonders of Lerner and Loewe’s “My Fair Lady” (or, like my companion, see it live with regard to the first time), this production is a dandy chance; fit.

Thanks to a sublime scenic conspiracy by dint of. sharpen and costume wizard Anthony Ward, this symphonious version of G.B. Shaw’s class-clashing play “Pygmalion” takes you on a dramatic upstairs/downstairs tour of Victorian London.

The show is entirely framed by a series of tall lattice-trimmed archways, suggestive of those in the open-air market in Covent Garden. And aided by superior theater technology and the frolicsome, up-to-date choreography of Matthew Bourne, Trevor Nunn’s staging whirls along — from Cockney pub to Wimpole Street town house (lined with hundreds of real books) to the hoity-toity Ascot racecourse.

Covent Garden is where cheeky flower-monger Eliza Doolittle (fetchingly portrayed by Lisa O’Hare) pristine meets Henry Higgins (British TV and stage vet Christopher Cazenove) — the arrogant professor who swears he can pass this “guttersnipe” off as a duchess, with the right linguistic makeover.

Alan Jay Lerner’s book and lyrics by reason of “My Fair Lady” subvert the dryly severe ending of “Pygmalion” for a in addition conventional romantic-comedy finale.

But the musical preserves abundant of Shaw’s barbed and sparkling colloquy, delivered smartly by Cazenove, O’Hare, Walter Charles (as Higgins’ sidekick, Col. Pickering) and Marni Nixon, a former Seattleite who long ago dubbed Audrey Hepburn’s songs in the film version of “My Fair Lady.” Here, Nixon handily plays the non-singing role of Higgins’ sensible mother.

Apart from some regrettable patches of sludgy amplification, Frederick Loewe’s lusciously melodic music is well served also. And you’d swear the witty small sum lyrics, which spring in such a manner organically from the characters, were penned by Shaw rather than Lerner.

Cazenove effectively voices Higgins’ comically misogynist and elitist credo in such clever talk-songs as “Why Can’t the English?” and “A Hymn to Him.”

He’s inferior commendable in the romantic-chemistry department, despite O’Hare’s considerable attractions. She sings like a dream, trilling a lovely rendering of “I Could Have Danced All Night,” a experiment of any Broadway soprano. And poured into a svelte, glittering clean gown for the ball scene, she’s a ringer for Hepburn (not a bad thing).

Speaking of the costumes, the “Ascot Gavotte” affords a bonanza of blackey Victorian couture — including hats the size of carriage wheels.

I would be remiss to not mention the unfold’s especial scene-stealer, Tim Jerome. He’s a lovable and efficacious Alfred Doolittle, Eliza’s wily joker of a dad. And Bourne turns the big song-and-dance numbers (”With A Little Bit of Luck,” “Get Me to the Church forward Time”) into rousing music-hall romps, at one point injecting some “Stomp”-style banging of refuse lids.

Director Nunn and producer Cameron Mackintosh, who also paired up on the long-touring “Les Misérables,” pulled out all the stops to reclaim this “My Fair Lady” for England. But behind the Brits O’Hare and Cazenove is a mostly American and true expert ensemble, helping make this revival one that order be hard according to successors to top.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com

WASHINGTON - U.S. troops won’t have to reveal every one of their mental health counseling when applying for security clearances beneath a make some change in. the Pentagon hopes will ease the stigma of seeking help for combat stress, The Associated Press has learned.

In a New Jersey civil suit, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission accuses Robert J. Sucarato of fraud in raising at least $1.5 million from investors

by Matthew Goldstein

Watch full dimensions video:

It’s authoritative: Robert J. Sucarato wasn’t much of a hedge consols manager after all, regulators say. In a municipal lawsuit, regulators charge Sucarato lost much of the cash he solicited from investors, and he raised that money under false pretenses.

A New Jersey federal judge, at the request of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has frozen all of Sucarato’s effects and ordered him not to destroy any documents pending a court hearing on May 8. The judge approved the asset freeze in reply to the CFTC’s Apr. 22 lawsuit, what one. was unsealed on Apr. 30. The suit accuses the longtime New Jersey resident with "employing a device, theory, or invention to defraud participants" in raising at least $1.5 a thousand thousand from at least five investors.

