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Douglas Century is the author or coauthor of numerous bestselling and critically acclaimed books. Century has also spoken at numerous venues across the United States and Canada, including McGill University, Williams College, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Temple Emanu-El and the New York Public Library. Century‘s work received Permanent of Canada Award for Short Fiction (Second Prize); the Geraldine Griffin Moore Award for the Short Story; the Harold Greenberg Fund for screenplay adaptation of an original book; and, most recently, a New York State Council for the Humanities Grant for Barney Ross.

Represented by International Creative Management, Century is a member of the Writers Guild of America, East and of the Writers Guild of Canada.

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AY-Z’S latest release, ”Girls’ Best Friend,” is an unusual love song: an ode not to a woman, but to the rapper’s diamonds. In the video, he dazzles the camera with his collection of ice-blue bracelets, pendants and pinky rings. ”I took you outta Jacob’s in clusters/ Busters, they wanted to rush us/ Love the way you sparkle when the sun touch ya,” he raps.

HIP-HOP made Cristal a household name. Can it also unmake it? Since the rapper Jay-Z called for a boycott of the Champagne after its maker seemed to sniff at its popularity with rap stars, some in the music, night life and beverage industries are predicting a long-term flattening of the $300-a-bottle bubbly.

''WE'RE gonna keep it in the truest essence of hip-hop: the battle,'' Jay-Z, the lanky Brooklyn-born rapper, said during his recent ''MTV Unplugged'' concert. Then, dressed in a Che Guevara T-shirt, he launched into ''Takeover,'' his scathing lyrical assault on his Queens-based rival, Nas. ''That's why your -- l-a-a-a-m-e! -- career's come to a end/There's only so long fake thugs can pretend,'' Jay-Z rapped, as the audience laughed and sang along.

Last month, filmmaker Lee Unkrich, a longtime member of Pixar Animation Studio’s creative team, won his second Academy Award as director of the Best Animated Film of 2017. Unkrich’s first Oscar was for directing Toy Story 3; his latest is for Coco—now released on DVD—a critically acclaimed smash, with a global box office gross of nearly $800 million.

Narcoterrorism, a word first coined by Peruvian President Fernando Belaúnde Terry in 1983, then made infamous with Pablo Escobar’s violence targeting the government of Colombia, has now vastly expanded from being a crisis limited to Latin America. In fact, I’d argue that whatever the nomenclature, Israel was among the first nations to be affected by the phenomenon of narcoterrorism. During the 1970s, Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization controlled clandestine laboratories in Lebanon, laying some of the foundations for the current narcoterrorism infrastructure, which boosted the PLO’s stashed bank accounts. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, an estimated 40 percent of the PLO’s weaponry was financed by the trafficking of heroin and hashish.