YCLOAK

The world welcomed the new year with a packed party in Times Square and fireworks soaring above European capitals, while hoping for an end to the war in Ukraine and a return to post-COVID normality in Asia.

It was a year marked by the conflict in Ukraine, economic stresses and the effects of global warming. But it was also a year that saw a dramatic soccer World Cup, rapid technological change, and efforts to meet climate challenges.

After 2023 descended upon Asia, Africa and Europe, New York rang in the new year in typical style as thousands corralled themselves into pens under pouring rain in Times Square, waiting hours for the ball to drop. A 12-foot (3.7-meter) geodesic sphere made of Waterford crystal triangles slid down a pole atop a 25-story building to mark the calendar change.

Meanwhile, millions watched the accompanying musical acts and countdown on television from dry and warm living rooms around the world.

Tommy Onolfo, 40, a mechanic from nearby Nassau County, said he wore a diaper during his drenched, 14-hour wait in Times Square, as security measures require spectators to deprive themselves of all comforts to maintain a front-row view.

“I’m a lifeguard in the summer so I’m not afraid of water at all,” Onolfo said. “I have my bathroom thing down to a science. I haven’t had to use the diaper yet. It’s just in case.”

Earlier, across the Atlantic, the London Eye turned blue and yellow in solidarity with Ukraine as fireworks saw in midnight in the British capital.

The celebration, which London’s mayor had branded the biggest in Europe, also referenced Queen Elizabeth II, who died in September, the red and white of England’s soccer team, and the rainbow colors of the LGBTQ Pride event, which had its 50-year anniversary in 2022.

For Ukraine, there seemed to be no end in sight to the fighting that began when Russia invaded in February.

Numerous blasts were heard in Kyiv and in other places around Ukraine and air raid sirens wailed across the country in the early hours of New Year’s Day.

On Saturday, Russia fired a barrage of cruise missiles that Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman described as “Terror on New Year’s Eve.”

Evening curfews remained in place nationwide, making the celebration of the beginning of 2023 impossible in many public spaces. Several regional governors posted messages on social media warning residents not to break restrictions.

In Kyiv, though, people gathered near the city’s central Christmas tree as midnight approached.

“We are not giving up. They couldn’t ruin our celebrations,” said 36-year-old Yaryna, who was celebrating with her husband, tinsel and fairy lights wrapped around her.

In a video message to mark the New Year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Time Magazine’s 2022 Person of the Year, said: “I want to wish all of us one thing – victory.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin devoted his New Year’s address to rallying the Russian people behind his troops.

Festivities in Moscow were muted, without the usual fireworks on Red Square.

“One should not pretend that nothing is happening – our people are dying (in Ukraine),” said 68-year-old Yelena Popova. “A holiday is being celebrated, but there must be limits.” Many Muscovites said they hoped for peace in 2023.

Elsewhere in Europe, fireworks exploded over the Parthenon in Athens, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, and the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, where crowds gathered on the Champs-Elysees avenue to watch the French capital’s first New Year fireworks since 2019.

But, like many places, the Czech capital Prague was feeling the pinch economically and so did not hold a fireworks display.

“Holding celebrations did not seem appropriate,” said city hall spokesman Vit Hofman.

Earlier, Australia kicked off the celebrations with its first restriction-free New Year’s Eve after two years of COVID disruptions. Sydney welcomed the New Year with a typically dazzling fireworks display, which for the first time featured a rainbow waterfall off the Harbour Bridge.

In China, rigorous COVID restrictions were lifted only in December as the government abruptly reversed its “zero-COVID” policy, a switch that has led to soaring infections and meant some people were in no mood to celebrate.

While China’s official death toll is barely ticking higher, UK-based health data firm Airfinity estimated last week that around 9,000 people in the country are probably dying each day from COVID.

“This virus should just go and die, cannot believe this year I cannot even find a healthy friend that can go out with me,” wrote one social media user based in eastern Shandong province.

But in the city of Wuhan, where the pandemic began three years ago, thousands of people gathered to despite a heavy security presence.

Barricades were erected and hundreds of police officers stood guard. Loudspeakers blasted out a message on a loop advising people not to gather. But the large crowds of revelers took no notice.

In Shanghai, many thronged the historic riverside walkway, the Bund.

“We’ve all traveled in from Chengdu to celebrate in Shanghai,” said Da Dai, a 28-year-old digital media executive who was visiting with two friends. “We’ve already had COVID, so now feel it’s safe to enjoy ourselves.”
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Sherlock Holmes is finally free to the American public in 2023.

The long-running contested copyright dispute over Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales of a whip-smart detective will finally come to an end as the 1927 copyrights expiring January 1 include Conan Doyle’s last Sherlock Holmes work.

Alongside the short-story collection The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, books such as Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, Ernest Hemingway’s Men Without Women, William Faulkner’s Mosquitoes and Agatha Christie’s The Big Four — an Hercule Poirot mystery — will become public domain as the calendar turns to 2023.