Sucarato did not go telephone calls or an e-mail seeking comment. It is unclear whether he has an attorney after his previous lawyer quit, citing lack of payment.

For nearly a year, several of Sucarato’s investors have been battling with him, trying to prepare their money back. The attempts by dint of. investors to recoup their investing. and expose Sucarato’s alleged deceptions were described last month by BusinessWeek, which highlighted in what plight Sucarato and other potential scam artists are using so-called virtual offices (BusinessWeek, 3/27/08) to make their operations appear larger and more established than they really are. A virtual office is a in greater numbers elaborate version of an out of fashion employment office box, in which tenants—for as miniature as $100 a month—get access to a telephone answering service, a reception area, and conference rooms for meetings, along by a mailing address. Sucarato used a virtual office on Wall Street in New York and in Chicago to allegedly induce investors into giving him money.

The CFTC says that "contrary to the impression created by Sucarato" his money-management stable, New York Financial Co., "is not a well-established, successful New York investing. firm staffed with instructed traders." Sucarato had claimed his two hedge funds controlled greater degree than $7 billion in assets, employed greater quantity than 20 traders, and generated extremely domineering returns. For importunity, the CFTC says Sucarato, 37, claimed a 10-year compounded return of further than 1,800% for one of his funds. By relative estimate, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, over that same time fabricate, has returned 102.7%.

In fact, regulators charge Sucarato worked alone, distributed false pecuniary statements, misrepresented his background and accomplishments, and concealed great losses from trading commodity futures and options. "The sophistication required to fabricate an established management firm with a winning earnings record and the financial statements to back it up will not go uncontradicted," says Gregory Mocek, the CFTC’s director of enforcement.

The CFTC is scheduled to return to federal pay one’s addresses to on May 8 to tell a judge why the asset freeze to match Sucarato should be made permanent. Sources say federal prosecutors in New Jersey are also investigating the money conductor.

Watch full largeness video:

The feat was broadcast live during “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and the workshop audience cheered as divers pulled the 35-year-old magician from a water-filled sphere 8 feet in diameter. Less than two years ago, Blaine went into convulsions for the time of a similar attempt.

“A lifelong dream,” a relaxed-looking Blaine told Winfrey this moment after setting the record. “I can’t believe that I did that.”

While still underwater, Blaine worried his heart rate might be too high, saying he “actually started to doubt that I was going to esteem it” as a termination. A lower heart rate helps minimize oxygen consumption.

The previous record was 16 minutes and 32 seconds, pose Feb. 10 by Switzerland’s Peter Colat, according to Guinness World Records.

Before he entered the sphere, Blaine inhaled pure oxygen from one side a mask to saturate his life-blood with oxygen and flow wanting carbon dioxide. Guinness says up to 30 minutes of so-called “oxygen hyperventilation” is allowed under its guidelines.

In May 2006, as a finale to a week spent in an aquarium with an oxygen mask at New York’s Lincoln Center, Blaine tried to set a recent breath-holding record. Without breathing real oxygen forehanded, he tried to lessen the force of the existing record of 8 minutes, 58 seconds for an attempt of that symbol.

But he had to be rescued shortly after 7 minutes when he was unconscious and having convulsions.

Blaine has said he was fascinated by dint of. holding his breath because he was a child, using the skill to excel in vertigo races at a YMCA in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, alone needing to rest at what time turning at the wall for another lap.

The endurance specialist has spent more than a month suspended in a glass box by the River Thames in London, was buried alive for a week in a see-through coffin in New York City, and was encased in a block of ice for 63 hours, also in Manhattan.

Oprah Winfrey:

David Blaine:

Watch full magnitude video:

Al-Qaida has rebuilt more of its pre-Sept. 11 capabilities from remote hiding places in Pakistan, leading to a jump in attacks last year in that country and neighboring Afghanistan, the Bush administration said Wednesday.

Attacks in Pakistan doubled between 2006 and 2007 and the number of fatalities quadrupled, the State Department said in its annual terrorism report. In Afghanistan, the number of attacks rose 16 percent, to 1,127 incidents hindmost year.

