Art from across Africa is on display in a newly renovated gallery at the Denver Art Museum in the U.S. state of Colorado. VOA’s Scott Stearns shows us what is on display.
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Tina Turner, the American-born singer who left a hardscrabble farming community and abusive relationship to become one of the top recording artists of all time, died on Wednesday at the age of 83.
She died peacefully after a long illness in her home in Küsnacht near Zurich, Switzerland, her representative said.
Turner began her career in the 1950s during the early years of rock ’n’ roll and evolved into an MTV phenomenon.
In the video for her chart-topping song “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” in which she called love a “second-hand emotion,” Turner epitomized 1980s style as she strutted through New York City streets with her spiky blond hair, wearing a cropped jean jacket, mini skirt and stiletto heels.
With her taste for musical experimentation and bluntly worded ballads, Turner gelled perfectly with a 1980s pop landscape in which music fans increasingly valued electronically produced sounds and scorned hippie-era idealism.
Sometimes nicknamed the “Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” Turner won six of her eight Grammy Awards in the 1980s. The decade saw her land a dozen songs on the Top 40, including “Typical Male,” “The Best,” “Private Dancer” and “Better Be Good to Me.” Her 1988 show in Rio de Janeiro drew 180,000 people, which remains one of the largest concert audiences for any single performer.
By then, Turner had been free from her marriage to guitarist Ike Turner for a decade.
The superstar was forthcoming about the abuse she suffered from her former husband during their marital and musical partnership in the 1960s and 1970s. She described bruised eyes, busted lips, a broken jaw and other injuries that repeatedly sent her to the emergency room.
“Tina’s story is not one of victimhood but one of incredible triumph,” singer Janet Jackson wrote about Turner, in a Rolling Stone issue that placed Turner at No. 63 on a list of the top 100 artists of all time.
“She’s transformed herself into an international sensation — an elegant powerhouse,” Jackson said.
In 1985, Turner gave a fictional turn to her reputation as a survivor. She played the ruthless leader of an outpost in a nuclear wasteland, acting opposite Mel Gibson in the third installment in the Mad Max franchise, “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.”
Most of Turner’s hit songs were written by others, but she enlivened them with a voice that New York Times music critic Jon Pareles called “one of the more peculiar instruments in pop.”
“It’s three-tiered, with a nasal low register, a yowling, cutting middle range and a high register so startlingly clear it sounds like a falsetto,” Pareles wrote in a 1987 concert review.
She was born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939, in the rural Tennessee community of Nutbush, which she described in her 1973 song “Nutbush City Limits” as a “quiet little old community, a one-horse town.”
Her father worked as an overseer on a farm and her mother left the family when the singer was 11 years old, according to the singer’s 2018 memoir My Love Story. As a teenager, she moved to St. Louis to rejoin her mom.
Ike Turner, whose 1951 song “Rocket 88” has often been called the first rock ’n’ roll record, discovered her at age 17 when she grabbed the mic to sing at his club show in St. Louis in 1957.
The band leader later recorded a hit song, “A Fool in Love,” with his protégé and gave her the stage name Tina Turner, before the two married in Tijuana, Mexico.
Tina employed her strong voice and strenuously rehearsed dance routines as lead vocalist in an ensemble called the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. She collaborated with members of rock royalty, including The Who and Phil Spector, in the 1960s and 1970s and appeared on the cover of issue two of Rolling Stone magazine in 1967.
Ike and Tina Turner bounced between record labels, owing much of their commercial success to a relentless touring schedule. Their biggest hit was a cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary.”
Turner left her husband one night in 1976 on a tour stop in Dallas, after he pummeled her during a car ride and she struck back, according to her memoir. Their divorce was finalized in 1978.
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inducted Ike and Tina Turner in 1991, calling them “one of the most formidable live acts in history.” Ike Turner died in 2007.
After leaving her husband, Turner spent years struggling to regain the limelight, releasing solo albums and singles that flopped and gigging at corporate conferences.
In 1980, she met new manager Roger Davies, an Australian music executive who went on to manage her for three decades. That led to a solo No.1 record — “What’s Love Got to Do With It” — and then in 1984 her album “Private Dancer” landed her at the top of the charts.
“Private Dancer” went on to become Turner’s biggest album, the capstone of a career that saw her sell more than 200 million records in total.
In 1985 Turner met German music executive Erwin Bach who became her long-term partner and in 1988 she moved to London, beginning a decades-long residency in Europe. She released two studio albums in the 1990s that sold well, especially in Europe, recorded the theme song for 1995 Bond movie “GoldenEye” and staged a successful world tour in 2008 and 2009.
After that, she retired from show business. She married Bach, relinquishing her U.S. citizenship and becoming a citizen of Switzerland.
She battled a number of health problems after retiring and in 2018 she faced a family tragedy, when her oldest son, Craig, died by suicide at age 59 in Los Angeles. Her younger son Ronnie died in December 2022.
Her name continues to draw audiences years after her retirement. Musical stage show “TINA – The Tina Turner Musical,” with Adrienne Warren initially acting and singing the star’s life story, was a hit first in London’s West End in 2018, and later on Broadway, and is still running. And in 2021 HBO released a documentary about her life, “Tina.”
She is survived by Bach and two sons of Ike Turner’s whom she had adopted.
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An art auction and New York gala have raised nearly $6 million to preserve and restore the childhood home of soul music legend and civil rights activist Nina Simone, organizers said Tuesday.
The twin events brought in some $5.88 million — far more than the original $2 million organizers hoped to raise to restore the rural North Carolina abode.
“The new funding will meaningfully advance our project goals to complete the full restoration of the house and landscape,” said Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. “With this investment, we are well on our way to opening the doors to visitors in 2024.”
Four US artists — Julie Mehretu, Ellen Gallagher, Rashid Johnson and Adam Pendleton — bought the dilapidated rural home in 2017 for $95,000. They’ve since worked with Leggs’ organization, as well as tennis star Venus Williams, to raise money to turn the house into a cultural and historical site.
The online auction, with works donated by British painter Cecily Brown and American artist Sarah Sze, was organized by Pace and Sotheby’s.
Among the 11 works for sale, Mehretu’s ink-and-acrylic “New Dawn, Sing (for Nina)” fetched $1.6 million.
Simone, whose songs found renewed resonance during the Black Lives Matter protests of recent years, had a complex, often difficult relationship with the United States, where she was born in 1933, during the era of racial segregation.
Born Eunice Waymon, she spent the first years of her life in the three-room house in Tryon, in the rural southeastern state of North Carolina, with her parents and siblings, and began playing the piano at age 3.
