Names and faces
Muhammad Ali Jr. was detained and questioned at a Washington airport before being allowed to board a flight to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., after meeting with lawmakers to discuss a separate airport detention incident last month, a lawyer for the late heavyweight champion’s son said Friday. Ali and his mother, Khalilah Camacho Ali, were stopped at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport after returning from Jamaica on Feb. 7. They traveled to Washington on Wednesday without incident to speak to members of a congressional subcommittee on border security about that experience. But attorney Chris Mancini said that when Ali attempted to board a JetBlue Airways flight home to Florida on Friday he was detained for 20 minutes. Mancini said Ali spoke to Department of Homeland Security officials by telephone and showed his driver’s license and passport before he was allowed to board. A spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration acknowledged that the agency confirmed Ali’s identity before he boarded his plane. Spokesman Lisa Farbstein said Ali also was patted down because his jewelry set off a checkpoint scanner alarm.
Avatar director James Cameron said the long-gestating sequel to his science- fiction epic will not be released next year. “201 8 is not happening,” Cameron told The Toronto Star. Cameron has been developing four more Avatar films simultaneously. Though Avatar 2 had not officially been scheduled for next year, 20th Century Fox in November dated a film from Cameron’s production company for Dec. 21, 2018. That means that at least a decade will likely follow Cameron’s 2009 Avatar before a sequel lands in theaters. Cameron has said the scripts are done for all four films and that pre-production work continues. The director called it “an epic undertaking” and “not unlike building the Three Gorges Dam” in China.