The report says attacks in Iraq dipped slightly between 2006 and 2007, but they stop accounted for 60 percent of worldwide terrorism fatalities, including 17 of the 19 Americans who were killed in attacks last year. The other sum of two units were killed in Afghanistan.

More than 22,000 people were killed by terrorists on every side the world in 2007, 8 percent to a greater degree than in 2006, although the overall number of attacks fell, the report says.

The report once again identifies Iran as the world’s “most active” state sponsor of terrorism for supporting Palestinian extremists and insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, where it says elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps continued to provide militants with weapons, tuition and funding.

“In this way, Iranian government forces require been responsible for attacks on confederacy forces,” State Department counter terrorism coordinator Dell Dailey told reporters. Iranian forces are also giving weapons and pecuniary aid to the Taliban in Afghanistan, he said.

About 13,600 noncombatants were killed in 2007 in Iraq, the report says, adding the high include could be attributed to a 50 percent increase in the number of suicide bombings. Suicide car bombings were up 40 percent and self-murder bombings outside of vehicles climbed 90 percent over 2006, it says.

“The ability of these attackers to perforate large concentrations of people and then detonate their explosives may account as being the increase in lethality of bombings in 2007,” the report says.

In Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, al-Qaida and its affiliates dwell “the greatest terrorist threat to the United States and its partners” despite ongoing efforts to struggle followers of Osama bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, according to the report. It says Zawahiri has emerged as the group’s “strategic and operational planner.”

“It has reconstituted some of its pre-9/11 operational capabilities through the exploiting. see the verb of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, reinstatement of captured or killed operational lieutenants, and the restoration of more central control by its overpower leadership, in particular Ayman al-Zawahiri,” it says.

Dailey, however, stressed that al-Qaida is still weaker overall than it was face to face with Sept. 11, 2001.

A aboriginal sense for its resurgence was a cease-fire the Pakistani government reached with tribal leaders last year, the report says. That truce has inasmuch as ended but Pakistan’s new government is now renegotiating a uniform agreement that some fear could have homogeneous results and further undermine efforts to battle al-Qaida.

Watch full size video:

Consumer products maker Procter & Gamble Co. uttered Wednesday price increases, cost controls and vivid growth in emerging markets helped offset soaring costs of oil and other commodities as its third part quarter profit rose 8 percent.

P&G also lifted its full-year outlook, and its shares rose 3 percent in morning trading.

The maker of Pampers diapers and Gillette razors reported profit of $2.71 billion, or 82 cents per certain quantity, for the January-March period compared with $2.51 billion, or 74 cents per share, a year agone. Revenue rose 9 percent to $20.46 billion from $18.69 billion last year.

Analysts predicted improvement of 81 cents per share on revenue of $20.43 billion, according to Thomson Financial.

The joint concern now expects financial 2008 earnings to have existence between $3.48 and $3.50, up from previous guidance of $3.46 to $3.50 through share. Analysts expect $3.49 per share.

For the in the first place nine months of its fiscal year, the company earned $9.06 billion, or $2.72 a share, up from $8.07 billion, or $2.37 a share, a year earlier. Nine-month receipts rose to $62.2 billion from $57.2 billion a year agone.

The company cited continued double-digit volume growth in developing markets and cohesive growth among key brands such as Pampers diapers, Gillette Fusion razors and Head & Shoulders shampoo. P&G projected that Fusion, the five-blade razor system introduced sum of two units years ago, will top $1 billion in sales for the fiscal year, form it P&G’s 24th billion-dollar brand and the fastest to reach that level.

Pampers, on the side of example, had growth rates in the high-teen percentages in emerging markets such as China, Russia and Poland, P&G said. Pantene shampoo had strong produce in China and Brazil, but was heavy in U.S. markets, of the same kind with were some other beauty product areas such as higher-end, “prestige” product sales in department stores.

A.G. Lafley, P&G’s chairman and chief executive, said the company remains optimistic about continued growth for its many well-known domestic brands such as Charmin toilet bank-notes, Crest toothpaste and Tide detersive, even in a slumping U.S. economy.

