YCLOAK

Chinese tourists used to flock to Hong Kong before the pandemic, bringing empty suitcases to fill with everything from baby milk powder, to cosmetics and nonprescription drugs. Large tour groups would descend on the city, sparking complaints from some locals.

When Hong Kong reopened its borders earlier this year, many people were expecting an influx of tourists from mainland China once again, but the past three years have changed the traveling and shopping behavior of Chinese people. 

Since reopening in January, Hong Kong has seen 20.5 million tourists as of the end of August, 80% of whom are from the mainland. That is a big jump from the little over 600,000 last year but is still just half the level seen in the first eight months of 2018, the year before the city was hit by widespread protests and two years before the coronavirus closed borders.

Moreover, those who are coming are buying less, according to industry experts and shop owners. 

“I used to be so busy that I couldn’t keep up with the tourists,” said Kenneth Fung, owner of Fung’s Co., a shop in the popular beachside neighborhood of Stanley, where he sells handwritten colorful depictions of auspicious Chinese characters.

“I would sell 100 of these characters a day, but now I can only sell 10,” he told VOA.

Some shops have had to close, unable to stay in business.

The slow rebound in Chinese outbound travel – one of the biggest sources of tourists for the world – is affecting other destinations around the world as well but it is especially noticeable and worrying in Hong Kong, where 80% of tourists have traditionally been from the mainland.

Before the pandemic, tourism was one of the main pillars of the economy, accounting for nearly 5% of its economic growth and more than 6% of its jobs.

“Other than financial [services], tourism is really a main source of income for Hong Kong. It supplies a lot of jobs for everybody, especially those medium-education workers, so we need tourism in Hong Kong,” said Paul Leung, chairman of the Hong Kong Inbound Travel Association, whose members include 100 travel agencies and tour bus companies.

Tourists interviewed told the VOA that mainlanders have grown used to shopping online during the pandemic, and Hong Kong no longer offered cheaper prices for luxury or other goods.

“Now we can buy whatever we want in the mainland,” said Lin Ping from Beijing. “The price difference isn’t great. … The prices of some online direct sales are more discounted than that of Hong Kong, from what I’ve seen in the past couple of days.”

Lin said she had done very little shopping and was simply enjoying the scenic attractions in the city, including on The Peak, a popular tourist destination that offers breathtaking views of Victoria Harbor.

Mainland China’s consumers also have more options for duty-free shopping now, with such centers opening on the mainland, rivaling Hong Kong.

A bigger underlying reason may be China’s slower economic growth, high youth unemployment and massive property bubble, which has seen housing values fall and made people hesitant to spend, economists said.

“They’re not into showy stuff like LV bags like before, and they don’t go to so many places outside of China anymore,” said independent Shanghai-based economist Andy Xie. “The mentality that you consume to show off to other people, that’s down sharply.”

Anti-Chinese sentiment, which exists in Hong Kong as elsewhere, may also have discouraged some people from traveling outside the mainland, Xie said.

“If people don’t like you, what’s the point of going there? The world doesn’t like you; Chinese people know that. You look at Europe and the United States, very few go there. The market has not caught on yet,” Xie said.

Cecilia Wang, a recent college graduate from neighboring Guangdong province, said she was worried about visiting Hong Kong prior to this trip because the last time she was here, the protests made her feel unsafe. She had also heard about discrimination against mainlanders, including rude service by shopkeepers of those speaking Mandarin Chinese rather than the local Cantonese dialect.

“After coming here, I feel that Hong Kong people are quite warmhearted. I didn’t feel any discrimination,” Wang said.

In a statement issued to VOA, the Hong Kong Tourism Board, in charge of promoting inbound travel, said the outlook for tourism recovery in the second half of the year was stable and gradual. 

“We are optimistic that the arrivals could reach 30 million for the full year 2023,” it said. 

That is about 50% of the pre-pandemic level. Industry officials believe it could take another year or longer before Hong Kong’s tourism and retail sectors bounce back. 

“The pace of recovery in the future will still be highly affected by varied factors, including air capacity, [the] global economy, and regional tourism competition, especially the exchange rate,” the board said.

It also said, though, that the latest visitor survey it conducted shows “Hong Kong continues to captivate visitors with its shopping, culinary offerings, theme parks, and excellent connectivity.” 

The agency also said visitors are increasingly interested in more comprehensive and diverse experiences in Hong Kong, particularly its arts, culture, and outdoors, such as its museums, neighborhoods, photographic opportunities, and outlying islands’ natural attractions.

To attract more tourists, the board began giving out 500,000 free plane tickets this year, as well as gifts to tourists, and has invited over 1,000 travel industry personnel, media, celebrities and influencers from mainland China and overseas to visit Hong Kong. 

Some of the city’s quarter of a million travel industry workers, however, have had to change careers as tourist arrivals fell from 65 million in 2018 to 56 million in 2019 during the protests, and then plunged to 3.5 million in 2020 when the pandemic hit. Arrivals dropped to just 91,398 in 2021, before starting to climb in 2022, but only to 604,564. 

Leung said his travel agency and other businesses, including hotels, face difficulties finding workers. 

“If you’re going to have it back to 70 million, I think it will take quite some time,” Leung said. “We need time to recover. No. 1 is the hotel, the manpower, the transportation.”

But he added: “We really have confidence that Hong Kong will bounce back.” Sitting in his empty shop, Fung, the artistic calligrapher, draws the Chinese word for “good fortune” in bright colors. He refuses to shut down his business, despite a lack of customers.

“I’ve been working here for nearly 40 years. At my age, I won’t be able to switch to a different career,” Fung said, before closing for the day.  
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The giant pandas that have been living at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington for 23 years will return to China by the end of this year. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias takes a look at the diplomatic moves that brought them to the United States and how politics and new conservation strategies could impact the species’ future.
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A Ukrainian composer has been commissioned to write an opera about mothers from that country going into Russia to rescue their forcibly detained children.