But her dream of becoming a classical concert performer was shattered when she was rejected by Philadelphia’s prestigious Curtis Institute of Music, an ordeal she attributed to racism.
In the 1960s, Simone was active in the civil rights movement, including through rousing speeches and song.
Her “Mississippi Goddam,” was a response to a 1963 fire in an Alabama church started by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, she performed “Why? (The king of love is dead).”
Simone eventually left the United States and lived her last years in the south of France, where she died in 2003.
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“The war never ends. Tomorrow it will start again,” remarks a character in “Goodbye Julia,” the first Sudanese film ever selected for Cannes.
It explores the racism fueling decades of conflict in the country, and director Mohamed Kordofani admitted to “contradictory feelings” about walking the glitzy red carpet of the Cannes Film Festival while his fellow Sudanese are cowering from bombs.
The irony is not lost on Kordofani, who did not expect his debut feature to coincide with the breakout of a new conflict in Sudan.
“Right now, I am stranded in Cannes,” he joked in an interview with AFP on a seaside terrace overlooking a flotilla of yachts, before adding on a serious note that he was “heartbroken” by the conflict and the fact he could not go home.
“The bombing needs to stop,” said the former aircraft engineer, who packed in his career to start a film production company.
“Goodbye Julia” is playing in the Un Certain Regard category in Cannes, a segment focusing on young, innovative talent.
The film starts in 2005 after the end of an earlier bout of fighting, between Khartoum and the separatist south, and ends as South Sudan gains independence in 2011.
It tells the story of how a covered-up murder brings a southern Sudanese woman, Julia, into contact with a northern Sudanese woman, Mona, and her overbearing conservative husband.
‘My own transformation’
The two women’s friendship is complex, and the racist undercurrent between Arabs and black Africans that stalks the Middle East and North Africa is on stark display.
Mona’s husband refers to the southerners as “slaves” and “savages,” and she is forced to confront her own ingrained racism, while gender roles are also explored.
Kordofani said he was inspired by how his own views had changed over the past decade.
“I started to review how I was behaving in my previous relationships. I reviewed my own racism.”
He said discrimination was so deeply ingrained in Sudan that “to this day, I don’t know if I’m completely not racist.”
While racism is not at the heart of Sudan’s current conflict, Kordifani said the film’s message was still relevant, as the country lurches from one broken cease-fire to the next, and residents hunker down with barely any food or supplies.
“I don’t think the war will end unless we change. We the people, not the government. We need to be equal, and we need to be inclusive, and we need to learn to coexist.”
Critics have warmly received “Goodbye Julia,” with Screen calling it “a gut-wrenching and emotionally rewarding tale.”
The Hollywood Reporter said it had “shades of a thriller” and praised Kordofani’s “fine direction.”
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Ray Stevenson, who played the villainous British governor in “RRR,” an Asgardian warrior in the “Thor” films, and a member of the 13th Legion in HBO’s “Rome,” has died. He was 58.
Representatives for Stevenson told The Associated Press that he died Sunday but had no other details to share Monday.
Stevenson was born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, in 1964. After attending the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and years of working in British television, he made his film debut in Paul Greengrass’s 1998 film “The Theory of Flight.” In 2004, he appeared in Antoine Fuqua’s “King Arthur” as a knight of the round table and several years later played the lead in the pre-Disney Marvel adaptation “Punisher: War Zone.”
Though “Punisher” was not the best-reviewed film, he’d get another taste of Marvel in the first three “Thor” films, in which he played Volstagg. Other prominent film roles included the “Divergent” trilogy, “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” and “The Transporter: Refueled.”
A looming presence at 6-foot-4, Stevenson, who played his share of soldiers past and present, once said in an interview, “I guess I’m an old warrior at heart.”
On the small screen, he was the roguish Titus Pullo in “Rome,” a role that really got his career going in the United States and got him a SAG card, at the age of 44. The popular series ran from 2005 to 2007.
“That was one of the major years of my life,” Stevenson said in an interview. “It made me sit down in my own skin and say, just do the job. The job’s enough.”
In the Variety review of “Rome,” Brian Lowery wrote that “the imposing Stevenson certainly stands out as a brawling, whoring and none-too-bright warrior — a force of nature who, despite his excesses, somehow keeps landing on his feet.”
He was Blackbeard in the Starz series “Black Sails,” Commander Jack Swinburne in the German television series “Das Boot,” and Othere in “Vikings.”
Stevenson also did voice work in “Star Wars Rebels” and “The Clone Wars,” as Gar Saxon, and has a role in the upcoming Star Wars live-action series “Ahsoka,” in which he plays a bad guy, Baylan Skoll. The eight-episode season is expected on Disney+ in August.
In an interview with Backstage in 2020, Stevenson said his acting idols were, “The likes of Lee Marvin (and) Gene Hackman.”
“Never a bad performance, and brave and fearless within that caliber,” Stevenson said. “It was never the young, hot leading man; it was men who I could identify with.”
Stevenson has three sons with Italian anthropologist Elisabetta Caraccia, who he met while working on “Rome.”
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Most filmmakers in the Cannes Film Festival’s top-rung competition are well-known directors who have been around for decades. One dramatic exception this year is Ramata-Toulaye Sy, a French-Senegalese filmmaker whose first film, “Banel & Adama,” landed among the 21 films competing for the Palme d’Or.
“It’s only now that I realize that being in competition means being in a competition,” Sy said, laughing, in an interview shortly after “Banel & Adama” premiered in Cannes. “Now that we’re really in the middle of it, I realize there’s a lot of passion going around.”
Sy, 36, is the sole first-timer in Cannes’ main lineup this year. She is also only the second Black female director to ever compete for the Palme, following Mati Diop, also a French-Senegalese filmmaker, whose “Atlantics” debuted in 2019. For the Paris-raised Sy, it’s not a distinction of significance.
“I’m a filmmaker and I really wish we stopped being counted as women, as Black or Arab or Asian,” she said.
In “Banel & Adama,” also the only Africa-set film competing for the Palme this year, Sy crafts a radiant and languorous fable tinged with myth and tragedy.
Banel (Khady Mane) and Adama (Mamadou Diallo) are a deeply in love married couple living in a small village in northern Senegal. In their intimate romantic idyll, they wish to pull away from the local traditions. Adama is set to become village chief but is uninterested in doing so. Banel dreams of living outside the village, in a home buried under a mountain of sand.
While Banel and Adama slowly work to sweep away the sand, their yearning to live on their own causes angst in the village, especially when a drought arrives that some take as a curse for their independence. Though often opaque, the film stays largely with the psychology of Banel, whose single-mindedness grows increasingly dark.
