Names and faces
■ Hip-hop artist Kodak Black, whose real name is Bill Kapri, was arrested in Pompano Beach, Fla., early on New Year’s morning and accused of trespassing in the area where he grew up, said officials from the Broward County sheriff’s office. He was taken to jail and released after posting bond. Black, who changed his name from Dieuson Octave to Bill Kapri, grew up in Pompano Beach. He was honored in June for his philanthropy. The proclamation was sponsored by former Broward commissioner and mayor Dale Holness and was prompted, in part, by Black paying college costs for three children of the two FBI agents killed during a raid in Sunrise in February, paying funeral costs for a police officer in South Carolina, and donating $100,000 to the Nova Southeastern University law school in memory of Meadow Pollack, a victim in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting in 2018. Former President Donald Trump commuted Black’s prison sentence in 2020, on the last day of his presidency. At the time, Black had served about half of a three-year sentence issued after he pleaded guilty to falsifying information on a document used to purchase guns in Miami.
■ Star architect Santiago Calatrava’s multimillion-dollar footbridge of translucent glass and steel is getting redone in less-glamorous trachyte stone after officials in Venice, Italy, say the slippery structure over the grand canal is too dangerous. As tourists wander obliviously on the Ponte della Costituzione, locals proceed with caution. Venetians make sure to walk on the narrow stone strip at the center, some lifting fogged glasses to keep their eyes on the ground. When a visitor trips, they barely lift their gaze. “That is not a bridge,” said Angelo Xalle, 71, a retired port worker who recalled helping people with broken chins or foreheads get up from its sleek floor. “It’s a trap.” Located near Venice’s train station, it was meant to symbolize the city’s embrace of modernity, but it has become better known as a stage for ruinous tumbles and dangerous slips. “People hurt themselves, and they sue the administration,” said Francesca Zaccariotto, Venice’s public works official. “We have to intervene.” Acclaimed around the world for work including the World Trade Center Transportation Hub in New York, Calatrava was commissioned to design the bridge in 1999.