The Metropolitan Opera and Lincoln Center Theater said Monday that 42-year-old Maxim Kolomiiets will compose the work to a libretto by George Brant, whose “Grounded,” with composer Jeanine Tesori, premieres at the Washington National Opera on October 28 and travels to the Met in autumn 2024. Met general manager Peter Gelb hopes the company can present the new work by 2027 or ’28.

The story is fictional but based on events in Ukraine and The Hague. The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants on March 17 for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian children’s rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, accusing them of abducting children from Ukraine.

“It will be a story of motherhood and childhood, about this strange, very difficult situation where mothers rescue their children and met with many difficulties,” Kolomiiets said in a telephone interview. “For people, for listeners, it will be a good understanding.”

He was living in Kyiv when the war started last year, then three months later moved to Leipzig, Germany, where he had a project and decided to stay.

Gelb said discussions began last fall with Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska when she visited New York and Kolomiiets was picked from among 72 applications after vetting by Met dramaturge Paul Cremo, Gelb and the Met’s artistic staff.

A story framework has been created. A piano-vocal score and libretto will be written in the next year or two and a workshop prepared.

“I felt it was important to have an English-language librettist working with the composer so that story would have the broadest possible audience,” Gelb said.

Gelb has been an advocate of support for Ukraine, banning Russian star soprano Anna Netrebko from the opera house and assisting Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra tours led by his wife, Canadian-Ukrainian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson.

Works in the joint commissioning program can appear at either house.

“It’s my hope it will end up as a full-blown opera and hopefully on our stage,” Gelb said.
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Jane Rosenberg started her courtroom sketch artist career drawing prostitutes in New York’s night court in 1980. Four decades later, she is still making court sketches, but these days some of her portraits are of much more well-known people. Nina Vishneva met with the artist to talk about her work. Anna Rice narrates the story. Camera: Natalia Latukhina, Vladimir Badikov
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A 2022 film highlighting the plight of a person with albinism in Zambia is streaming on Netflix. “Can You See Us” is based on the true story of a boy who becomes a successful musician despite obstacles caused by his genetic condition. Kathy Short reports from Lusaka. VOA footage by Richard Kille.
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Like many horrors before it, bad reviews didn’t scare off moviegoers from buying tickets for ” The Nun II.” The sequel to the 2018 hit, released in 3,728 theaters by Warner Bros., topped the box office in its first weekend in North American theaters earning an estimated $32.6 million, the studio said Sunday.

AP’s Mark Kennedy wrote in his one-star review that it’s “a movie that seems destined to pound a nail into this franchise’s undead coffin” and audiences gave it a C+ CinemaScore. But it hardly matters: Horror is perhaps the most reliably critic-proof genre, at least when it comes to opening weekend.

The Michael Graves-directed sequel starring Taissa Farmiga and Storm Reid fell far short of the debut for the first film ($53.8 million), but it’s still a solid launch. “The Nun” movies are part of the so-called Conjuring universe, which now has nine films, and $2.1 billion in box office, to its name. The sequel also played well internationally, picking up $52.7 million from 69 markets (Mexico being the strongest with $8.9 million) and boosting its global debut to $85.3 million.

“To have a horror universe is really powerful in terms of the revenue generating potential,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “It’s a great bet that Warners made on the horror moviegoing experience never waning.”

And there are many more scary movies on the calendar through the fall including “A Death in Venice,” which opens next week, “Saw X” on Sept. 29 and “The Exorcist: Believer” on Oct. 6.

“The Nun II” bumped Denzel Washington’s ” Equalizer 3 ” to second place in its second weekend. The Columbia Pictures release added $12.1 million, bringing its domestic grosses to $61.9 million and its worldwide earnings to $107.7 million.

Third place went to another new movie: The third installment of Nia Vardalos’s “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” which arrives 21 years after the first film became a massive sleeper hit earning some $369 million against a $5 million production budget. Released by Focus Features in 3,650 theaters, the third film earned an estimated $10 million, overwhelmingly driven by female audiences (71%) who were 25 or older (83%).

Vardalos wrote, directed and stars in “Greek Wedding 3,” which brings back John Corbett and takes the gang to Greece. AP’s Jocelyn Noveck wrote in her review that the movie, which has gotten mostly poor marks, is “like a thrice-warmed piece of baklava.”

The Indian revenge thriller, “Jawan,” starring Shah Rukh Khan, opened in fourth place with $6.2 million from only 813 locations. It was released in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. Khan, a Bollywood superstar, also led another box office sensation this year, “Pathaan,” which has made $130 million worldwide.

“Barbie,” which comes to VOD on Tuesday, dropped to No. 5 after 8 triumphant weeks with $5.9 million from 3,281 locations. The Warner Bros. film has now made $620.5 million domestically.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. “The Nun II,” $32.6 million.

2. “The Equalizer 3,” $12.1 million.

3. “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3,” $10 million.

4. “Jawan,” $6.2 million.

5. “Barbie,” $5.9 million.

6. “Blue Beetle,” $3.8 million.

7. “Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story,” $3.4 million.

8. “Oppenheimer,” $3 million.

9. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem,” $2.6 million.
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An Israeli delegation arrived in Saudi Arabia on Sunday to attend a U.N. conference on world heritage sites, in the first public visit by government officials to the kingdom, an Israeli official said. 

The delegation is led by the head of Israel’s Antiquities Authority and includes diplomats, the official said. It is not a bilateral visit, and it was unclear whether they would meet with Saudi officials. 

The official was not authorized to discuss the matter with media and spoke on condition of anonymity. The official noted that Israel took part in a video game competition in Saudi Arabia earlier this year. 

