LAKE LURE, N.C. (AP) — A wanted Tiki bar cook tried to flee authorities by swimming away in a North Carolina river, but was caught by officers waiting downstream.

A Lake Lure Police statement says 38-year-old Jesse Lee Boyd was wanted by the U.S. Marshals Service on warrants accusing him of forgery or counterfeiting in Iowa.

Investigators said they made a plan over the weekend to arrest him at the management office of the Geneva Riverside Tiki Bar. But they say Boyd was warned as he walked to the office and fled on foot before dashing into the Rocky Broad River.

Officers positioned themselves downstream along the banks, and Boyd eventually gave himself up.

A police statement Monday said department officials didn’t know if Boyd has an attorney.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Art Neville, a member of a storied New Orleans musical family who performed with his siblings in The Neville Brothers band and founded the groundbreaking funk group The Meters, died Monday. The artist nicknamed “Poppa Funk” was 81.

Neville’s manager, Kent Sorrell, said Neville died at his home.

“Art ‘Poppa Funk’ Neville passed away peacefully this morning at home with his adoring wife, Lorraine, by his side,” Sorrell said in an email.

The cause of death was not immediately available but Neville had battled a number of health issues including complications from back surgery.

“Louisiana lost an icon today,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said in a news release.

The Neville Brothers spent some of their childhood in the now demolished Calliope housing project in New Orleans and some at a family home in uptown New Orleans.

In a 2003 interview with Offbeat magazine, Art Neville described going to a Methodist church as a child where he had his first encounter with a keyboard.

“My grandmother used to clean the pulpit. She was in there cleaning it one day and I guess she was babysitting me ’cause I was in there with her. She went to one side and all of a sudden I was on the side where the organ was,” he said. “Something told me to turn it on. I reached up and pressed a bass note and it scared the daylights out of me!”

That experience helped kick off a lifelong career as a keyboardist and vocalist.

The Neville Brothers — Art, Charles, Cyril and Aaron — started singing as kids but then went their separate ways in the 1950s and ’60s. In 1954 Art Neville was in high school when he sang the lead on the Hawketts’ remake of a country song called “Mardi Gras Mambo.”

He told the public radio show “American Routes” how he was recruited by the Hawketts. “I don’t know how they found out where I lived,” he said in the interview. “But they needed a piano player. And they came up to the house and they asked my mother and father could I go.”

More than 60 years later, the song remains a staple of the Carnival season, but that longevity never translated into financial success for Art Neville who received no money for it.

“It made me a big shot around school,” Art said with a laugh during a 1993 interview with The Associated Press.

In the late ’60s, Art Neville was a founding member of The Meters, a pioneering American funk band that also included Cyril Neville, Leo Nocentelli (guitar), George Porter Jr. (bass) and Joseph “Zigaboo” Modeliste (drums).

The Meters were the house band for Allen Toussaint’s New Orleans soul classics and opened for the Rolling Stones’ tour of the Americas in 1975 and of Europe in 1976.

They also became known for their session work with Paul McCartney, Robert Palmer and Patti LaBelle and recordings with Dr. John.

The Meters broke up in 1977, but members of the band have played together in groups such as the Funky Meters and the Meter Men. And in more recent years The Meters have reunited for various performances and have often been cited as an inspiration for other groups.

Flea, the bass player for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, paid homage to The Meters when he invited members of the group onstage to perform with the Chili Peppers during a 2016 performance at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

“We are their students,” Flea said.

As The Meters were breaking up, The Neville Brothers were coming together. In 1978 they recorded their first Neville Brothers album.

Charles died in 2018.

For years, The Neville Brothers were the closing act at Jazz Fest. After 2005′s Hurricane Katrina, the four brothers — like many New Orleanians — were scattered across the country while the city struggled to recover. They returned to anchor the festival in 2007.

“This is how it should be,” Art Neville said during a news conference with festival organizers announcing their return to the annual event. “We’re a part of Jazz Fest.”