“I was quite reluctant at the start to acknowledge that Banel is me,” Sy said. “Now I have to confess that it’s definitely me. I see myself, my questions, my struggle in her journey. How to become an individual inside a community is really my own question.”
Sy began writing “Banel & Adama” in 2014 as a student at La Fémis, the French film school. Sy, the daughter of Senegalese immigrants, says she was first drawn to literature. Novels like Toni Morrison’s “Sula” and Elena Frenate’s “My Brilliant Friend” inspired “Banel & Adama.”
“The love story was a pretext for to deal with myth,” she says. “I wanted to have this kind of mythological female character that you find in Greek tragedy.”
Sy co-wrote Atiq Rahimi’s “Our Lady of the Nile” and Çagla Zencirci and Guillaume Giovanetti’s “Sibel” — both of which played at international festivals. Her first short film, “Astel,” was well-received.
But little prepared her for the stresses of shooting in rural Senegal. Along with heat, sandstorms and bouts of illness among the crew, Sy struggled to find her Banel. In the end, she found Mane while walking around.
“We had all the cast except for her. We started five months before shooting and one month before shooting we still didn’t have her. One day I was walking down the street and my eyes locked on this girl,” Sy said. “It was the way that she looked at me. Her gaze had something a bit wise and a bit crazy.”
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While the world watched Kabul fall and the Taliban surge back to power in 2021 following the withdrawal of U.S. troops, actor Jennifer Lawrence and producer Justine Ciarrocchi were asking themselves what they could do to support women’s rights.
“Jen’s first response was to find an Afghan filmmaker and give them a platform,” Ciarrocchi told The Hollywood Reporter.
They eventually found director Sahra Mani, whose 2019 documentary “A Thousand Girls Like Me” looked at a sexually abused woman’s quest for justice.
On Sunday, “Bread and Roses,” Mani’s documentary about the daily lives of three women after the Taliban’s resurgence, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in a special screening.
“This film has a message from women in Afghanistan, a soft message; please be their voice who are voiceless under Taliban dictatorship,” said Mani at the premiere.
The director said in an interview on the Cannes website that she wanted to show the reality of how drastically life has changed under the Taliban for women, even if filming was difficult. “Now that women can no longer leave the house without the veil, I thought we should tell their stories,” she said.
The safety of the camera crews and the people filmed was of top priority, said Mani, who currently lives in France.
“The way in which their lives have changed under the Taliban is an everyday reality for us, it’s life under a dictatorship, a cruel reality we cannot ignore.”
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The 10th installment of the “Fast and Furious” franchise was off to the races this weekend, knocking “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” out of first place and easily claiming the No. 1 spot at the box office. “Fast X” earned $67.5 million in ticket sales from 4,046 North American theaters, according to estimates from Universal Pictures on Sunday.
It’s on the lower end of openings for the series which peaked with “Furious 7’s” $142.2 million launch, the sole movie in the series to surpass $100 million out of the gates. “Fast X’s” domestic debut only ranks above the first three. The last movie, “F9,” opened to $70 million in 2021.
But this is also a series that has usually made the bulk of its money internationally, often over 70%. True to form, overseas it’s on turbo drive. “Fast X” opened in 84 markets internationally, playing in over 24,000 theaters, where it earned an estimated $251.4 million. The top market was China with $78.3 million, followed by Mexico with $16.7 million. And it adds up to a $319 million global debut — the third biggest of the franchise.
“It’s a global franchise with a very broad audience,” said Jim Orr, Universal’s head of domestic distribution. “The themes resonate across the world.”
Directed by Louis Leterrier (who took over from Justin Lin during production), “Fast X” brings back the familiar crew including Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson and Jordana Brewster and adds several newcomers, like Brie Larson, Rita Moreno and a villain played by Jason Momoa. The ever-expanding cast includes Jason Statham, Charlize Theron, Scott Eastwood and Helen Mirren.
Reports say the movie cost $340 million to produce, not including marketing.
Reviews were mixed for “Fast X,” the beginning of the end for the $6 billion franchise, which currently has a 54% on Rotten Tomatoes. AP’s Mark Kennedy wrote in his review that, “It has become almost camp, as if it breathed in too much of its own fumes” and that it’s also “monstrously silly and stupidly entertaining.”
According to exit polls, audiences were 29% Caucasian, 29% Hispanic and 21% Black, and 58% were between the ages of 18 and 34. They gave the film a B+ CinemaScore.
In its third weekend, Disney and Marvel’s ” Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ” made an estimated $32 million in North America to take second place. It’s now made $266.5 million domestically and $659.1 million globally.
Third place went to another Universal juggernaut, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” which is now in its seventh weekend and available to rent on VOD. Nevertheless, it earned an additional $9.8 million in North America, bringing its domestic total to $549.3 million.
“Book Club: The Next Chapter ” added $3 million in its second weekend to take fourth place, while “Evil Dead Rise” rounded out the top five in its fifth weekend with $2.4 million.
“Mario” and “Fast X” are just the latest success stories for Universal, following hits like “Cocaine Bear” and “M3GAN.” And later this summer, on July 21, they’ll release Christopher Nolan’s ” Oppenheimer.”
“Universal as a studio is just on a roll like no other by having this incredible slate of films from all different types of genres,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “They’ve created a release strategy that’s really picture perfect so far.”
“Fast X” doesn’t have an entirely open runway though. Next weekend there will be sizable competition in Disney’s live-action “The Little Mermaid,” in addition to a slew of crowd-pleasers hoping to catch a Memorial Day weekend audience, including Julia Louis-Dreyfus in “You Hurt My Feelings” and the broad comedy “About My Father,” with Sebastian Maniscalco and Robert De Niro.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
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“Fast X,” $67.5 million.
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“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” $32 million.
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“The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” $9.8 million.
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“Book Club: The Next Chapter,” $3 million.
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“Evil Dead Rise,” $2.4 million.
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“John Wick: Chapter 4,” $1.3 million.
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“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” $1.3 million.
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“Hypnotic,” $825,000.
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“MET Opera: Don Giovanni,” $701,025.
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“BlackBerry,” $525,000.
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A powerful Auschwitz-set psychological horror film, The Zone of Interest, is emerging as the hot ticket at the Cannes Film Festival, with reviews Saturday were near-unanimous in their praise.
British director Jonathan Glazer’s film focuses on the family of Rudolf Hoess, the longest-serving commandant of the Auschwitz camp, who lived a stone’s throw from the incinerators.