The visit comes as Washington is pushing to broker normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which are believed to have quietly cultivated ties in recent years over their shared suspicion of Iran. A formal agreement would be a historic step toward integrating Israel into the wider region, but it faces major challenges. 

The Saudis are reportedly demanding major progress on resolving the conflict with the Palestinians — a hard sell for the most right-wing government in Israel’s history — as well as U.S. defense guarantees and aid in establishing a civilian nuclear program. 

Saudi Arabia is hosting the 45th session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, which begins Sunday and runs until Sept. 25. 
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The Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival was awarded Saturday to a hilarious and shockingly explicit reworking of Frankenstein, Poor Things, starring Emma Stone as a sex-mad reanimated corpse.

An ongoing Hollywood strike may have robbed Venice of its usual bevy of stars, but its strong selection showed the world’s oldest film festival could still boast of its status as a launchpad for Oscar contenders.

Poor Things by Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos was labelled an “instant classic” by critics. It looks set to repeat the success he had with his 2018 film, The Favourite, which after two awards at Venice won a string of international prizes.

Stone plays Bella, a woman brought back to life with an infant’s brain by a mad scientist (Willem Dafoe).

Accepting the award, Lanthimos said the film “couldn’t exist without another incredible creature, Emma Stone,” who could not appear due to the strike.

The film features some of the most explicit sex ever seen in an A-list Hollywood film as Stone’s character discovers — and very much enjoys — her sexuality.

The film brilliantly skewers the way men try and fail to control the innocent Bella — particularly a roguish Mark Ruffalo — triggering bursts of spontaneous applause and riotous laughter from audiences in Venice.

‘Terrifying’ AI threat

The Volpi Cup for best actress went to 25-year-old Cailee Spaeny for her portrayal of Elvis Presley’s wife in Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla.

Best actor went to Peter Sarsgaard for his performance as a man suffering from dementia in the drama, Memory, in which he played alongside Jessica Chastain.

He used his speech to back the Hollywood strike and warn of the “terrifying” threat from artificial intelligence, one of the key issues in the dispute.

“If we lose that battle in the strike, our industry will be the first of many to fall,” Sarsgaard said.

The runner-up Silver Lion went to Japan’s Ryusuke Hamaguchi for Evil Does Not Exist, a quiet and eerie eco-fable that follows his Oscar-winning Drive My Car.

Venice audiences were floored by two brutal migrant dramas, and both went home with awards.

Io Capitano, the epic story of Senegalese teenagers crossing Africa to reach Europe, won best director for Italy’s Matteo Garrone (Gomorrah) and a best newcomer prize for its star, Seydou Sarr, in his first-ever film.

Green Border, a harrowing account of refugees trapped between Belarus and Poland, took the third-place Special Jury Prize.

One of the stranger entries in competition, El Conde, which reimagined Chile’s former dictator Augusto Pinochet as a blood-sucking vampire, won best screenplay for writer-director Pablo Larrain.

The winners were chosen by a jury led by director Damien Chazelle (La La Land) and included Jane Campion and Laura Poitras, who won last year with Big Pharma documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.

Strike impact

Hollywood stars with independent films were allowed to attend Venice by striking unions, including Chastain and Adam Driver, who starred in Michael Mann’s racing biopic Ferrari.

Both backed the strikes, with Chastain saying actors had been silenced for too long about “workplace abuse” and “unfair contracts.”

But director David Fincher, who premiered his assassin movie The Killer starring Michael Fassbender and has been closely associated with Netflix, triggered controversy by saying he understood “both sides.”

The strong line-up helped distract from the controversy around the inclusion of Roman Polanski in the out-of-competition section.

As a convicted sex offender, the 90-year-old director was already struggling to find distribution in the U.S. and other countries for his slapstick comedy The Palace.

The response from Venice will not have helped: it currently holds a resounding zero percent on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, variously described as a “laugh-less debacle” and “soul-throttling crap” by critics.

Another director effectively blacklisted in the U.S., Woody Allen, had a better time with his 50th film (and first in French), Coup de Chance. Some critics considered it his best film in years.

Here’s the complete list of winners from the 23 entries in the main competition:

Golden Lion for best film: Poor Things by Yorgos Lanthimos
Silver Lion - Grand Jury Prize: Evil Does Not Exist by Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Silver Lion for best director: Matteo Garrone for Io Capitano
Volpi Cup for best actress: Cailee Spaeny for Priscilla by Sofia Coppola
Volpi Cup for best actor: Peter Sarsgaard for Memory by Michel Franco
Best screenplay: Guillermo Calderon and Pablo Larrain for El Conde by Pablo Larrain
Special Jury Prize: Green Border by Agnieszka Holland
Marcello Mastroianni Prize for best newcomer: Seydou Sarr for Io Capitano by Matteo Garrone 

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Budget for new public buildings includes allotment for original artworks
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Since its founding, the United States has incorporated art into its federal buildings. These days, one-half of one percent of a new building’s budget usually goes to funding original art designed specifically for that structure. As VOA’s Dora Mekouar reports, it’s a tradition that helps preserve American culture for future generations. Camera: Adam Greenbaum
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Rescuers from across Europe rushed to a cave in Turkey on Thursday, launching an operation to save an American researcher who became trapped almost 1,000 meters below the cave’s entrance after suffering stomach bleeding.

Experienced caver Mark Dickey, 40, suddenly became ill during an expedition with a handful of others, including three other Americans, in the Morca cave in southern Turkey’s Taurus Mountains, the European Association of Cave Rescuers said.

While rescuers, including a Hungarian doctor, have reached and treated Dickey, it could be days and possibly weeks before they are able to get him out of the cave, which is too narrow in places for a stretcher to pass through.

In a video message from inside the cave and made available Thursday by Turkey’s communications directorate, Dickey thanked the caving community and the Turkish government for their efforts.