He shared in three Grammy awards: with The Neville Brothers for “Healing Chant,” in 1989; with a group of musicians on the Stevie Ray Vaughn tribute “SRV Shuffle in 1996; and with The Meters when they got a lifetime achievement in 2018.

“Art will be deeply missed by many, but remembered for imaginatively bringing New Orleans funk to life,” the Recording Academy, which awards the Grammys, said in a news release.

Neville announced his retirement in December.

CORALVILLE, Iowa (AP) — In 2016, Iowa State University accused an employee of fraud and theft in a dispute over the unusual but lucrative campus assets she managed: popular outdoor sculptures made of thousands of Lego bricks.

Three years later, the school has withdrawn its allegations against Teresa McLaughlin under a settlement reached last month. The university paid McLaughlin $225,000 in wages and attorneys’ fees, will offer her health insurance until 2022 and has given her a glowing letter of recommendation from its president calling her an honest employee who made major contributions over 17 years. Iowa State will also dedicate a bench for McLaughlin in Reiman Gardens, the campus landmark that she spent much of her career building as its director.

Those steps end a dispute that derailed the Lego art program conceived by McLaughlin, called Nature Connects. The traveling exhibits featured sculptures of plants and animals, were displayed at zoos and gardens nationwide and brought in revenue for Iowa State.

McLaughlin said she wants to restore her reputation, which she believes was unfairly sullied by her alma mater. She said the university made claims of wrongdoing against her without evidence and while in possession of records that exonerated her.

She said the dispute hurt her finances and “took a great toll on me and my family.”

“I did not think Iowa State would do this to me,” she said in an interview in Coralville, where she lives. She called the experience “confusing, unfair and unfortunate.”

The university does not admit wrongdoing in the settlement, which avoided a June trial.

McLaughlin envisioned the sculptures as a way to draw visitors to Reiman Gardens, a 17-acre (7-hectare) space on the Ames campus. McLaughlin began working there in 1999 and built one of the “finest and most unique public gardens in the country,” according to university President Wendy Wintersteen’s recommendation letter.

Iowa State hired Brooklyn artist Sean Kenney to build the sculptures, which went on display at Reiman Gardens in 2012. Seeing demand to market them nationwide, the school reached agreements with Kenney to build four more.

McLaughlin stepped down as gardens director in 2014 to become director of Nature Connects. Dozens of institutions from Hawaii to Chicago agreed to pay between $70,000 and $150,000 to display the exhibits for several weeks. Directors of zoos and gardens raved about how they boosted attendance.

But by 2016, an aide to Roy Reiman, a top university donor who helped fund the exhibits and for whom the gardens are named, was questioning the costs, including payments to Kenney and McLaughlin, who received a 10% commission on exhibit sales under her university contract.

Emails show that a top aide to then-President Steven Leath pushed to change the formula for splitting the profits with the artist so the school could get a larger “administrative fee.” McLaughlin objected to the request, noting the contracts had been signed after reviews by Iowa State officials and could not be changed unilaterally.

A school-ordered restructuring then laid off McLaughlin’s assistant and transferred oversight of the program’s finances to the administration. Kenney began complaining that the university took away support that was critical to making the exhibits successful and wasn’t paying him what he was promised. A frustrated McLaughlin announced she would take an early retirement but agreed to stay a few months to finalize several pending sales. Things soon got worse.

She received a surprise letter from a law firm hired by Iowa State. The letter ordered her to stop working and telling her she was under investigation for alleged conflicts of interest related to her outside work with Kenney’s company.

Iowa State stopped paying commissions McLaughlin was owed, and she filed a lawsuit seeking payment. The university filed counterclaims accusing McLaughlin of breaching her fiduciary duty and committing fraud and unjust enrichment. It alleged that she was profiting at the university’s expense by secretly helping Kenney market competing exhibits.