While the screams and gunshots are audible from their beautiful garden, the family carries on as though nothing was amiss.
The horror “is just bearing down on every pixel of every shot, in sound and how we interpret that sound… It affects everything but them,” Glazer told AFP.
“Everything had to be very carefully calibrated to feel that it was always there, this ever-present, monstrous machinery,” he said.
The 58-year-old Glazer, who is Jewish, focused on the banality of daily lives around the death camp, viewing Hoess’s family not as obvious monsters but as terrifyingly ordinary.
“The things that drive these people are familiar. Nice house, nice garden, healthy kids,” he said.
“How like them are we? How terrifying it would be to acknowledge? What is it that we’re so frightened of understanding?”
“Would it be possible to sleep? Could you sleep? What happens if you close the curtains and you wear earplugs, could you do that?”
The film is all the more uncomfortable as it is shot in a realist style, with natural lighting and none of the frills that are typical of a period drama.
It has garnered gushing praise so far from critics at the French Riviera festival.
A “bone-chilling Holocaust drama like no other,” The Hollywood Reporter said of the “audacious film,” concluding that Glazer “is incapable of making a movie that’s anything less than bracingly original.”
Variety said that Glazer had “delivered the first instant sensation of the festival,” describing it as “profound, meditative and immersive, a movie that holds human darkness up to the light and examines it as if under a microscope.”
‘I cogitate a lot’
Glazer is known for taking his time — it has been a decade since his last film, the acclaimed, deeply strange sci-fi Under the Skin starring Scarlett Johansson.
He made his name with music videos for Radiohead, Blur and Massive Attack in the 1990s before moving into films with Sexy Beast (2000) and Birth (2004).
“I cogitate a lot. I think a lot about what I’m going to make, good or bad,” he said.
“This particular subject obviously is a vast, profound topic and deeply sensitive for many reasons and I couldn’t just approach it casually.”
A novel of the same title by Martin Amis was one catalyst for bringing him to this project.
It provided “a key that unlocked some space for me… the enormous discomfort of being in the room with the perpetrator.”
He spent two years reading other books and accounts on the subject before beginning to map out the film with collaborators.
Glazer’s film is one of 21 in competition for the Palme d’Or, the top prize at Cannes, which runs until May 27.
French reviewers were equally impressed by Glazer’s film, with Le Figaro calling it “a chilling film with dizzying impact” and Liberation saying it could well take home the Palme.
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National Treasure won the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore on Saturday, giving Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert a record-breaking eighth win in the middle jewel of U.S. thoroughbred racing’s Triple Crown.
With John Velazquez aboard, National Treasure held off a late charge from Blazing Sevens. Kentucky Derby winner Mage finished third, meaning the chestnut colt will not have a shot at becoming U.S. thoroughbred racing’s 13th Triple Crown winner.
The win capped an emotional day for Baffert, whose colt Havnameltdown was euthanized on the track earlier on Saturday after going down with an injury during a race at Pimlico.
“Losing that horse today really hurt but I am happy for Johnny, he got the win,” Baffert said fighting back tears, referring to the jockey. “It’s been a very emotional day.”
For Baffert, one of the sport’s best-known figures, the Preakness marked his first Triple Crown race in two years due to a lengthy suspension after one of his horses, Medina Spirit, tested positive for a banned substance and was stripped of the Kentucky Derby title in 2021.
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Salman Rushdie made an emotional and unexpected return to public life Thursday night, attending the annual gala of PEN America and giving the event’s final speech as he accepted a special prize, the PEN Centenary Courage Award, just nine months being after being stabbed repeatedly and hospitalized.
“It’s nice to be back — as opposed to not being back, which was also a possibility. I’m glad the dice rolled this way,” Rushdie, 75, told hundreds gathered at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, where he received a standing ovation.
It was his first in-person appearance at a public event since he was attacked last August while on stage at a literary festival in western New York.
Rushdie, whose attendance had not been announced beforehand, spoke briefly and dedicated some of his remarks to those who came to his help last year at the Chautauqua Institution, a nonprofit education and retreat center. He cited a fellow attendee, Henry Reese of the City of Asylum project in Pittsburgh, for tackling the assailant and thanked audience members who also stepped in.
“I accept this award, therefore, on behalf of all those who came to my rescue. I was the target that day, but they were the heroes. The courage, that day, was all theirs, and I thank them for saving my life,” he said.
“And I have one last thing to add. It’s this: Terror must not terrorize us. Violence must not deter us. La lutte continue. La lutta continua. The struggle goes on.”
Attacks against Rushdie have been feared since the late 1980s and the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses, which Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini condemned as blasphemous for passages referring to the Prophet Mohammad. The Ayatollah issued a decree calling for Rushdie’s death, forcing the author into hiding, although he had been traveling freely for years before the stabbing.
Since the attack, he has granted few interviews and otherwise communicated through his Twitter account and prepared remarks. Earlier this week, he delivered a video message to the British Book Awards, where he was given a Freedom to Publish prize.
Rushdie was clearly elated to attend the PEN America gala, but his voice sounded frailer than it once did, and the right frame of his glasses was dark, concealing the eye blinded by his attacker.
PEN galas have long been a combination of literature, politics, activism and celebrity, with attendees ranging from Alec Baldwin to Senator Angus King of Maine. Other honorees Thursday included “Saturday Night Live” producer Lorne Michaels and the imprisoned Iranian journalist and activist Narges Mohammadi, who was given the PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award.
“Dear writers, thinkers, and sympathizers, I implore you to help the Iranian people free themselves from the grip of the Islamic Republic, or morally speaking, please help end the suffering of the Iranian people,” Mohammadi wrote from prison in a letter read aloud at the ceremony. “Let us prove the magic of global unity against authorities besotted with power and greed.”
The host Thursday night was “Saturday Night Live” head writer Colin Jost, who inspired nervous laughter with jokes about the risks of being in the same room as Rushdie, likening it to sharing a balcony section with Abraham Lincoln. He also referred briefly to the Hollywood writers’ strike, which has left “Saturday Night Live” off the air since early May, saying it was “disorienting” to spend the afternoon on a picket line and then show up “for the museum cocktail hour.”
PEN events are familiar settings for Rushdie, a former president of PEN, the literary rights organization for which freedom of speech is a core mission. He has attended many times in the past and is a co-founder of PEN’s World Voices Festival, an international gathering of author panels and interviews held around the time of the PEN gala.
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Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal announced Thursday that he is pulling out of the French Open because of a lingering hip injury, and he expects 2024 to be the final season of his career.