Once a work enters the public domain it can legally be shared, performed, reused, repurposed or sampled without permission or cost. The works from 1927 were originally supposed to be copyrighted for 75 years, but the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act delayed opening them up for an additional 20 years.

While many prominent works on the list used those extra two decades to earn their copyright holders good money, a Duke University expert says the copyright protections also applied to “all of the works whose commercial viability had long subsided.”

“For the vast majority — probably 99% — of works from 1927, no copyright holder financially benefited from continued copyright. Yet they remained off limits, for no good reason,” Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, wrote in a blog post heralding “Public Domain Day 2023.”

That long U.S. copyright period meant many works that would now become available have long since been lost, because they were not profitable to maintain by the legal owners but couldn’t be used by others. On the Duke list are such “lost” films as Victor Fleming’s “The Way of All Flesh” and Tod Browning’s “London After Midnight.”

1927 portended the silent film era’s end with the release of the first “talkie” — a film with dialogue in it. That was “The Jazz Singer,” the historic first feature-length film with synchronized dialogue also notorious for Al Jolson’s blackface performance.

In addition to the Alan Crosland-directed film, other movies including “Wings” — directed by William A. Wellman and the “outstanding production” winner at the very first Oscars — and Fritz Lang’s seminal science-fiction classic “Metropolis” will enter the public domain.

Musical compositions — the music and lyrics found on sheet music, not the sound recordings — on the list include hits from Broadway musicals including “Funny Face” and jazz standards from the likes of legends such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, in addition to Irving Berlin’s “Puttin’ on the Ritz” and “(I Scream You Scream, We All Scream for) Ice Cream” by Howard Johnson, Billy Moll and Robert A. King.

Duke’s Center for the Public Domain highlighted notable books, movies and musical compositions entering the public domain — just a fraction of the thousands due to be unleashed in 2023.

Books

— The Gangs of New York, by Herbert Asbury (original publication)

— Death Comes for the Archbishop, by Willa Cather

— The Big Four, by Agatha Christie

— The Tower Treasure, the first Hardy Boys mystery by the pseudonymous Franklin W. Dixon

— The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle

— Copper Sun, by Countee Cullen

— Mosquitoes, by William Faulkner

— Men Without Women, by Ernest Hemingway

— Der Steppenwolf, by Herman Hesse (in German)

— Amerika, by Franz Kafka (in German)

— Now We Are Six, by A.A. Milne with illustrations from E.H. Shepard

— Le Temps retrouvé, by Marcel Proust (in French)

— Twilight Sleep, by Edith Wharton

— The Bridge of San Luis Rey, by Thornton Wilder

— To The Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf

Movies

— “7th Heaven,” directed by Frank Borzage

— “The Battle of the Century,” a Laurel and Hardy film directed by Clyde Bruckman

— “The Kid Brother,” directed by Ted Wilde

— “The Jazz Singer,” directed by Alan Crosland

— “The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog,” directed by Alfred Hitchcock

— “Metropolis,” directed by Fritz Lang

— “Sunrise,” directed by F.W. Murnau

— “Upstream,” directed by John Ford

— “Wings,” directed by William A. Wellman

Musical compositions

— “Back Water Blues,” “Preaching the Blues” and “Foolish Man Blues” (Bessie Smith)

— “The Best Things in Life Are Free,” from the musical “Good News” (George Gard “Buddy” De Sylva, Lew Brown, Ray Henderson)

— “Billy Goat Stomp,” “Hyena Stomp” and “Jungle Blues” (Ferdinand Joseph Morton)

— “Black and Tan Fantasy” and “East St. Louis Toodle-O” (Bub Miley, Duke Ellington)

— “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” and “Ol’ Man River,” from the musical “Show Boat” (Oscar Hammerstein II, Jerome Kern)

— “Diane” (Erno Rapee, Lew Pollack)

— “Funny Face” and “‘S Wonderful,” from the musical “Funny Face” (Ira and George Gershwin)

— “(I Scream You Scream, We All Scream for) Ice Cream” (Howard Johnson, Billy Moll, Robert A. King)

— “Mississippi Mud” (Harry Barris, James Cavanaugh)

— “My Blue Heaven” (George Whiting, Walter Donaldson)

— “Potato Head Blues” and “Gully Low Blues” (Louis Armstrong)

— “Puttin’ on the Ritz” (Irving Berlin)

— “Rusty Pail Blues,” “Sloppy Water Blues” and “Soothin’ Syrup Stomp” (Thomas Waller)
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Photo collage above: Top row, from left, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, singer Ronnie Spector, actor Sidney Poitier, Queen Elizabeth, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev. Bottom row, from left, actress Angela Lansbury, singer Jerry Lee Lewis, Pakistani doctor who championed women’s health and rights Nafis Sadik, Soviet cosmonaut Valery Polyakov, Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, revered Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh and NBA star Bill Russell.
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Cristiano Ronaldo completed a lucrative move to Saudi Arabian club Al Nassr on Friday in a deal that is a landmark moment for Middle Eastern soccer but will see one of Europe’s biggest stars disappear from the sport’s elite stage.