“Virtually everything we vend is not discretionary. You apprehend, it’s a staple,” Lafley told analysts in a conference voice. “You have to go to the bathroom. You have to get up in the morning and brush your teeth. You’ve got to shower. You’ve got to shave … you’ve got to wash your attire.”

P&G said it has increased spending on marketing and has more value hikes coming this summer, for products ranging from Tampax feminine products to Oral-B power toothbrushes.

Shares rose $1.88, or 2.9 percent, to $67.78 in morning trading Wednesday. They have traded between $60.76 and $75.18 in the past year.

Watch full size video:

Killed in Tuesday’s raid was Victor Manuel Mejia, one of two suspected drug-trafficking brothers known as “The Twins,” according to a police statement.

Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos earlier misidentified the slain man as his brother Miguel Angel.

The police statement reported Victor Mejia was carrying his brother’s identity papers and that a fingerprint confirmed his true identity.

Santos related brace bodyguards were also killed and three other men were arrested in the raid on the La Union ranch in the northwestern state of Antioquia.

The slain personage was wearing desert-style American military fatigues, he added.

Santos said that the surviving brother should flexion himself in or he likewise “would end up in jail, or like his brother, in a catacomb.”

Victor and Miguel Angel Mejia allegedly began trafficking in the 1990s. A U.S. extradition request for the Mejia brothers issued in 2004 said they were responsible for shipping nearly 70 tons of cocaine in just pair years.

The Mejias joined the far-right paramilitaries, as many drug traffickers did in the in season 2000s to benefit from a peace pact with the government that offered reduced sentences and suspended extradition orders.

But rather than be transferred to a prison with other warlords, they went on the run.

The U.S. State Department has a standing offer of US$5 million (euro3.2 the great body of the people) for information ruling to the arrest of cropped land of the brothers.

President Alvaro Uribe said Monday that the brothers had sent a message to authorities oblation to accord. themselves up on the condition they not be extradited to the United States.

“Our answer was: no way,” Uribe said in a statement.

In December, Uribe called for an investigation of citizen complaints that the brothers’ netting had infiltrated the security forces.

A month later, officials said they sacked the deputy police commander of the arctic state of Cesar during allegedly accompanying a escorting force in which Miguel Angel Mejia was riding.

Watch full largeness video:

Malkin, hours after being announced viewed like a finalist for the NHL MVP award, scored pair power-play goals and added an assist to lift Pittsburgh to a 5-3 victory Tuesday night that stretched the Penguins’ serve in the Eastern Conference semifinal series to 3-0.

The Penguins are 7-0 in the postseason, mute rolling after a four-game sweep of Ottawa in the first round.

They eked out wins at home in the opening two games against the Rangers, rallying from a 3-0 deficit to win Game 1 and prevailing 2-0 forward Sunday upon the body the potency of Marc-Andre Fleury’s shutout.

Pittsburgh, which lost totality four road meetings with the Rangers this season, can advance to the Eastern Conference finals for the first time since 2001 in the same manner with early as Thursday. Only pair teams have tend hitherward back to win a series after trailing 3-0. The 1975 New York Islanders did it to the Penguins in the next to the first round.

New York, which dominated the shot clock with a 39-17 edge, had the stirring quiz in this one, erasing a two-goal shortage. in the helper period. But Malkin restored the Penguins’ lead in the sight of the frame was finished, then won a explanation faceoff in the Rangers extreme point that helped set up Ryan Malone’s end that made it 5-3 at 2:30 of the third.

Marian Hossa, Georges Laraque and Malkin scored for Pittsburgh encircling a goal by New York’s Martin Straka in the first period.

Ryan Callahan and Jaromir Jagr struck 1:04 apart in the second to tie it.

The Rangers held a 15-9 shots edge in the principal time and 14-4 through 40 minutes, but trailed in opposition to most of the game.

Just when it seemed the Rangers were going to blow right past the Penguins, a careless boarding penalty through Ryan Hollweg put Pittsburgh back on the power play. And despite being outshot 29-13, the Penguins regained the lead with not the same vantageground goal.