The owner of a record 14 championships at the clay-court Grand Slam tournament will miss it for the first time since making his debut there in 2005.
Nadal, who turns 37 next month, delivered the news of his withdrawal — and future plans — during a news conference at his tennis academy in Manacor, Spain. He said he does not want to set a date for his return to the tennis tour, but expects it to take months.
And then, the 22-time Grand Slam champion added: “You never know how things will turn out, but my intention is that next year will be my last year.”
Play begins at Roland Garros in Paris on May 28. Nadal has a career record of 112-3 across 18 appearances at the French Open, a level of dominance unmatched by any man or woman at any Grand Slam event in the long annals of a sport that dates to the 1800s. When Nadal won the trophy last year at age 36 while dealing with chronic foot pain, he became the oldest champion in tournament history.
He said he is not sure that taking more time off now will give him a real chance of coming back next season in competitive form, but explained that he knows he can´t keep trying to force his body back into match condition now.
“I am going to stop, I am not going to train. I am not ready to train,” Nadal said, alternating answers in Spanish and English. “These have been many months with many moments of frustration, and I can handle frustration, but there comes a time when you have to stop.”
Nadal’s birthday is June 3, when ordinarily he might have been playing his third-round match in Court Philippe Chatrier. Instead, he will be out of action, just as he has been for most of this season.
The Spaniard hasn’t competed anywhere since he lost to Mackie McDonald in the second round of the Australian Open on Jan. 18, when his movement clearly was restricted by a bothersome left hip flexor. That was Nadal’s earliest Grand Slam exit since 2016.
An MRI exam the next day revealed the extent of the injury, and his manager said at the time that Nadal was expected to need up to two months to fully recover. He initially aimed to return at the Monte Carlo Masters in March on his beloved red clay, but he wasn’t able to play there, then subsequently sat out tournament after tournament, decreasing the likelihood that he would be ready for the French Open.
Nadal is just 1-3 this season. He has dropped seven of his past nine matches overall, dating to a fourth-round loss to Frances Tiafoe in the U.S. Open’s fourth round last September.
It is one thing for Nadal to lose more frequently, and in earlier rounds, than he usually has over the course of his illustrious career — one in which his 22 major titles are tied with rival Novak Djokovic for the most by a man, and includes 92 trophies in all, along with more than 1,000 tour-level match wins.
It is another thing entirely for Nadal to be missing from Roland Garros, where he has appeared 18 times, every year since he won it as a teen in 2005. He also was the champion in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2022.
That’s why tennis players often refer to facing Nadal at the French Open as the toughest task in sports.
Amid all of the triumphs there, the setbacks certainly were infrequent.
Nadal dropped out of the field before the third round in 2016 because of an injured wrist, and was eliminated by another player three times: Those losses came against Robin Soderling in the fourth round in 2009, against Djokovic in the quarterfinals in 2015, then again against Djokovic in the semifinals in 2021.
This year, Nadal will be absent right from the start from his favorite event — and one where he generally is regarded as the favorite to win, no matter what.
“You can´t keep demanding more and more from your body, because there comes a moment when your body raises a white flag,” said Nadal, who sat alone on a stage, wearing jeans and a white polo shirt during his news conference, which was carried live in Spain by the state broadcaster’s 24-hour sports network. “Even though your head wants to keep going, your body says this is as far it goes.”
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Britain’s Prince Harry, his wife Meghan and her mother were involved in a “near catastrophic car chase” involving paparazzi photographers, a spokesperson for the prince said on Wednesday.
It occurred after the couple had attended an awards ceremony held in New York by the Ms. Foundation for Women, where Meghan was honored for her work.
Pictures that have appeared on social media have shown Harry, Meghan and her mother, Doria Ragland, in a taxi.
“Last night, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and Ms Ragland were involved in a near catastrophic car chase at the hands of a ring of highly aggressive paparazzi,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
“This relentless pursuit, lasting over two hours, resulted in multiple near collisions involving other drivers on the road, pedestrians and two NYPD (New York Police Department) officers.”
Harry and Meghan stepped down from their royal roles in 2020 and moved to the United States partly because of what they described as intense media harassment.
The prince has long spoken out about his anger about press intrusion which he blames for the death of his mother Princess Diana, who was killed when her limousine crashed as it sped away from chasing paparazzi in Paris.
Russian authorities have suspended the release of an award-winning film about a serial killer who targets sex workers in Iran, a distributor said on Tuesday.
“Holy Spider,” directed by Danish Iranian Ali Abbasi, was inspired by a true story about a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war who killed 16 sex workers in the early 2000s in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city and a main shrine city of Shiite Islam.
The move comes as Russia and Iran are seeking closer ties amid Moscow’s growing isolation in the West over its war on Ukraine.
Russia has become increasingly conservative since President Vladimir Putin sent troops to Ukraine in February 2022.
The film hit theaters in Russia on May 11, but less than a week later the culture ministry withdrew the film’s distribution license.
“Unfortunately, that’s true,” Anastasiya Kruglyakova, a representative of Exponenta Film, told AFP in written comments.
The ministry said that the release was canceled “due to the presence in the specified film of materials, containing information whose dissemination is prohibited by the legislation of the Russian Federation.”
Kruglyakova did not provide further details.
There was no immediate comment from the culture ministry.
Abbasi was denied permission to film in Iran, and “Holy Spider” was eventually shot in Jordan.
Last year, Zar Amir Ebrahimi won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival for her role in “Holy Spider” as a journalist who investigates the murders.
Iran protested to France after the Cannes film festival selected the film, slamming the move as “wrong and completely political.”
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Writer Salman Rushdie has made a public speech, nine months after being stabbed and seriously injured onstage, warning that freedom of expression in the West is under its most severe threat in his lifetime.
Rushdie delivered a video message to the British Book Awards, where he was awarded the Freedom to Publish award on Monday evening. Organizers said the honor “acknowledges the determination of authors, publishers and booksellers who take a stand against intolerance, despite the ongoing threats they face.”
Rushdie, 75, looked thinner than before the attack and wore glasses with one tinted lens. He was blinded in his right eye and suffered nerve damage to his hand when he was attacked at a literary festival in New York state in August.
His alleged assailant, Hadi Matar, has pleaded not guilty to charges of assault and attempted murder.
He told the awards ceremony that “we live in a moment, I think, at which freedom of expression, freedom to publish has not in my lifetime been under such threat in the countries of the West.”
“Now I am sitting here in the U.S., I have to look at the extraordinary attack on libraries, and books for children in schools,” he said. “The attack on the idea of libraries themselves. It is quite remarkably alarming, and we need to be very aware of it, and to fight against it very hard.”