“The caving world is a really tight-knit group and it’s amazing to see how many people have responded on the surface,” said Dickey. ” … I do know that the quick response of the Turkish government to get the medical supplies that I need, in my opinion, saved my life. I was very close to the edge.”

Dickey, who is seen standing and moving around in the video, said that while he is alert and talking, he is not “healed on the inside” and will need a lot of help to get out of the cave. Doctors will decide whether he will need to leave the cave on a stretcher or if he can leave under his own power.

Dickey, who had been bleeding and losing fluid from his stomach, has stopped vomiting and has eaten for the first time in days, according to a New Jersey-based cave rescue group he’s affiliated with. It’s unclear what caused his medical issue.

The New Jersey Initial Response Team said the rescue will require many teams and constant medical care. The group says the cave is also quite cold — about 4-6 degrees Celsius.

Communication with Dickey takes about five to seven hours and is carried out by runners, who go from Dickey to the camp below the surface where a telephone line to speak with the surface has been set up.

Experts said it will be a challenge to successfully rescue Dickey.

Yusuf Ogrenecek of the Speleological Federation of Turkey said that one of the most difficult tasks of cave rescue operations is widening the narrow cave passages to allow stretcher lines to pass through at low depths.

Stretcher lines are labor intensive and require experienced cave rescuers working long hours, Ogrenecek said. He added that other difficult factors range from navigating through mud and water at low temperatures to the psychological toll of staying inside a cave for long periods of time.

Marton Kovacs of the Hungarian Cave Rescue Service said that the cave is being prepared for Dickey’s safe extraction. Passages are being widened and the danger of falling rocks is also being addressed.

Turkish disaster relief agency AFAD and rescue team UMKE are working with Turkish and international cavers on the plan to hoist Dickey out of the cave system, the European Cave Rescue Association said.

The rescue effort currently involves more than 170 people, including doctors, paramedics who are tending to Dickey and experienced cavers, Ogrenecek said, adding that the rescue operation could take up to two to three weeks.

The operation includes rescue teams from Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Turkey.

Dickey was described by the association as “a highly trained caver and a cave rescuer himself” who is well known as a cave researcher, or speleologist, from his participation in many international expeditions. He is secretary of the association’s medical committee.

Dickey was on an expedition mapping the 1,276-meter-deep Morca cave system for the Anatolian Speleology Group Association (ASPEG) when he ran into trouble about 1,000 meters down, according to Ogrenecek. He initially became ill on Saturday, but it took until Sunday morning to notify others who were above ground.

Justin Hanley, a 28-year-old firefighter from near Dallas, Texas, said he met Dickey a few months ago when he took a cave rescue course Dickey taught in Hungary and Croatia. He described Dickey as upbeat and as someone who sees the good in everyone.

“Mark is the guy that should be on that rescue mission that’s leading and consulting and for him to be the one that needs to be rescued is kind of a tragedy in and of itself,” he said.

A team of rescuers from Italy’s National Alpine and Speleological Rescue Team will be flying to Turkey on Thursday night. A total of around 50 rescuers will be at the entrance of the cave early Friday ready to participate in the operation directed by Turkish authorities.

The rescue teams hope that the extraction can begin on Saturday or Sunday. Kovacs said that lifting Dickey will likely take several days, and that several bivouac points are being prepared along the way so that Dickey and rescue teams can rest.

The cave has been divided into several sections, with each country’s rescue team being responsible for one section.

The Hungarian Cave Rescue Service, made up of volunteer rescuers, was the first to arrive at Dickey’s location and provided emergency blood transfusions to stabilize his condition. 
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It has been nearly five months since civil war erupted in Sudan. The U.N. refugee agency estimates that by year’s end, 1.8 million people will have fled to neighboring countries. VOA’s Nairobi Bureau Chief Mariama Diallo reports on a group of Sudanese artists who came together recently to deal with the trauma of the war by showcasing their work in the Kenyan capital
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Thousands of Burning Man attendees readied to make their “exodus” on Monday as the counter-culture arts festival in the Nevada desert ends in a sea of drying mud instead of a party around its flaming effigy namesake, Reuters reported. Rain over the weekend turned the once hard-packed ground to pudding. One person died at the event in the Black Rock Desert, authorities said on Sunday, providing few details.
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Decommissioned in 1945, the Old City Hall Station remains the ‘jewel in the crown’ for NY transit system
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Spain’s men’s national team Monday denounced the “unacceptable behavior” of the country’s suspended football chief Luis Rubiales over his infamous World Cup kiss.

Rubiales, 46, has defied expectations and refused to resign as president of the Spanish football federation (RFEF) after forcibly kissing Jenni Hermoso on the lips following Spain’s victory in the Women’s World Cup.

Atletico Madrid’s Alvaro Morata read out a statement on behalf of the entire team congratulating their female counterparts on “a historic” achievement.

He said the men’s team “expressed their solidarity with the women players and deplored that their success had been tarnished” by Rubiales at the August 20 prize giving ceremony in Sydney.

Morata added: “We want to denounce the unacceptable behavior of Mr. Rubiales who has not lived up to the institution he represents.

“We are firmly on the side of the values enshrined in sport.

“Spanish football should be the source of respect, inspiration, inclusivity and diversity, and should lead by example in its behavior both on and off the pitch.”

Hermoso has joined a mass strike of women players, saying she did not consent to the kiss.

Women players’ union FUTPRO, Hermoso and 80 other players have said they would not accept an international call-up “if the current leadership continues” at the RFEF.

Rubiales has stood firm in refusing to stand down from his post “because of a little consensual kiss,” provoking widespread indignation.

World football’s governing body FIFA has suspended him for 90 days and launched a disciplinary inquiry into his behavior.

Rubiales is also the subject of an investigation by Spain’s sports court.
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A guitar expert and two journalists have launched a global hunt for a missing bass guitar owned by Paul McCartney, bidding to solve what they brand “the greatest mystery in rock and roll.”

