Guilty pleasures
By NewsPress Now
Boy Scouts of America changing name to Scouting America
IRVING, Texas | The Boy Scouts of America is changing its name for the first time in its 114-year history and will become Scouting America. It’s a significant shift as the organization emerges from bankruptcy following a flood of sexual abuse claims and seeks to focus on inclusion.
The organization steeped in tradition has made seismic changes after decades of turmoil, from finally allowing gay youth to welcoming girls throughout its ranks. With an eye on increasing flagging membership numbers, the Irving, Texas-based organization announced the name change Tuesday at its annual meeting in Florida.
“In the next 100 years we want any youth in America to feel very, very welcome to come into our programs,” Roger Krone, who took over last fall as president and chief executive officer, said in an interview before the announcement.
The organization began allowing gay youth in 2013 and ended a blanket ban on gay adult leaders in 2015. In 2017, it made the historic announcement that girls would be accepted as Cub Scouts as of 2018 and into the flagship Boy Scout program — renamed Scouts BSA — in 2019. Over 6,000 girls have now achieved the vaunted Eagle Scout rank.
There were nearly 1,000 young women in the inaugural class of female Eagle Scouts in 2021, including Selby Chipman. The all-girls troop she was a founding member of in her hometown of Oak Ridge, North Carolina, has grown from five girls to nearly 50, and she thinks the name change will encourage even more girls to realize they can join.
“Girls were like: ‘You can join Boy Scouts of America?’” said Chipman, now a 20-year-old college student and assistant scoutmaster of her troop.
When people question the need to change the name, Krone points out that membership is at historic lows. “Part of my job is to reduce all the barriers I possibly can for people to accept us as an organization and to join,” he said.
Like other organizations, the scouts lost members during the pandemic, when participation was difficult. After a highpoint over the last decade of over 2 million members in 2018, the organization currently services just over 1 million youths, including more than 176,000 girls and young women. Membership peaked in 1972 at almost 5 million.
David Aaker, vice chairman of the national branding and marketing firm Prophet, author and professor emeritus at the University of California-Berkeley, called the name change an “excellent” move that gives the organization a chance to start a new conversation about itself, while not being so drastic that it strays too far from its original scouting mission.
“It’s a onetime chance to tell a new story,” Aaker said.
The National Organization for Women had urged the Boy Scouts to open itself to girls throughout its ranks. Bear Atwood, vice president of NOW, said the name change “signals that not only are girls allowed to join but they are welcome to join.”
Reaction online Tuesday ranged from those excited and supportive to those decrying that “boy” no longer appears in the name. “Wokeness destroys everything it touches,” wrote Rep. Andrew Clyde, a Georgia Republican, on X.
But Lois Alvar, a 20-year-old Eagle Scout and assistant scoutmaster from the Dallas area, said the new name should help all scouts feel accepted. “Having it nationally recognized that girls are being welcomed and included in scouting allows it to be a more safe space, just in general,” she said.
The move to accept girls throughout the Boy Scout ranks strained a bond with the Girl Scouts of the USA, which sued, saying it created marketplace confusion and damaged their recruitment efforts. They reached a settlement agreement after a judge rejected those claims, saying both groups are free to use words like “scouts” and “scouting.”
The Boy Scouts’ $2.4 billion bankruptcy reorganization plan took effect last year, allowing the organization to keep operating while compensating the more than 80,000 men who say they were sexually abused as children while scouting.
The organization won’t officially become Scouting America until Feb. 8, 2025, the organization’s 115th birthday. But Krone said he expects people will start immediately using the name.
“It sends this really strong message to everyone in America that they can come to this program, they can bring their authentic self, they can be who they are and they will be welcomed here,” Krone said.
Police investigating shooting outside Drake’s mansion
TORONTO | Police are investigating a shooting outside rapper Drake’s mansion in Toronto that left a security guard seriously wounded.
Authorities did not confirm whether Drake was at home at the time of the shooting, but said his team is cooperating. The shooting happened around 2 a.m. Tuesday in the affluent Bridle Path neighborhood of Toronto.
Toronto Police Inspector Paul Krawczyk said video of the shooting had been recovered and the guard who was wounded remains hospitalized.