Rushdie spent years in hiding with police protection after Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, in 1989 calling for his death over the alleged blasphemy of the novel “The Satanic Verses.”
He gradually returned to public life after the Iranian government distanced itself from the order in 1998, saying it would not back any effort to kill Rushdie, though the fatwa was never officially repealed.
Rushdie won the Booker Prize in 1981 for his novel “Midnight’s Children,” and in 2008 was voted the best-ever winner of the prestigious fiction prize. His most recent novel, “Victory City” — completed a month before the attack — was published in February.
In his speech, Rushdie also criticized publishers who change decades-old books for modern sensibilities, such as large-scale cuts and rewrites to the works of children’s author Roald Dahl and James Bond creator Ian Fleming.
He said publishers should allow books “to come to us from their time and be of their time.”
“And if that’s difficult to take, don’t read it, read another book,” he said.
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Striking members of the Writers Guild of America have said they will not picket next month’s Tony Award telecast, clearing a thorny issue facing show organizers and opening the door for some sort of Broadway razzle-dazzle on TV.
The union last week denied a request by Tony organizers to have a waiver for their June 11 glitzy live telecast. It reiterated that in a statement late Monday, saying the guild “will not negotiate an interim agreement or a waiver for the Tony Awards.”
But the guild gave some hope that some sort of Tony show might go on, saying organizers “are altering this year’s show to conform with specific requests from the WGA, and therefore the WGA will not be picketing the show.” What is being altered was not clear, but it may be to allow a non-scripted version of the Tonys to go on.
The strike, which has already darkened late-night TV shows like “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert “and “Saturday Night Live” and delayed the making of scripted TV shows, was jeopardizing theater’s biggest night, one that many Broadway shows rely on to attract interest with millions of people watching.
The union — representing 11,500 writers of film, television and other entertainment forms — has been on strike since May 2, primarily over royalties from streaming media. While the guild doesn’t represent Broadway writers, it does represent writers who work on the Tonys telecast.
Tony organizers faced a stark choice after the request for a waiver was rejected: either postpone the ceremony until the strike ends or announce winners in a non-televised reception that would ask nominees to cross picket lines. The decision Monday means the possibility of a third way: A non-scripted show that leans heavily on performances.
That is largely what happened during the 1988 awards, which were broadcast during a Writers Guild of America walkout. Host Angela Lansbury and presenters speaking impromptu and with performances from such shows as “A Chorus Line” and “Anything Goes.”
Before the Writers Guild of America decision, a two-part Tony ceremony had been planned, with a pre-show of performances streaming live on Pluto, and the main awards ceremony broadcasting live on CBS and streaming live to premium-level Peacock members.
The big first awards show during the current strike was the MTV Movie & TV Awards, which had no host and relied on recycled clips and a smattering of pre-recorded acceptance speeches.
The strike has also disrupted the PEN America Gala. The Peabody Awards, which celebrate broadcasting and streaming media, on Monday canceled its June 11 awards show.
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Several new movies infiltrated theaters nationwide this weekend, from a lighthearted trip to Italy with Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, Diane Keaton and Mary Steenburgen to a Ben Affleck-fronted detective thriller. The two top spots were once again claimed by Marvel and Mario, however.
In its second weekend, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3″ added $60.5 million from North American theaters, according to studio estimates on Sunday. That’s a slim 49% drop from its opening, which is rare for big superhero films that tend to be front-loaded and have big second weekend drops of 60% or more. As the smallest Marvel drop since the beginning of the pandemic, it also answers the ” superhero fatigue ” question that some floated last weekend. Including $91.9 million from international showings, “Vol. 3” has already grossed over $528.8 million worldwide.
Second place went to “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” with $13 million in its sixth weekend, bringing its domestic grosses just shy of $536 million. Families with younger children have had almost no other options at the theaters since Mario entered the picture, resulting in repeat viewings and its continued dominance at the box office, where it is still playing in 3,800 locations domestically. Globally, it’s at $1.2 billion.
With Chris Pratt in the leading positions of chart-topping movies, as Star Lord in “Guardians” and the voice of Mario, debates have ensued about how much of the draw is star power versus brand power.
It was an especially crowded weekend for new movies, opening both wide and limited in all genres and of all qualities.
“The second weekend in May is very notable, traditionally speaking, because it bridges the gap between a big summer kickoff movie (“Guardians 3”) and the next big blockbuster (“Fast X”),” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore. “Everyone in the business knew Guardians would dominate the weekend but it provided an opportunity for a lot of movies to get out there that hit that sweet spot between two behemoths.”
“Book Club: The Next Chapter ” fared the best on the charts with $6.5 million from 3,508 locations. The sequel, released by Focus Features on Mother’s Day weekend, reunites the cast with director Bill Holderman and his co-writer Erin Simms. Audiences were heavily female (77%), Caucasian (59%) and over 45 (66%) and the hope is that there will be a Mother’s Day boost and decent holdover for the $20 million production. Older audiences typically don’t rush out on opening weekend. The first film opened to $13.5 million in 2018 and went on to gross over $104 million.
Robert Rodriguez’s “Hypnotic,” meanwhile, is bombing. The mystery starring Affleck as a detective whose daughter is missing cost a reported $65 million to make. It went into the weekend with poor reviews (32% on Rotten Tomatoes) and limited marketing from distributor Ketchup Entertainment and earned just $2.4 million from 2,118 locations.
Other mid-level releases failed to make a big splash, including Charlie Day’s Hollywood satire “Fool’s Paradise,” which earned $443,140 from 784 locations, and the anime-inspired “Knights of the Zodiac,” which made only $535,000 from 586 theaters.
“BlackBerry,” Matt Johnson’s well-reviewed portrait about the rise and fall of the beloved smartphone starring Glenn Howerton and Jay Baruchel, got off to a bumpy start with $473,000 from 450 theaters.
Sony Pictures Classics also launched its Yogi Berra documentary “It Ain’t Over” in 99 theaters, making $106,000.
Dergarabedian noted that several independent films thrived this weekend with solid per theater averages, including IFC’s “Monica” ($26,500 from two theaters) and Bleecker Street’s “The Starling Girl” ($27,736 from four theaters).
“If you’re a moviegoer, you have a lot to choose from right now,” Dergarabedian said.
There was also quite a bit of competition on home screens, from a Michael J. Fox documentary on Apple TV+ to the Jennifer Lopez action pic “The Mother” on Netflix. “Air,” which is still in the top 10 after six weekends in theaters, also made its debut on Prime Video.