The trio of lifelong Beatles fans are searching for McCartney’s original Höfner bass — last seen in London in 1969 — in order to reunite the instrument with the former Fab Four frontman.

McCartney played the instrument throughout the 1960s, including at Hamburg’s Top Ten Club, at the Cavern Club in Liverpool and on early Beatles recordings at London’s Abbey Road studios.

“This is the search for the most important bass in history — Paul McCartney’s original Höfner,” the search party says on a website (thelostbass.com) newly-created for the endeavor.

“This is the bass you hear on ‘Love Me Do’, ‘She Loves You’, and ‘Twist and Shout’. The bass that powered Beatlemania — and shaped the sound of the modern world.”

McCartney bought the left-handed Höfner 500/1 Violin Bass for around £30 — about £550 ($585) today — in Hamburg in 1961, during The Beatles’ four-month residency at the Top Ten Club.

It disappeared without a trace nearly eight years later in January 1969 when the band were recording the “Get Back/Let It Be” sessions in central London.

By then its appearance was unique — after being overhauled in 1964, including with a complete respray in a three-part dark sunburst polyurethane finish — and it had become McCartney’s back-up bass.

‘Give something back’

The team now hunting for the guitar say it has not been seen since, but that “numerous theories and false sightings have occurred over the years.”

Appealing for fresh tips on its whereabouts, they insist their mission is “a search, not an investigation”, noting all information will be treated confidentially.

“With a little help from our friends — from fans and musicians to collectors and music shops — we can get the bass back to where it once belonged,” the trio stated on the website.

“Paul McCartney has given us so much over the last 62 years. The Lost Bass project is our chance to give something back.”

Nick Wass, a semi-retired former marketing manager and electric guitar developer for Höfner who co-wrote the definitive book on the Höfner 500/1 Violin Bass, is spearheading the search.

“It was played in Hamburg, at The Cavern Club, at Abbey Road. Isn’t that enough alone to get this bass back?” he added.

“I know, because I talked with him about it, that Paul would be so happy — thrilled — if this bass could get back to him.”

Wass is joined by journalist husband and wife team Scott and Naomi Jones.

The trio said other previously lost guitars have been found.

John Lennon’s Gibson J-160E — which he used to write “I Want To Hold Your Hand” — disappeared during The Beatles’ Christmas Show in 1963.

It resurfaced half a century later, and then sold at auction for $2.4 million.
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Burning Man, the annual weeklong festival in Nevada closed its entrance Saturday due to flooding from recent storms. Some of the thousands of festivalgoers are being warned to shelter in place. Despite the weather, the event drew artists from around the world, including six Chinese artists who spoke with Genia Dulot before the rain set in. (Camera and Produced by: Genia Dulot)
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The third installment in the Denzel Washington-led “Equalizer” franchise topped the domestic box office this weekend with $34.5 million according to studio estimates Sunday. By the end of the Monday holiday, Sony expects that total will rise to $42 million.

Labor Day signals the end of Hollywood’s summer movie season, which will surpass $4 billion in ticket sales for the first time since the pandemic thanks in no small part to “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” which are still netting records even after seven weeks in theaters. This weekend, Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” officially became the biggest movie of 2023 with over $1.36 billion globally, surpassing “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” while Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” sailed past $850 million globally to become the No. 3 movie of the year and Nolan’s third highest grossing.

“The Equalizer 3” arrived at a fraught time for Hollywood, with actors seven weeks into a strike for fair contracts with major entertainment companies and movie theaters bracing for a somewhat depleted fall season as a result.

The ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike meant Washington was unable to stump for the movie, which was directed by his frequent collaborator Antoine Fuqua and brings his vigilante character Robert McCall to Italy’s Amalfi coast. While the lack of a major star on a promotional tour would normally be considered a liability for a film’s box office potential, “Equalizer 3” may be the rare exception that could withstand a rollout without Washington’s help simply because it’s a recognizable franchise.

“One of the biggest movie stars in the world took us out on a high note,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “Studios often coast to Labor Day, but Sony was smart to choose this weekend to open ‘The Equalizer 3.'”

Sony opened the R-rated “Equalizer 3” in over 3,900 locations in North America, including on IMAX and premium large format screens, where it opened in line with the previous two films which both went on to make over $190 million globally. With co-financing from TSG and Eagle Pictures, the film carried a $70 million production price tag. The film received generally positive reviews from critics (76% on Rotten Tomatoes) and overwhelmingly positive reviews from audiences, who gave it an A on CinemaScore and a five-star PostTrak rating.

“It’s uncanny the consistency of the Equalizer franchise,” Dergarabedian said.

Overseas, it made $26.1 million, contributing to a $60.6 million global debut.

In second place, “Barbie” added $10.6 million over the weekend in the U.S. and Canada, pushing its domestic total to $609.5 million. Warner Bros.’ other main theatrical offering, “Blue Beetle” added $7.3 million to take third. The DC superhero film has grossed $56.6 million in three weekends in North America. Fourth place went to Sony’s “Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story,” which is projecting $6.6 million through Sunday, down 62% from its first-place opening weekend, and $8.5 million including Monday.

“Oppenheimer” landed in fifth place on the domestic charts with an estimated $5.5 million ($7.4 million including estimates for Monday) from 2,543 theaters. This brings its domestic total to $310.3 million and its global take to $851 million.

The Universal film opened in China on Wednesday, playing on 35,000 screens, where it is estimated to have made $30.3 million in its first five days. A significant portion of that ($9.3 million through Sunday) came from 736 IMAX screens.

IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond said in a statement that “Oppenheimer’s” China debut showed that “it’s nowhere near finished dazzling audiences worldwide.” Gelfond added that its success also offers “a powerful demonstration of our surging market share around the world.”