In recent weeks, Drake has been engaged in a rap feud with Kendrick Lamar, with each artist dropping diss tracks attacking the other.
Krawczyk was asked whether the feud was a factor in the shooting and he said while investigators are aware of it, it was too early to discuss motive.
Drake, born Aubrey Drake Graham, is one of the best-selling artists of the modern era. He began his career as a child actor on the popular teen program “Degrassi: The Next Generation” before setting his sights on music, dropping some of the most influential albums of any genre in the 2010s: “Take Care,” “Nothing Was the Same,” and “Views” among them. He’s released 13 No. 1 hits across his career, including “God’s Plan,” “Work” featuring Rihanna, and “One Dance” with WizKid and Kyla.
The “Hotline Bling” performer was named Spotify’s most streamed artist of the decade, has won five Grammy awards, and is often credited for ushering in the new era of hip-hop where rappers sing, weaving R&B sensibilities into the genre.
Nintendo to announce Switch successor in this fiscal year
TOKYO | Japanese video-game maker Nintendo said Tuesday that it will make an announcement about a successor to its Switch home console sometime before March 2025.
In reporting its financial results, Nintendo gave no details about the announcement, including about whether it would launch that successor product during this fiscal year, or just announce its plans for it.
“We will make an announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year. It will have been over nine years since we announced the existence of Nintendo Switch back in March 2015,” the company’s president, Shuntaro Furukawa, said in a statement.
Kyoto-based Nintendo Co. reported a 13% rise in profit for the fiscal year that ended in March, boosted by solid demand for Switch software like “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.”
Nintendo’s net profit for the fiscal year through March 2024 totaled 490.6 billion yen ($3 billion), up from 432.7 billion yen in the previous fiscal year. Annual sales rose 4% to 1.67 trillion yen ($11 billion), nearly 80% of it from outside Japan.
Besides “The Legend of Zelda,” whose global sales for the fiscal year totaled 20.6 million units, “Super Mario Bros. Wonder” sold 13.4 million units, and “Pikmin 4” sold nearly 3.5 million, according to Nintendo.
The release a year ago of the film, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” also helped sales.
The yen’s weakness against the dollar, which lifts the value in yen of overseas earnings of Japanese exporters like Nintendo, also helped. The U.S. dollar has averaged about 151 Japanese yen over the past fiscal year, up from 133 yen in the previous fiscal year.
Nintendo, which did not break down quarterly numbers, was less optimistic about its financial results for the fiscal year through March 2025, forecasting net profit to fall to 300 billion yen ($1.9 billion).
Nintendo has sold more than 141 million Switch machines, 15.7 million of them during the fiscal year that just ended.
Such sales tend to gradually decline over the years, so offering a steady stream of fun games is crucial.
“Endless Ocean Luminous,” which went on sale this month, has the player go on a virtual scuba diving adventure, complete with whales, colorful fish and other sea creatures. “Luigi’s Mansion 2,” featuring the plumber Mario’s brother, goes on sale next month.
Nintendo is also planning a new film for worldwide release in April 2026. It’s counting on the openings of Donkey Kong Country in Universal Studios Japan, as well as a museum on Nintendo in Kyoto, both scheduled for later this year, to woo more fans to its franchise.
Met Opera hosts four female conductors in landmark week
NEW YORK | Oksana Lyniv, Speranza Scappucci, Marin Alsop and Xian Zhang filled their lockers in the guest conductors’ dressing room off the Metropolitan Opera’s orchestra pit. Just four women had led the orchestra from 1883 through 2016, but four took the baton in a landmark week from April 19-26.
“Maybe I’ll say it because they’re probably a bit too shy to say,” declared Alsop, at 67 the senior member of the group. “It has to not be unusual for it to be part of the fabric. It takes a long time for society to get comfortable with different things, and our industry is very conservative.”
Lyniv led Puccini’s “Turandot” on April 19, and Scappucci conducted Puccini’s “La Rondine” the following day. Alsop was in the pit for the Met premiere of John Adams’ “El Niño” on April 23, and Zhang helmed Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” on April 26.
“It’s like a different woman conductor arrived in New York simultaneously,” Lyniv said. “Now I can say it’s much easier to build a career than 20 years ago, 25 years ago, when I was a student and just started.”