Things are going to pick up considerably next weekend when “Fast X” enters the summer box office race, followed by the live-action “The Little Mermaid” on May 26.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
"Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3," $60.5 million.
"The Super Mario Bros. Movie," $13 million.
"Book Club: The Next Chapter," $6.5 million.
"Evil Dead Rise," $3.7 million.
"Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret." $2.5 million.
"Hypnotic," $2.4 million.
"John Wick: Chapter 4," $1.9 million.
"Love Again," $1.6 million.
"Air," $875,357.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves," $740,000.
Four sisters are building the first Hobbit-style village in southeast Europe in the green hills of central Bosnia, hoping to attract fans of “The Lord of the Rings” books and movies as well as sharing their childhood memories.
“We have often held family gatherings on this hill and discussed what would be the best way to make use of this view for tourism purposes,” said Milijana, the eldest of the Milicevic sisters, pointing to the stunning view of a valley and a lake nestled among the hills.
The Kresevo Hobbiton, as the Hobbits’ village is called, is located in the village of Rakova Noga (The Crab’s Leg) near the old royal and mining town of Kresevo, some 40 minutes drive from the capital of Sarajevo.
Last year Marija, a 28-year-old geology engineer, proposed to her sisters Milijana, Vedrana and Valentina that they build house in the style of the Hobbit homes in J.R.R. Tolkein’s “The Lord of the Rings” tales. The “hole houses” are built into the ground.
The sisters decided that their houses must include characteristics of the area where they live and that each sister would decorate one dwelling as she likes.
They have already built two houses and three others are under construction.
The first house, with a round green door and window, was named Lipa after the village where Milijana had spent most of her childhood with their grandparents. Lipa is also the name for the linden tree.
“Lipa is my nostalgia, the memory of a healthy childhood where garden planting was a social game, domestic animals friends and a tin barrel the Adriatic Sea,” Milijana said in the wood-decorated house.
The second house is named Ober after a cave in Kresevo. Its ceiling is decorated with stalactites to provide the feeling of being in the cave.
“Ober in history has been the mine from which Kresevo miners had extracted cinnabar and melted it to get gold,” said Marija.
Her house’s door and window is painted red after the coloring of the cinnabar ore.
The other three houses, which should be completed soon, will also be named after local attractions.
For example Bedem, with towers on its corners, is named after the fortress where Bosnia’s last queen, Katarina, had stayed while in Kresevo.
Tourists from across the region and other European countries have already started visiting, Marija said.
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When she was a girl in South Africa’s Northern Cape, Katrina Esau stopped speaking her mother tongue, N|uu, after being mocked by other people and told it was an “ugly language.”
Now at age 90, she is the last known speaker of N|uu, one of a group of indigenous languages in South Africa that have been all but stamped out by the impacts of colonialism and apartheid.
“We became ashamed when we were young girls, and we stopped speaking the language,” Esau told Reuters. Instead she spoke Afrikaans, the language promoted by South Africa’s white minority rulers.
Later, as an adult, Esau realized the importance of preserving her mother tongue and founded a school in her home town of Upington to try to pass it on.
N|uu was spoken by one of many hunter-gatherer groups that populated Southern Africa before the arrival of European colonizers. These indigenous people spoke dozens of languages in the San family, many of which have gone extinct.
“During colonialism and apartheid, Ouma Katrina and other (indigenous) groups were not allowed to speak their languages, their languages were frowned upon, and that is how we got to the point where we are with minimal speakers,” said Lorato Mokwena, a linguist from South Africa’s University of the Western Cape.
“It’s important that while Ouma Katrina is around, that we do the best that we can to preserve the language and to document it,” she said.
Ouma, or “grandmother” Katrina started teaching N|uu to local children around 2005 and later opened a school with her granddaughter and language activist Claudia Snyman.
But the school property was vandalized during the COVID-19 lockdown, and now lies abandoned.
“I am very concerned. The language isn’t where it’s supposed to be yet. If Ouma dies, then everything dies,” said Snyman, whose dream is to one day open her own school and continue her grandmother’s legacy.
“I’ll do anything in my power to help her to prevent this language from dying,” Snyman said.
Esau has two living sisters but they do not speak N|uu, and she does not know anyone else who does, save the family members and children to whom she has taught some words and phrases.
“I miss speaking to someone,” she said. “It doesn’t feel good. You talk, you walk, you know … you miss someone who can just sit with you and speak N|uu with you.”
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Swedish singer Loreen won the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday night with her power ballad “Tattoo,” at a colorful, eclectic music competition clouded for a second year running by the war in Ukraine.
The diva from Stockholm beat acts from 25 other countries to take the continent’s pop crown at the competition in Liverpool. Finnish singer Käärijä was second in a close-fought battle of the Nordic neighbors.
Loreen also won Eurovision in 2012 and is the second performer to take the prize twice, after Ireland’s Johnny Logan in the 1980s.
Sounds of Ukraine throughout show
Britain hosted Eurovision this year on behalf of Ukraine, which won last year but couldn’t take up its right to hold the contest because of the war. Air raid sirens sounded across Ukraine as the contest was underway.
Under the slogan “united by music,” Eurovision fused the soul of English port city that birthed The Beatles with the spirit of war-battered Ukraine.
The sights and sounds of Ukraine ran through the show, starting with an opening film that showed 2022 Eurovision winners Kalush Orchestra singing and dancing in the Kyiv subway, with the tune picked up by musicians in the U.K. — including Kate, Princess of Wales, shown playing the piano.
The folk-rap band itself then emerged onstage in the Liverpool Arena on a giant pair of outstretched hands, accompanied by massed drummers.
Contestants from the 26 finalist nations entered the arena in an Olympics-style flag parade, accompanied by live performances from Ukrainian acts including Go A, Jamala, Tina Karol and Verka Serduchka — all past Eurovision competitors.
Three-minute performances
Now in its 67th year, Eurovision bills itself as the world’s biggest music contest — an Olympiad of party-friendly pop. Competitors each have three minutes to meld catchy tunes and eye-popping spectacle into performances capable of winning the hearts of millions of viewers.
Loreen had been the bookies’ favorite and won by far the most votes from professional juries in Eurovision’s complex voting system. She faced a close challenge from Kaarija, who won the public vote.
He is a performer with Energizer bunny energy and a lurid green bolero top who goes from metal growler to sweet crooner on party anthem “Cha Cha Cha.” The infectious song got one of the biggest singalong crowd reactions of the night.
Italy’s Marco Mengoni also had a strong following for “Due Vite” (Two Lives), a seductive ballad with enigmatic lyrics.
