LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec 30, 2024--
AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) continues its decade-long tradition of taking part in the Rose Parade ® with a float celebrating Charlie Chaplin on the 100th anniversary of his classic 1925 film, “The Gold Rush.” AHF’s float both honors and celebrates Chaplin and his iconic “Little Tramp” character—arguably America’s most famous (albeit fictional) homeless person—and spotlights some of AHF’s innovative solutions to help address the affordable housing and homelessness crises in Los Angeles, throughout California, and across the nation.
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AHF’s entry in the 136 th Rose Parade ® presented by Honda is titled “Home Sweet Home.” It is a lighthearted, animated float promoting AHF’s Healthy Housing Foundation.
Chaplin’s classic film lends well to AHF and its Healthy Housing Foundation messaging on affordable housing and homelessness. Set during the Alaska gold rush (but shot mainly on Hollywood sound stages), Chaplin gets the gold and the girl. After sending mixed signals, an initially reluctant Georgia (Georgia Hale) dances the night away with Chaplin, welcoming New Year 1925 by the end of the last reel.
The Chaplin family and Charlie Chaplin™ © Bubbles Incorporated SA graciously authorized AHF’s use of its “The Gold Rush” imagery for no royalty fee.
AHF’s Healthy Housing Foundation is part of a larger community-based effort to address the exploding affordable housing and homelessness crises in Los Angeles and across the nation. Since 2017, AHF has purchased, refurbished, and repurposed 13 single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels and motels throughout Los Angeles and on Downtown’s Skid Row and created more than 1,400 housing units for formerly homeless and extremely-low-income individuals. Nationwide, AHF has created more than 1,900 housing units with an additional 1,100 already in the pipeline.
Many of Healthy Housing Foundation’s refurbished hotels in Downtown Los Angeles are as old as Chaplin’s 1925 film classic. Now, these majestic hotels have been reborn and repurposed, offering many a resident a first step toward living their own “Best Day Ever.”
As of the January 2024 point-in-time homeless count, there were more than 75,000 homeless individuals in the 88 cities that make up Los Angeles County. Nearly 186,000 individuals are homeless throughout California, accounting for fully one-quarter of the nation’s homeless population.
The concept of AHF’s “Home Sweet Home” float was initially designed by Jason Farmer, Vice President of Marketing for AHF, and finalized by John Ramirez, designer with Artistic Entertainment Services, the company creating AHF’s float.
AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the world’s largest HIV/AIDS healthcare organization, provides cutting-edge medicine and advocacy to more than 2.2 million individuals across 47 countries, including the U.S. and in Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, the Asia/Pacific Region, and Eastern Europe. To learn more about AHF, visit us online at AIDShealth.org, find us on Facebook, and follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.
About the Pasadena Tournament of Roses®and Rose Parade®presented by Honda
The Pasadena Tournament of Roses ® is a volunteer organization that hosts America’s New Year Celebration ® with the Rose Parade ® presented by Honda, the Rose Bowl Game ® presented by Prudential and a variety of accompanying events. The Association’s 935 Members supply more than 80,000 volunteer hours, which will drive the success of the 136 th Rose Parade, themed “Best Day Ever!,” on Wednesday, January 1, 2025, followed by the College Football Playoff Quarterfinal at the 111 th Rose Bowl Game presented by Prudential. Visitwww.tournamentofroses.com, like us onFacebookand follow us onInstagramandYouTube.
The Chaplin family and Charlie Chaplin™ © Bubbles Incorporated SA graciously authorized AHF’s use of its “The Gold Rush” imagery for no royalty fee. https://www.aidshealth.org?p=82883
The rendering of AHF's float for the 136th Rose Parade® presented by Honda titled, “Home Sweet Home.” The float celebrates Charlie Chaplin on the 100th anniversary of his 1925 film classic, “The Gold Rush.” AHF’s float both honors and celebrates Chaplin and his iconic “Little Tramp” character—arguably America’s most famous (albeit fictional) homeless person—and spotlights some of AHF’s innovative solutions to help address the homeless crisis in Los Angeles throughout California and across the nation.