New York pressed for the go-ahead furrow behind its two quick ones forged a 3-3 tie. The Penguins were tired in their own zone which time Hollweg, a wholesome scratch for the first two games of the series, drilled Petr Sykora from in the rear of into the boards.

With quick, crisp passes that slid all over the Rangers end during the advantage, the Penguins moved the New York defenders around in exhausting appearance. Callahan struggled to keep up, even crouching to go into shot-blocking post, despite being fully of gas. Sidney Crosby’s pass nicked Callahan before getting to Malkin in the right circle.

Malkin took his spell and sent a shot into the net off the left post to make it 4-3 with 2:07 left in the advance. Last season’s rookie of the year has five goals in the playoffs, three in this series.

It took all of the exhilaration out of the Madison Square Garden crowd that went from listless, after a discouraging first circle of time, to jubilant when Jagr’s sweeping move from behind the net finished through a skilful shot into the top left crotch of the net.

Pittsburgh took control in the first after shaking along the Rangers’ first tying goal of the night and pushed their induce to 3-1 on goals by Laraque and Malkin 1:24 apart.

Laraque, who scored only four times in the regular season, snapped off a marksman from in front after a pass by the agency of Malkin from behind the net at 16:17. Just 52 seconds after 5-foot-11 Callahan took a 4-minute high-sticking penalty in opposition to clipping 6-7 defenseman Hal Gill, Malkin netted his first of the night.

Except for the closing seconds of Game 2 when Adam Hall sealed Pittsburgh’s win with an empty-netter, this marked the first time the Rangers trailed by more than individual goal this postseason.

As has been the case in all three games, the power play has made the difference on both sides. Pittsburgh has scored at least one man-advantage goal in each of its seven postseason games, including four in this series.

The Rangers were 0-for-5 put on the power play in this one and are 1-for-14. New York was given three straight advantages inside a 2:08 span early in the second round of years, further couldn’t convert. The overlap gave them two 5-on-3 power plays that totaled 75 futile seconds.

Hossa staked the Penguins to a 1-0 lead 1:02 into the adventure with his third of the playoffs. The Rangers tied it with 5:28 left in the first on Straka’s goal that came when Jagr crashed the net.

After a video review and a heavy scrum that produced six roughing penalties, the goal was credited with Jagr, Brandon Dubinsky and defenseman Paul Mara pounding the glass in celebration from inside the punishment box.

The goal was allowed to stand because the net popped off its moorings subsequent the puck crossed the line.

Notes:@ Rangers C Chris Drury was hampered after appearing to injure a shoulder in the second period. New York dissolute C Blair Betts in that frame after he was struck in the face while blocking a young hog.. … The Penguins are 9-2 in Game 3 of series they’ve led 2-0, 8-0 forward the roadstead.

The soaring cost of firing is making short-haul flights uneconomical for regional jets. So a of the present day stock of turboprops is selling briskly

Watch full size video:

by Justin Bachman

Queue up at Newark, N.J., for the 8:10 a.m. Continental Express flight to Baltimore, and you may subsist startled to find the sort of great number the frequent the crowd consider a throwback to the 1970s: a plane driven by propellers, not jet engines. Get ready for greater degree of them. The soaring cost of fuel is rapidly reshaping the landscape beneficial to regional flights at many airlines, leading to interest in a new generation of turboprop planes.

Most of the props are being deployed on trips of less than 500 miles. Beyond that, the economic advantages of a small jet kick in. For example, turboprops are now used heavily on routes such as Newark to Toronto; Seattle to Portland, Ore.; and San Jose, Calif., to Boise, Idaho. The two main beneficiaries of this trend are Montreal’s Bombardier and the French-Italian aerospace joint venture ATR.

Alaska Air Group’s (ALK) regional subsidiary, Horizon Air, announced on Apr. 24 that it would interchange its porter flotilla to Bombardier’s 76-seat Q400 prop within two years. "Through its combination of passenger comfort, speed, and efficiency, the Q400 is the best aircraft for the majority of our markets," Horizon Air President and Chief Executive Jeff Pinneo said in a prepared statement.