Even family had pushed Lyniv to reconsider her career pursuit.
“There are no examples of successful female conductors,” she recalled being told. “Maybe you will conduct maximum a school orchestra or church choirs.”
When Susanna Mälkki made her Met debut in 2016, she became just the fourth female conductor in the company’s 133-year history after Sarah Caldwell, who debuted in 1976, Simone Young (1996) and Jane Glover (2013). The total has risen to 14 women, among them Keri-Lynn Wilson, wife of Met general manager Peter Gelb.
“There’s been a deliberate effort by major companies to create more opportunities for female conductors and I think it was overdue,” Gelb said. “Opera is changing, and it’s changing for the better by embracing a wider range of talents both on the stage and in the pit.”
A specific event opened doors and put a spotlight on the lack of equity in hiring.
“Because of MeToo,” Alsop said of the social movement that began in 2017. “It’s not as though everyone became enlightened suddenly. It had to get instigated. It had to catch fire. It’s no good to have one. You have to have a plethora.”
Like many musicians of her generation, Alsop was inspired by Leonard Bernstein, the first American to lead a major U.S. symphony.
“I saw Bernstein conduct when I was 9. I was more impressed with him talking to us, the audience, when he turned around. I remember him jumping around a lot, and I thought that was very cool,” Alsop said. “My dad took me to the concert, and I said, ‘Oh, dad, I want to be the conductor.’ He said, ‘Great.’ Never changed my mind.”
Scappucci, 51, was born in Rome and accompanied her older sister to piano lessons on the ground floor of their building with neighbor Maria Borzatti.
“After six months, the teacher called my mom and said, ‘Signora Scappucci, Gioia, she’s going to be great at languages,” the conductor recalled, “but I’ve observed the little one. I think she has a very good ear for music, so I’d like to teach her instead.’”
Speranza studied piano at the Conservatorio di Musica Santa Cecilia and Juilliard, where she took a class in coaching singers. Valued for her Italian background, she was hired by U.S. companies as a coach. She became Riccardo Muti’s assistant to the Salzburg Festival, then moved into conducting and from 2017-22 was music director of the Opéra Royal de Wallonie.
Scappucci became the first Italian woman to conduct at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala in 2022, and in 2025-26, she starts as principal guest conductor of London’s Royal Opera. She is in her third season as co-presenter of the Italian TV show “La gioia della musica (The joy of music).”
Lyniv, 46, was born in Ukraine to a family of musicians. She studied piano and flute. At 18, she had to conduct the student orchestra as part of the curriculum. A retired professor walked up to her.
“He said to me: ‘You are not a Toscanini, but you have a great future,’” she recalled, a reference to conducting great Arturo Toscanini.
Lyniv finished third at the 2004 Gustav Mahler conducting competition. She attended the Dresden Academy of Music, became an assistant at Odessa’s National Theatre in Odessa, then Kirill Petrenko’s at the Bavarian State Opera. She was hired as chief conductor of the Graz Opera from 2017-20, and in 2021, became the first woman to conduct at Wagner’s Bayreuth Festival in Germany. In 2022, she took over as music director of Teatro Comunale di Bologna, the first woman to lead an Italian opera house.
Born in China, Zhang started playing piano at 3 but at 16 was told by a teacher that her hands were too small. She went to Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music and was invited by a teacher to step in to conduct Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” at 19 with the China National Opera Orchestra. Two of her three conducting teachers back then were women.
“I was so naive. Because I saw them working so much, I never thought this is very unusual,” Zhang said. “Much later, I realized that’s not the case.”
She attended the University of Cincinnati College — Conservatory of Music, won the Maazel/Vilar International Conductors’ Competition in 2002 and was hired as the New York Philharmonic’s assistant conductor and later associate. Zhang became music director of the Sioux City Symphony Orchestra from 2005-07 and the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi from 2009-16 and has held the role with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra since 2016.
Preparing the next generation, Lyniv founded the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine in 2016. Alsop in 2002 started a conducting fellowship that awards $25,000 and has assisted 36 women conductors.
“It’s a good moment but I also am cognizant of what’s going on in the world around us and how women’s rights are taken away overnight, and that happens all the time,” Alsop said. “So, we have to really remain strong and vigilant about the future generations.”
—From AP reports