McLaughlin said the claims were false, noting that Iowa State approved her limited work for Kenney’s company. She denied ever putting Kenney’s interests ahead of Iowa State’s and she earned little from the arrangement. Iowa State settled its dispute with Kenney in 2017. McLaughlin, 62, said she doesn’t understand why the school fought her for two more years.

On the bench honoring her, McLaughlin has asked the school to enshrine a Dalai Lama quote: “Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.”

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Marvel’s push for more women and people of color in its immensely popular film franchise is extending to behind the camera as it launches its next round of films after the massive success of “Avengers: Endgame.” Of the five films the superhero studio announced at Comic-Con on Saturday, only one is set to be directed by a white man.

“It’s about fresh voices and new voices and great filmmakers who can continue to steer the (Marvel Cinematic Universe) into new places,” Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige said in an interview after the studio’s explosive Hall H panel. “And I am as proud of that lineup of directors as you saw today as any.”

In addition to a slew of women and people of color at the helm of the upcoming Marvel films, the weekend’s announcements promised more diversity on screen.

First up for release is the long-awaited solo film starring Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow, the lethal assassin she has played for nearly a decade. The film is set for release in May 2020.

Johansson said the search for “Black Widow” director Cate Shortland wasn’t easy.

“It’s really interesting because when we were looking for a director, you start to see some of the systemic problems,” Johansson said. “Even looking for a female director who has had enough experience — who has had the opportunity to have the experience to sit at the helm of something huge like this, you know, choices are limited because of that. And it sucks.”

Scarlett Johansson explains why the search for an experienced female director for ‘Black Widow’ highlights a Hollywood problem. (July 21)
The actress added that she was proud to see the diversity on stage during Marvel’s Hall H panel.

“Looking out on that stage tonight, it was incredible. It was really moving, also just to see how incredibly diverse the universe is — and reflects what we see all around us. It’s incredible,” she said.

In terms of more diversity, “Black Widow” is just the beginning.

“The Eternals” will feature a cast full of actors of color, including Kumail Nanjiani, Brian Tyree Henry, and Salma Hayek. Simu Liu will become Marvel’s first big screen Asian American superhero when “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” is released in February 2021. Natalie Portman will play a female Thor in the new “Thor: Love and Thunder,” which will also feature Tessa Thompson’s character, Valkyrie, as the MCU’s first LGBTQ superhero.

“First of all, as new King (of Asgard), she needs to find her queen, so that will be her first order of business. She has some ideas. Keep you posted,” Thompson said during the panel. Feige later confirmed the news in an interview with the website io9.

The studio is also reviving one of Marvel’s most iconic black characters, Blade (previously played by Wesley Snipes), with the help of Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali. Feige told The Associated Press that right after winning his second Academy Award for “Green Book” earlier this year, Ali set up a meeting.

“Within 10 minutes, he basically was like, ‘What’s happening with ‘Blade’? I want to do it.′ And we went, that’s what happening with ‘Blade.’ Let’s do it,” Feige said.

“Captain Marvel,” released in March, was the first of Marvel Studios film to be centered entirely on a female character. It earned $427 million domestically, and along with the DC Comics film “Wonder Woman” has created momentum for more films with female heroes leading the way.

“Marvel is really focused on having very strong female characters at the forefront of their stories,” said actress Rachel Weisz, who also stars in “Black Widow.” ″And I think that’s great. This film has got three. It’s Scarlett, Florence Pugh, myself. So I think yeah, they are doing wonderful work to represent women, people of color, and tell different kinds of stories.”

The sliver of Hollywood still on the outside of the Marvel’s cinematic empire was paying close attention to the news.

Actress, writer and director Lena Waithe tweeted Sunday: “Captain America is black. Thor is a woman. the new Blade got two Oscars. 007 is a black woman. And The Little Mermaid bout to have locs. (Expletive). Just. Got. Real.”