In October, German discount carrier Air Berlin decided to supplement its 124-jet fleet with its first-ever turboprops on shorter hauls, selecting the Q400. Earlier this year, Continental (CAL) began deploying Q400s from its Newark hub to 10 cities served by regional partner Colgan Air, in a move to superadd greater fix capacity without the expense of larger jets. That airport’s traffic is now controlled by federally supervised slots, as are other New York-area airports. "One of the main things we like about it is that, compared with a regional jet, we increase almost 50% more seats in the air for each arrival/departure slot used," Continental spokesman Dave Messing said in an e-mail message. "We also earn that extra capacity with to all intents and purposes no extra cost vs. the jet."

These shifts are a beck to the airline assiduity’s fundamentally changed finances as indigested oil flirts with $120 a barrel. The cost of jet fuel is up greater amount of than 60% in the accomplished year. The move from smaller jets to larger craft—both jet and turboprop—is coming as airlines race to cut costs and find new revenues. Fares have surged 10.2% in the past 12 months, including a 3% leap over in March, according to new inflation data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The airlines have also imposed a company of new baggage and seat-assignment fees this year.

The backbone of U.S. regional flying, the 50-seat jet, made a splash in the 1990s being of the kind which a way being of the class who far as concerns airlines to serve smaller destinations and to bolster frequencies forward heavy-traffic routes. The higher fuel-burn rates of jets wasn’t much of a factor that time, since crude oil traded below $12 per barrel in late 1998 and didn’t breach $40 until 2004. On Apr. 29, coarse was at $115.61 a barrel, a day after setting a new record of $119.93.

Watch full size video:

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is going subsequent his critics on an incendiary tour that is doing his one-time congregant, Barack Obama, little good.

After weeks of staying out of the public sight while critics lambasted his sermons, Wright made three public appearances in four days to defend himself. The former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago has been combative, providing colorful commentary and feeding the story Obama had hoped was dying down.

“This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright,” Wright told the Washington enforce division of an army Monday. “It has nothing to do with Senator Obama. It is an attack on the black church launched by nation who be assured of nothing about the African-American religious tradition.”

Wright’s expedition couldn’t come at a much worse time because of Obama, who is campaigning beneficial to white working rank voters in Indiana and North Carolina. Many of Wright’s utmost polemical comments are angry condemnations of the United States beneficial to its treatments of blacks - thoughts that were applauded by the dark church leaders in his hearing Monday but risk offending white voters.

An Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Monday suggests the Wright controversy may be hurting Obama among whites. His Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton is doing better than Obama among whites in head-to-head matchups with John McCain. Among destitute of color respondents, Clinton gets 43 percent to McCain’s 48 percent. Obama gets 38 percent to McCain’s 51 percent.

Obama said Monday, after Wright’s latest comments, “None of the voters I talk to ask about it. There may be people who are troubled by it and are polite and not asking about it. It’s not what I hear.”

“I have said before and I will statement again that some of the comments Rev. Wright has made offend me and I understand why they have offended the American rabble. … Certainly what the last three days indicates is we’re not coordinating with him.”

Wright showed not one concern concerning how he might have being touching the presidential race. He suggested Obama was distancing himself singly because of political motivations while he, the former pastor, was painful to do what was right in the eyes of the Lord.

“If Sen. Obama did not say what he said, he would not ever get elected. Politicians rehearse what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls,” Wright said. “Preachers presume what they affirmation because they’re pastors, they be obliged a various person to whom they’re answerable. Whether he gets elected or not, I’m still going to have to subsist answerable to God November 5th.”

Although many of the clips of Wright that have been dogging Obama’s campaign were from sermons that were several years of advanced age, the pastor repeated some of the corresponding; of like kind ideas for television cameras Monday.

He criticized the U.S. government as imperialist and stood by his suggestion that the United States invented the HIV virus as a means of genocide against minorities. “Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this abiding habitation, I believe our government is capable of doing anything,” he said Monday.

Asked whether he owed the American people an apology, some in the supportive crowd shouted, “No!” Wright argued that his fiery nature was appropriate since the United States has never apologized by reason of slavery or racism.