That the 18-week summer movie season hit $4 billion is significant for an industry still recovering from the pandemic and facing uncertainty in the fall if the actors and writers strikes continue. Before the pandemic, $4 billion summers had become the standard for the industry and generally accounted for at least 40% of the total box office for the year. Last summer netted out with $3.4 billion.

And this summer had its share of hits, flops and surprises, with “Barbenheimer” accounting for over $900 million of the $4 billion haul.

“The summer box office is vitally important and a strong indicator of the health of the industry,” Dergarabedian said. “Many were really skeptical that we could get to $4 billion. We’re hitting it literally in the final days of the summer. It’s a reminder that any hit or miss makes a profound impact on the bottom line.”

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Tuesday.

1. “The Equalizer 3,” $34.5 million.

2. “Barbie,” $10.6 million.

3. “Blue Beetle,” $7.3 million.

4. “Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story,” $6.6 million.

5. “Oppenheimer,” $5.5 million.

6. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem,” $4.8 million.

7. “Bottoms,” $3 million.

8. “Meg 2: The Trench,” $2.9 million.

9. “Strays,” $2.5 million.

10. “Talk to Me,” $1.8 million.
    …

The first production co-directed by Iranian and Israeli filmmakers had to be shot in secret to prevent possible interference by Tehran, directors Zar Amir Ebrahimi and Guy Nattiv told Reuters Sunday.

“Tatami,” a tense thriller centered on a world judo championship, got its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival at the weekend, receiving a standing ovation.

The film takes place over the course of the single day of competition as an Iranian judoka champion, played by Farsi-speaking U.S. actress Arienne Mandi, is ordered to fake an injury to avoid a possible match-up with an Israeli competitor.

Amir Ebrahimi and Nattiv shot the movie in Georgia, a country Iranians can easily visit. They stayed in separate hotels, spoke English and did not let on that they were making such a politically charged film.

“I knew there are many Iranians there, so we were trying to keep it calm and secret,” said Amir Ebrahimi, who is an award-winning actress and stars in the film, playing the judoka’s increasingly terrified trainer.

“We were undercover. We knew it was a dangerous thing,” said Nattiv, whose previous movie “Golda” premiered at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.

Iran does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and has banned its athletes from competing against Israelis.

In an incident that inspired “Tatami,” the International Judo Federation in 2021 gave Iran a four-year ban for pressuring one of its fighters not to face an Israeli.

Claustrophobic

Amir Ebrahimi, who won the best actress award in Cannes in 2022 for “Holy Spider,” fled Iran in 2008 for fear of imprisonment and lashings after a private video of her was leaked.

She said she had to take time to think through the possible consequences before accepting Nattiv’s offer to make the film.

“What I have learnt about the Iranian government is that as long as you are afraid, they can arrest you, they can kill you, they can make trouble around you. But as long as you are not afraid … it is going to be fine,” she said.

The film was shot in black and white, using a tight, 4:3 format, like for old television programs.

“These women are living in a black and white world. There are no colors. The box is the claustrophobic world they live in. That is the one thing they want to break. They want their freedom,” Nattiv said.

Children growing up in Iran were made to fear Israel as an implacable enemy, Amir Ebrahimi said – something Nattiv said was also happening in his own homeland, with Iran portrayed as an existential threat.

Nattiv revealed he had helped Amir Ebrahimi pay a clandestine visit to Israel, something that Tehran absolutely forbids for its citizens.

“I loved it. We could be from the same nation, the same family, we are the same,” said Amir Ebrahimi.
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The changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace may draw tourists from far and wide, but Sunday visitors to the landmark were treated to a different sort of spectacle: a parade of corgis dressed up in crowns, tiaras and royal outfits.

Around 20 royal fans and their pet corgis gathered to walk their dogs outside the palace in central London to remember Queen Elizabeth II a year since her death.

Corgis were the late queen’s constant companions since she was a child, and Elizabeth owned around 30 throughout her life. Generations of the dogs descended from Susan, a corgi that was given to the queen on her 18th birthday.

Agatha Crerer-Gilbert, who organized Sunday’s event, said she would like the corgi march to take place every year in Elizabeth’s memory.

“I can’t see a better way to remember her than through her corgis, through the breed that she loved and cherished through her life,” she said.

“You know, I can’t still get used to the fact that she’s not physically around us, but she’s looking at us. Look, the sun is shining, I thought it would shine on us today,” she added.

Aleksandr Barmin, who owns a corgi named Cinnamon and has taken the pet to attend past royal-related events, said the parade was a poignant reminder that Elizabeth is no longer around.

“It’s a really hard feeling, to be honest … it’s really sad that we don’t have (the queen) among us anymore,” he said. “But still, Her Majesty the Queen is still in our hearts.”

Sept. 8 will be the first anniversary of the death of the 96-year-old queen at her Balmoral castle estate in Scotland. She was queen for 70 years and was Britain’s longest-reigning sovereign. 
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It seemed wistfully appropriate, somehow, that news of Jimmy Buffett’s death emerged at the beginning of the Labor Day weekend, the demarcation point of every American summer’s symbolic end. Because for so many, the 76-year-old Buffett embodied something they held onto ever so tightly as the world grew ever more complex: the promise of an eternal summer of sand, sun, blue salt water and gentle tropical winds.

He was the man whose studied devil-may-care attitude became a lifestyle and a multimillion-dollar business — a connecting filament between the suburbs and the Florida Keys and, beyond them, the Caribbean. From Margaritaville to the unspecified tropical paradise where he just wanted to eat cheeseburgers (“that American creation on which I feed”), he became a life’s-a-beach avatar for anyone working for the weekend and hoping to unplug — even in the decades before “unplugging” became a thing.

“It’s important to have as much fun as possible while we’re here. It balances out the times when the minefield of life explodes,” he posted last year.

