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NASCAR has banned the Confederate flag from all events and properties. NASCAR says the Confederate flag “runs contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all fans, our competitors and our industry.” Former chairman Brian France in 2015 tried to ban the flying of Confederate flags at race tracks, a proposal too broad to enforce and one that angered NASCAR’s core Southern-based fan base.   NASCAR banned the Confederate flag from its races and properties on Wednesday, formally distancing itself from what for many is a symbol of slavery and racism that had been a familiar sight at stock car events for more than 70 years.  The move comes amid social unrest around the globe following the death in police custody of George Floyd, an unarmed black man in Minneapolis. Protests have roiled the nation for days and Confederate monuments are being taken down across the South — the traditional fan base for NASCAR. FILE – Bubba Wallace greets fans during a NASCAR Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway in Martinsville, Va., Oct. 27, 2019.Bubba Wallace, NASCAR’s lone black driver, called this week for the banishment of the Confederate flag and said there was “no place” for it in the sport. At long last, NASCAR obliged.  “The presence of the Confederate flag at NASCAR events runs contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all fans, our competitors and our industry,” NASCAR said. “Bringing people together around a love for racing and the community that it creates is what makes our fans and sport special.  The display of the Confederate flag will be prohibited from all NASCAR events and properties.” The move was announced before Wednesday night’s race at Martinsville Speedway where Wallace, an Alabama native, was driving a Chevrolet with a #BlackLivesMatter paint scheme. Wallace got a shoutout on Twitter from several athletes, including NBA star LeBron James, for using the paint scheme in the race. The flag issue has been a thorny one for NASCAR. Former chairman Brian France in 2015 tried to ban the flying of Confederate flags at race tracks, angering many fans. NASCAR did not address how it would enforce the policy or indicate any penalties for fans who violate it by bringing the Confederate flag to the track. NASCAR has not raced with fans since the sport resumed last month amid the pandemic and was expected to have minimal fans allowed at races this month in Florida and Georgia. 
 
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The art director of Cairo’s international film festival has resigned amid calls for his removal because of past inflammatory posts on social media, the festival said.  The resignation of Egyptian film critic Ahmed Shawky was announced Tuesday in a statement by the festival’s advisory board. Shawky, who was acting artistic director of the 2019 festival, had been appointed artistic director of this year’s festival earlier this month.  His recent appointment brought criticism from activists and others who pointed to past comments Shawky made that apparently espoused violence. Those include referring to the death of dozens of Egyptian soccer fans in a notorious riot as their being “culled.”The statement said the festival would continue preparing for its 2020 edition and “uphold our principles of championing diversity, bridging cultures, encouraging dialogue, celebrating new voices.” The festival is scheduled for November 19-28.The festival statement did not provide reasons for Shawky’s resignation. The film critic did not answer phone calls and messages seeking comment Wednesday.But Shawky’s resignation came after activists threatened to write to foreign filmmakers invited to the festival to inform them of Shawky’s history.  Among the most controversial statements of Shawky’s were posts about a 2012 soccer riot that left more than 70 people dead in Egypt’s worst sports disaster and one of the world’s deadliest.  In a 2014 post, Shawky referred to the deaths of the soccer fans as their being “culled,” suggesting those who died were somehow inferior and selectively killed. Almost all of those killed were from The Al-Ahly club’s “Ultras” — hardcore supporters of the Cairo-based team and the country’s largest fan association.Shawky used the same word to describe the death of the daughter of a Muslim Brotherhood leader who was killed in the summer of 2013 when security forces descended on supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.  “No-one should feel sorry for her,” he said. “If I know someone like her … I would kill her with my own hands.”‘Hurtful words’Following the recent backlash on social media, Shawky apologized this week, saying in a statement that he used “hurtful words” that were “painful to the families of the dead.”He has since shut down his social media accounts.Shawky was also sharply critical of Syrian filmmakers documenting the country’s civil war, accusing them of taking advantage of the suffering to gain Oscar nominations.
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The Recording Academy is making changes to several Grammy Awards categories, including the often-debated best new artist title, and having nomination review committee members sign disclosure forms to prevent conflicts of interest.
The new rules announced Wednesday will affect the 63rd annual Grammy Awards, which will air live on Jan. 31, 2021.  
The best new artist award has been criticized for decades, and the academy has tried to evolve with the ever-changing music industry by continually updating the category’s rules. In recent years, the award has been scrutinized because the academy placed a song and album limit, disqualifying certain performers. But the new rules say, “there is no longer a specified maximum number of releases prohibiting artists from entering” the category.