The Chaplin family and Charlie Chaplin™ © Bubbles Incorporated SA graciously authorized AHF’s use of its ‘The Gold Rush’ film imagery for no royalty fee for use by AHF in its 2025 parade float for the 136th Rose Parade® presented by Honda. This year marks the 100th anniversary of Chaplin's 1925 film classic, “The Gold Rush.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI says it recovered the black banner of the Islamic State group from the truck that an American man from Texas smashed into New Year's partygoers in New Orleans' French Quarter, killing 15 people.
The investigation is expected to look in part at any support or inspiration that driver Shamsud-Din Jabbar may have drawn from that violent Middle East-based group or from any of at least 19 affiliated groups around the world.
President Joe Biden said Wednesday evening that the FBI had told him that “mere hours before the attack, (Jabbar) posted videos on social media indicating that he was inspired” by IS.
Routed from its self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria and Iraq by a U.S. military-led coalition more than five years ago, IS has focused on seizing territory in the Middle East more than on staging massive al-Qaida-style attacks on the West.
But in its home territory, IS has welcomed any chance to behead Americans and other foreigners who come within its reach. The main group at peak strength claimed a handful of coordinated operations targeting the West, including a 2015 Paris plot that killed 130 people. It has had success, although abated in recent years, in inspiring people around the world who are drawn to its ideology to carry out ghastly attacks on innocent civilians.
Here's a look at IS, its current status, and some of the offshoot armed groups and so-called lone wolves that have killed under the group's flag.
The main group also goes by IS, ISIS, or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
It began as a breakaway group from al-Qaida.
Under leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, IS had seized stunning amounts of territory in Iraq and Syria by 2014. Within territory under its control, it killed, raped and otherwise abused members of other faiths and targeted fellow Sunni Muslims who strayed from its harsh interpretation of Islam.
By 2019, a U.S.-led military intervention had driven IS from the cities and towns of its self-claimed state. Al-Baghdadi killed himself, and two children near him, that same year, detonating an explosive vest as U.S. forces closed in on him.
Currently, the main IS is a scattered and much weakened organization working to regain fighting strength and territory in Syria and Iraq. Experts warn that the group is reconstituting itself there.
And that flag? Typically, it's a black banner with white Arabic letters expressing a central tenet of the Islamic faith. Countless Muslims around the world see the coercive violence of the group as a perversion of their religion.
Some experts argue that IS is powerful today partly as a brand, inspiring both militant groups and individuals in attacks that the group itself may have no real role in.
The group's credo and military successes have led armed extremist organizations in Africa, Asia and Europe to swear allegiance to it. It's a greatly decentralized alliance.
Many of the offshoot groups have carried out lethal attacks. Islamic State-Khorasan, an Afghanistan-based group, is one of the most lethal currently. Attacks linked to that affiliate include the March 2024 killings of about 130 people at a Moscow theater, the August 2021 bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members and about 170 Afghans as the U.S. was withdrawing from Afghanistan, and killings in Pakistan and elsewhere.
The New Orleans rampage reflects the deadliest IS-inspired attack on U.S. soil in several years.
Other attacks over the past decade include a 2014 shooting rampage by a husband-and-wife team who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, and a 2016 massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, by a gunman who fatally shot 49 people, pledged his allegiance on a 911 call to al-Baghdadi and raged against the “filthy ways of the West.”
Those attacks coincided with an influx of thousands of Westerners — some of them Americans — who traveled to Syria in hopes of joining the so-called caliphate.
In the aftermath of those killings, the threat from radicalized followers of the group had appeared to wane in the Defense Department strikes have taken out other IS members and the FBI has had significant success in disrupting plots before they come to fruition.
But over the past year, FBI officials have warned about a significantly elevated threat of international terrorism following Hamas’ rampage in Israel in October 2023 and the resulting Israeli strikes in Gaza.
The SITE intelligence group reported IS supporters celebrating in online chat groups Wednesday.
“If it’s a brother, he’s a legend. Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great,” it quoted one as saying.
President Joe Biden makes a statement on the latest developments in New Orleans from Camp David, Md., Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Emergency services attend the scene on Bourbon Street after a vehicle drove into a crowd on New Orleans' Canal and Bourbon Street, Wednesday Jan. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
This undated passport photo provided by the FBI on Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025, shows Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar. (FBI via AP)
A black flag with white lettering lies on the ground rolled up behind a pickup truck that a man drove into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing and injuring a number of people, early Wednesday morning, Jan. 1, 2025. The FBI said they recovered an Islamic State group flag, which is black with white lettering, from the vehicle. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