The beach has stood in for informality and relaxation in American popular culture for more than a century, propelled by the early Miss America pageants on the Atlantic City boardwalk and the culturally appropriative “tiki” aesthetic that GIs brought back from the South Pacific after World War II. It gained steam with the Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello “Beach Blanket Bingo” years, the mainstreaming of surfing and beach-motel culture and the Beach Boys’ “California Girls.” And it continues unabated — just look to the dubious stylings of MTV’s “Jersey Shore.”

That train arrived at Margaritaville in the 1970s, and Buffett jumped aboard and became the conductor and chief engineer of its gently rebellious counterculture. He was hardly a critical darling, but he was, as he sang, “a pirate, 200 years too late” who believed that latitude directly impacted attitude. That accounted for a lot of the mass appeal.

These days, for every piece of the culture that made the shoreline or the tropical island a potentially dispiriting place to become unanchored — “The Beach” or “Lost” or even, heaven help us, “Gilligan’s Island” — there is a counterbalancing Buffett song right there to tell you that at the edge of the land you can find peace, or at least a chance at it.

There was of course “Margaritaville,” the song that launched a “Parrothead” empire, the one that prescribed taking time “watching the sun bake” and invoked “booze in the blender” and shrimp “beginnin’ to boil” (from which you can draw a direct line to the sensibility of seafood restaurant chains like Joe’s Crab Shack).

There was “Last Mango in Paris,” in which the singer had to “get out of the heat” to meet his hero, who told him to inhale all that life offers, and that even after that, “Jimmy, there’s still so much to be done.” There was “’Bama Breeze,” an ode to a bar along the Gulf Coast where “you’re one of our own” and, says the protagonist, “Good God, I feel at home down there.”

And there was “Come Monday,” in which a trip to do a gig in San Francisco — on Labor Day weekend, no less — became a meditation on city (“four lonely days in that brown LA haze”) vs. paradise (“that night in Montana”) and which he liked better.

Here was the funny thing, though: In that song, the unrepentantly inland Montana became his beach, his paradise of the moment. That was part of why he resonated: because the metaphorical Buffett beach could be pretty much anywhere that contained people looking for a bit of peace.

Just as country music spent decades building “country” from an actual geography into an entire state of mind, Buffett — whose roots were in country and folk — did the same thing with the beach. In his hands, it became an aesthetic as much as a place — the anti-city, where the backbreaking labor and the cubicle blues could be left behind for a realm where real people roamed. That’s been a deeply American trope from the beginning.

Americans have always romanticized the frontier — the edge of civilization, the place whose exploration defined them. But the frontier was, of course, a lonely and dangerous place. As Buffett rhapsodized, the sand-covered edge of the land that he so adored was also the edge of civilization — but only in the most appealing (and, not coincidentally, mostly apolitical) ways possible. In the universe of his songs, the beach was a safe frontier that you could explore if you wanted to. But you could also sit back in a straw hut and hat, sip a Corona, contemplate your navel and your sins — and be left alone.

In their 1998 book “The Beach: The History of Paradise on Earth,” Lena Lenček and Gideon Bosker trace the emergence of the beach as “a narcotic for holiday masses.” They write: “Before it could be transformed into a theater of pleasure, it had to be discovered, claimed and invented as a place apart from the messy business of survival.”

Buffett and his music — and the empire they begat — became pivotal figures in that claiming and invention. Through them, the off-the-grid sensibility and the loud-shirt aesthetic were vigorously mainstreamed and popularized.

All of his imagery, beach and beach-adjacent, shouted to us that there was a better, more relaxing way than regular daily life. It said that all those characters and people were waiting there for us with bare, sandy feet and cold beers and a bit of melancholy, and that we could jack into that sunny world and escape the monotony — for a long weekend or forever.

And therein lies a rub.

These days, summer ain’t what it used to be. With apologies to Buffett and the Beach Boys, the notion of an “endless summer” has a different, more unsettling connotation after these climate-change-inflected months of dangerous heat and devastating wildfires in places like Maui. Five years ago, even Paradise burned. So “watching the sun bake” has become a statement with multiple layers, and some of them are more rueful than relaxing.

Jimmy Buffett’s work was big on not reading too much into things. You could say, fairly, that his musical aesthetic was built around a three-word statement: Don’t overthink it. “Never meant to last,” he once sang. But as with most artists who echo resoundingly in the culture, his work — and, not incidentally, the legions of Parrotheads whose lifestyles he inspired — takes on additional dimensions when you pull the lens back and consider the broader shoreline.

That was true especially when the flip-flop fantasy collided with the reality that most people live. That collision took place at the intersection where Buffett was the most memorable, where the summer of the mind met the reality of the rest of the year. As he put it in “Son of a Son of a Sailor”: “The sea’s in my veins, my tradition remains. I’m just glad I don’t live in a trailer.”
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The entrance to the Burning Man counterculture festival in the Nevada desert was closed and attendees were urged to shelter in place Saturday as flooding from storms swept through the area.

The entrance will be closed for the remainder of the event, which began Aug. 27 and was scheduled to end Monday, according to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the Black Rock Desert where the festival is being held.

“Officials from BLM and the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office have closed ingress to the Burning Man event effective immediately and for the remainder of the event. Participants inbound for the event should turn around and head home.

“Rain over the last 24 hours has created a situation that required a full stop of vehicle movement on the playa. More rain is expected over the next few days and conditions are not expected to improve enough to allow vehicles to enter the playa.”

About 15 centimeters of rain is believed to have fallen on Friday at the festival site, about 177 kilometers north of Reno, the National Weather Service in Reno said. Another 7.5 centimeters of rain is expected late Saturday into Sunday.

Organizers urged festivalgoers to conserve their food, water and fuel. 
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Singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, who popularized beach bum soft rock with the escapist Caribbean-flavored song Margaritaville and turned that celebration of loafing into an empire of restaurants, resorts and frozen concoctions, has died. He was 76.