The change will benefit younger artists, specifically rappers, who tend to release many singles and therefore did not qualify in recent years because they surpassed the 30-song limit. Whitney Houston and Lady Gaga missed out on being best new artist nominees because of the category’s rules in the years they marked their breakthroughs.
The academy also said musicians invited to participate in a nomination review committee — in place to safeguard a specific genre’s integrity and to serve as additional checks and balances — will have to agree to the terms of a conflict of interest disclosure form. Committee participants will have to reveal if they would benefit from an artist’s nomination for that category, whether the ties are financial, familial or creative.
If a conflict is discovered, that person would not be allowed to sit on that committee that year.
Some of the new changes could be a response to former Recording Academy CEO Deborah Dugan, who was fired only months into her job and days before the 2020 Grammys, held in January. Dugan had said the awards show was rigged and muddled with conflicts of interest. Questions have loomed for years around the nominations process for the Grammys, but the doubts reached a new level following Dugan’s comments.
The academy has said that nominees are selected from contenders voted into the top 20 in each category. But critics have called the voting less than transparent, because the choice of finalists happens behind closed doors. That has stirred claims that members of key nominating committees promote projects they worked on or projects they favor based on personal relationships.
The academy’s board of trustees approved the new changes last month. The organization also said it is making its 66-page rules and guidelines book public for the first time, at Grammys.com, starting Wednesday.
Songs and albums released between Sept. 1, 2019 and Aug. 31, 2020 will be eligible for nominations at the 2021 Grammys. There are 84 categories.  
Other changes approved by the board:
— The best rap/sung performance Grammy will now be called best melodic rap performance. The category was originally titled best rap/sung collaboration and was established at the 2002 Grammys for collaborations between rappers and R&B or pop singers. For the 2017 Grammys, the academy renamed it and allowed solo artists who sing and rap on a song — from Drake to Chris Brown — to compete. The newly titled category, available to solo performances or collaborations, now “requires a strong and clear presence of melody combined with rap cadence, and is inclusive of dialects, lyrics or performance elements from non-rap genres including R&B, rock, country, electronic or more.”
— The best urban contemporary album award, which debuted at the 2013 Grammys and represented R&B albums that fused elements of other genres, from rock to dance, has been renamed to best progressive R&B album. Qualified albums should “include the more progressive elements of R&B and may include samples and elements of hip-hop, rap, dance, and electronic music.”
— The Latin pop album Grammy has expanded and been renamed to best Latin pop or urban album, while the best Latin rock, urban or alternative album will now be called best Latin rock or alternative album.
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HBO Max has temporarily removed “Gone With the Wind” from its streaming library in order to add historical context to the 1939 film long criticized for romanticizing slavery and the Civil War-era South.  
Protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death have forced entertainment companies to grapple with the appropriateness of both current and past productions. On Tuesday, the Paramount Network dropped the long-running reality series “Cops” after 33 seasons. The BBC also removed episodes of “Little Britain,” a comedy series that featured a character in blackface, from its streaming service.  
In an op-ed Monday in the Los Angeles Times, the filmmaker John Ridley urged WarnerMedia to take down “Gone With the Wind,” arguing that it “romanticizes the Confederacy in a way that continues to give legitimacy to the notion that the secessionist movement was something more, or better, or more noble than what it was — a bloody insurrection to maintain the ‘right’ to own, sell and buy human beings.”
In a statement, the AT&T-owned WarnerMedia, which owns HBO Max, called “Gone With the Wind” “a product of its time” that depicts racial prejudices.  
“These racist depictions were wrong then and are wrong today, and we felt that to keep this title up without an explanation and a denouncement of those depictions would be irresponsible,” said an HBO Max spokesman in a statement.  
The company said that when “Gone With the Wind” returns to the recently launched streaming service, it will include “historical context and a denouncement of those very depictions, but will be presented as it was originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed.”
Based on a 1936 book by Margaret Mitchell, “Gone With the Wind” is a historical epic about a romance between Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh), the daughter of a Georgia plantation owner, and Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), a gambler who joins the Confederacy.  
“Gone With the Wind” has long been denounced for featuring slave characters who remain loyal to their former owners after the abolition of slavery. It remains the highest-grossing film of all time when adjusted for inflation. It won eight Academy Awards including best picture and best supporting actress for Hattie McDaniel, the first black actress to be nominated or win an Oscar.
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