Austrian duo Teya & Salena was first to perform with “Who the Hell is Edgar?” — a daffy satirical ode to Edgar Allen Poe that also slams the meagre royalties musicians earn from streaming services.
After that, the varied tastes of the continent were on display: the cabaret-style singing of Portugal’s Mimicat; the Britney-esque power pop of Poland’s Blanka; echoes of Edith Piaf from La Zarra for France; smoldering balladry from Cyprus’ entry, Andrew Lambrou.
Rock was unusually well represented this year at a contest that tends to favor perky pop. Australia’s Voyager evoked head-banging ’80s stadium rock on “Promise,” while Slovenia’s Joker Out, Germany’s Lord of the Lost were also guitar-crunching entries.
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Sprinkle the sequins and pump up the volume: The 67th Eurovision Song Contest reaches its climax on Saturday with a grand final broadcast live from Liverpool. There will be catchy choruses, a kaleidoscope of costumes and tributes to the spirit of Ukraine in a competition that for seven decades has captured the changing zeitgeist of a continent.
Here’s what to expect as acts from across Europe — and beyond — vie for the continent’s pop crown.
Who’s Competing?
This year, 37 countries sent an act to Eurovision, selected through national competitions or internal selections by broadcasters. The host country is usually the winner of the previous year’s event, but 2022 runner-up Britain is hosting this time around on behalf of the winner, Ukraine.
Twenty-six countries will compete in Saturday’s final at the Liverpool Arena, beside the River Mersey in the port city that gave birth to The Beatles. Six countries automatically qualify: last year’s winner and the “Big Five” who pay the most to the contest — France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K.
The other 20 finalists, chosen by public votes in two semifinals on Tuesday and Thursday, are: Albania, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Israel, Lithuania, Moldova, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Sweden and Switzerland.
Wait — Australia?
Eurovision is about spirit, not just geography. Eurovision is hugely popular in Australia, and the country was allowed to join the competition in 2015. Other entrants from outside Europe’s borders include Israel and Azerbaijan.
Who Are This Year’s Favorites?
It’s hard to predict victors in a contest whose past winners have ranged from ABBA to Finnish cartoon metal band Lordi, but bookmakers say Swedish diva Loreen, who won Eurovision in 2012, is favorite to score a double with her power ballad “Tattoo.”
Finland’s Käärijä was a crowd-pleaser in the semifinals with his pop-metal party tune “Cha Cha Cha,” and Canadian singer La Zarra, competing for France, is also highly ranked for her Edith Piaf-esque chanson “Évidemment.”
And never underestimate left-field entries like Croatia’s Let 3, whose song “Mama ŠČ!”is pure Eurovision camp: an antiwar rock opera that plays like Monty Python meets “Dr. Strangelove.”
What Happens During The Final?
Around 6,000 fans will attend the final, hosted by long-time BBC Eurovision presenter Graham Norton, “Ted Lasso” star Hannah Waddingham, British singer Alesha Dixon and Ukrainian rock star Julia Sanina.
Each competing act must sing live and stick to a three-minute limit, but otherwise is free to create its own staging — the flashier the pyrotechnics and more elaborate the choreography, the better.
Russia’s war in Ukraine will lend a solemn note to a contest famed for celebrating cheesy pop. The show will open with a performance by last year’s winner, Ukrainian folk-rap band Kalush Orchestra. Ukrainian singer Jamala, who won the contest in 2016, will perform a tribute to her Crimean Tatar culture.
One person who won’t be appearing is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He asked to address the final by video — but organizer the European Broadcasting Union said “regrettably,” that would breach “the nonpolitical nature of the event.”
How Is The Winner Decided?
After all the acts have performed, viewers in participating nations can vote by phone, text message or app – though they can’t vote for their own country. This year for the first time, viewers in nonparticipating countries can also vote online, with the combined “rest of the world” votes being given the weight of one individual country.
National juries of music industry professionals also allocate between one and 12 points to their favorite songs, with an announcer from each country popping up to declare which has been granted the coveted “douze points” (12 points).
Public and jury votes are combined to give each country a single score. Ending up with “nul points” (zero points) is considered a national embarrassment. It’s a fate the U.K. has suffered several times.
How Can I Watch?
Eurovision is being shown by national broadcasters that belong to the European Broadcasting Union, including the BBC in Britain, and on the Eurovision YouTube channel. In the United States, it’s being shown on NBC’s Peacock streaming service.
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Thousands of Ukrainians fleeing the war found refuge in the small town of Uzhhorod in Ukraine. A local theater director decided to stage the Shakespearean play, King Lear, to help refugees find some normalcy during the war. They were surprised by what happened next. Angelina Bagdasaryan has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Vazgen Varzhabetian
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Austria, has been ranked by The Economist as the most livable city in the world and it is also the pioneer of adopting a gender-inclusive urban design. For VOA, Chermaine Lee reports from Vienna.
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The United States returned two looted antiquities to China, the latest in a wave of repatriations of artifacts stolen from more than a dozen countries, New York authorities announced Tuesday.
The two 7th-century stone carvings, currently valued at $3.5 million, had been sawn off a tomb by thieves in the early 1990s and smuggled out of China, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement.
The carvings were among 89 antiquities from 10 different countries purchased by Shelby White, a private art collector in New York.
From 1998, they were “loaned” to the Metropolitan Museum of Art until they were seized this year by the DA’s office following a criminal investigation.
“It is a shame that these two incredible antiquities were stolen and at least one remained largely hidden from the public view for nearly three decades,” Bragg said.
“While their total value is more than $3 million, the incredible detail and beauty of these pieces can never be truly captured by a price tag.”
Collectively valued at nearly $69 million, they were part of a criminal investigation by the city’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit that tracks and repatriates looted artifacts.
One of the funerary carvings was kept in the museum’s storage room and never displayed, according to the statement by Bragg’s office.
It was never cleaned and caked in dirt, another tell-tale sign of their illicit origin, the statement added.
The carvings were handed over during a repatriation ceremony at the Chinese consulate in New York.
“We regard the crackdown on crimes against cultural property a sacred mission,” Chinese Consul General Huang Ping was quoted as saying in the statement by the DA’s office.
Since January 2022, more than 950 antiquities worth over $165 million have been returned to 19 countries, including Cambodia, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Iraq, Greece, Turkey, and Italy.
In 2021, Michael Steinhardt, a private collector, returned around 180 stolen antiquities worth $70 million following an out-of-court agreement, in one of the most famous cases of art trafficking in New York.
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