“Jimmy passed away peacefully on the night of September 1st surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs,” a statement posted to Buffett’s official website and social media pages said late Friday. “He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many.”

The statement did not say where Buffett died or give a cause of death. Illness had forced him to reschedule concerts in May and Buffett acknowledged in social media posts that he had been hospitalized but provided no specifics.

Margaritaville, released on Feb. 14, 1977, quickly took on a life of its own, becoming a state of mind for those “wastin’ away,” an excuse for a life of low-key fun and escapism for those “growing older, but not up.”

The song is the unhurried portrait of a loafer on his front porch, watching tourists sunbathe while a pot of shrimp is beginning to boil. The singer has a new tattoo, a likely hangover and regrets over a lost love. Somewhere there is a misplaced salt shaker.

“What seems like a simple ditty about getting blotto and mending a broken heart turns out to be a profound meditation on the often painful inertia of beach dwelling,” Spin magazine wrote in 2021. “The tourists come and go, one group indistinguishable from the other. Waves crest and break whether somebody is there to witness it or not. Everything that means anything has already happened and you’re not even sure when.”

The song — from the album Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes — spent 22 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and peaked at No. 8. The song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2016 for its cultural and historic significance, became a karaoke standard and helped brand Key West, Florida, as a distinct sound of music and a destination known the world over.

“There was no such place as Margaritaville,” Buffett told the Arizona Republic in 2021. “It was a made-up place in my mind, basically made up about my experiences in Key West and having to leave Key West and go on the road to work and then come back and spend time by the beach.”

The song soon inspired restaurants and resorts, turning Buffett’s alleged desire for the simplicity of island life into a multimillion brand. He landed at No. 13 in Forbes’ America’s Richest Celebrities in 2016 with a net worth of $550 million.

Music critics were never very kind to Buffett or his catalogue, including the sandy beach-side snack bar songs like Fins, Come Monday and Cheeseburgers in Paradise. But his legions of fans, called “Parrotheads,” regularly turned up for his concerts wearing toy parrots, cheeseburgers, sharks and flamingos on their heads, leis around their necks and loud Hawaiian shirts.

“It’s pure escapism is all it is,” he told the Republic. “I’m not the first one to do it, nor shall I probably be the last. But I think it’s really a part of the human condition that you’ve got to have some fun. You’ve got to get away from whatever you do to make a living or other parts of life that stress you out. I try to make it at least 50/50 fun to work and so far it’s worked out.”

His special Gulf Coast mix of country, pop, folk and rock added instruments and tonalities more commonly found in the Caribbean, like steel drums. It was a stew of steelpans, trombones and pedal steel guitar. Buffett’s incredible ear for hooks and light grooves were often overshadowed by his lyrics about fish tacos and sunsets.

Rolling Stone, in a review of Buffett’s 2020 album Life on the Flip Side, gave grudging props. “He continues mapping out his surfy, sandy corner of pop music utopia with the chill, friendly warmth of a multi-millionaire you wouldn’t mind sharing a tropically-themed 3 p.m. IPA with, especially if his gold card was on the bar when the last round came.”

Buffett’s evolving brand began in 1985 with the opening of a string of Margaritaville-themed stores and restaurants in Key West, followed in 1987 with the first Margaritaville Café nearby. Over the course of the next two decades, several more of each opened throughout Florida, New Orleans and California.

The brand has since expanded to dozens of categories, including resorts, apparel and footwear for men and women, a radio station, a beer brand, ice tea, tequila and rum, home décor, food items like salad dressing, Margaritaville Crunchy Pimento Cheese & Shrimp Bites and Margaritaville Cantina Style Medium Chunky Salsa, the Margaritaville at Sea cruise line and restaurants, including Margaritaville Restaurant, JWB Prime Steak and Seafood, 5 o’Clock Somewhere Bar & Grill and LandShark Bar & Grill.

There also was a Broadway-bound jukebox musical, Escape to Margaritaville, a romantic comedy in which a singer-bartender called Sully falls for the far more career-minded Rachel, who is vacationing with friends and hanging out at Margaritaville, the hotel bar where Sully works.

James William Buffett was born on Christmas day 1946 in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and raised in the port town of Mobile, Alabama. He graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and went from busking the streets of New Orleans to playing six nights a week at Bourbon Street clubs.

He released his first record, Down To Earth, in 1970 and issued seven more on a regular yearly clip, with his 1974 song Come Monday from his fourth studio album Living and Dying in ¾ Time, peaking at No. 30. Then came Margaritaville.

He performed on more than 50 studio and live albums, often accompanied by his Coral Reefer Band, and was constantly on tour. He earned two Grammy Award nominations, two Academy of Country Music Awards and a Country Music Association Award.

Buffett was actually in Austin, Texas, when the inspiration struck for Margaritaville. He and a friend had stopped for lunch at a Mexican restaurant before she dropped him at the airport for a flight home to Key West, so they got to drinking margaritas.

“And I kind of came up with that idea of this is just like Margarita-ville,” Buffett told the Republic. “She kind of laughed at that and put me on the plane. And I started working on it.”

He wrote some on the plane and finished it while driving down the Keys. “There was a wreck on the bridge,” he said. “And we got stopped for about an hour so I finished the song on the Seven Mile Bridge, which I thought was apropos.”

Buffett also was the author of numerous books including Where Is Joe Merchant? and A Pirate Looks at Fifty and added movies to his resume as co-producer and co-star of an adaptation of Carl Hiaasen’s novel Hoot.

Buffett is survived by his wife, Jane; daughters, Savannah and Sarah; and son, Cameron. 
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An art exhibition in Rockville, Maryland, pays tribute to women in Iran who have been killed for speaking out against injustice. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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