Al Nassr posted a picture on social media of the five-time Ballon d’Or holding up the team’s jersey after Ronaldo signed a deal until June 2025, with the club hailing the move as “history in the making.”

“This is a signing that will not only inspire our club to achieve even greater success but inspire our league, our nation and future generations, boys and girls to be the best version of themselves,” the club wrote.

It also gives the 37-year-old Ronaldo a massive payday in what could be the final contract of his career. Media reports have claimed the Portugal star could be earning up to $200 million a year from the deal, which would make him the highest-paid soccer player in history.

Ronaldo said in a statement that he was “eager to experience a new football league in a different country.”

“I am fortunate that I have won everything I set out to win in European football and feel now that this is the right moment to share my experience in Asia,” the forward added.

While the signing is a massive boost for Middle Eastern soccer, it will also fuel the debate about Saudi Arabia using so-called “sportswashing” to boost the country’s image internationally. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund owns Premier League team Newcastle, and the country is considering a bid to host the 2030 World Cup.

Ronaldo had been a free agent after his contract was terminated by Manchester United following an explosive TV interview in which he criticized manager Erik ten Hag and the club’s owners after having been repeatedly benched and even temporarily suspended by the club.

He is also coming off a disappointing World Cup where he was benched in the knockout rounds and left the field in tears after Portugal lost in the quarterfinals to Morocco.

And after a storied career that saw him win the Champions League with both United and Real Madrid, along with league and cup titles in England, Spain and Italy, he will now seemingly see out the last years of his career far away from the spotlight of top European soccer.

While Saudi Arabia earned its biggest international soccer win ever at the World Cup in Qatar last month when it beat eventual champion Argentina in its first group-stage game, the domestic league has few other stars and is not watched by a major international audience.
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Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, the first pope in 600 years to resign, has died. Below are highlights from his life.

April 16, 1927: Born Joseph Alois Ratzinger in Marktl am Inn, Germany, youngest of three children to Joseph and Maria Ratzinger.

1943-45: Assistant in Germany’s anti-aircraft defense and infantry soldier; imprisoned in 1945 in American POW camp in Neu-Ulm.

June 29, 1951: Ordained along with brother Georg Ratzinger in Freising.

1969-77: Professor at University of Regensburg.

March 25, 1977: Named archbishop of Munich and Freising.

June 27, 1977: Made a cardinal by Pope Paul VI.

Nov. 25, 1981: Named prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith by Pope John Paul II; takes up post in March 1982.

April 2, 2005: Pope John Paul II dies.

April 8, 2005: As dean of the College of Cardinals, Ratzinger presides over John Paul’s funeral.

April 19, 2005: Elected 265th pope in one of the fastest conclaves in history. Choosing name Benedict XVI, he says he is merely a “simple, humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord.”

April 24, 2005: Installed as pope with Mass.

Aug. 18-21, 2005: First foreign trip, to World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany.

Sept. 24, 2005: Meets with dissident theologian Hans Kung at papal summer residence.

Dec. 25, 2005: First encyclical, God is Love, signed. Released Jan. 25, 2006.

May 28, 2006: During trip to Poland, visits Auschwitz concentration camp.

Sept. 12, 2006: During visit to Germany, delivers speech at University of Regensburg that enrages Muslims; quoting a Byzantine emperor who characterized some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as “evil and inhuman,” particularly “his command to spread by the sword the faith.”

April 16, 2007: First volume of Jesus of Nazareth completed on his 80th birthday. Released April 13.

May 27, 2007: Signs letter to China’s Catholics, urging them to unite under his authority. Published June 30.

July 7, 2007: Removes restrictions on celebrating the old Latin Mass in major gesture to traditional Catholics.

April 20, 2008: During visit to United States, prays for victims of Sept. 11, 2001 attacks at ground zero.

July 19, 2008: During visit to Australia for World Youth Day, meets with victims of priestly sex abuse and during a Mass apologizes for their suffering.

Jan. 21, 2009: Lifts excommunication of Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson and three other ultra-traditionalist bishops of Society of St. Pius X, igniting outrage. Decree released Jan. 24.

March 10, 2009: Acknowledges Vatican mistakes in Williamson affair, says Vatican must make better use of Internet to prevent future controversies. Letter released March 12.

March 17, 2009: En route to Cameroon, tells reporters aboard papal plane that condoms are not the solution to AIDS and can make problem worse, prompting widespread criticism.

May 11, 2009: During visit to the Holy Land, lays wreath at Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem, says Holocaust victims “lost their lives but they will never lose their names.”

June 29, 2009: Third encyclical, Charity in Truth, signed. Released July 7, 2009.

July 17, 2009: Breaks right wrist in late-night fall at summer vacation home.

Oct. 20, 2009: Vatican announces pope is making it easier for Anglicans to convert en masse to Catholicism.

March 19, 2010: Rebukes Irish bishops for “grave errors of judgment” in handling clerical sex abuse but makes no mention of Vatican responsibility in letter to Irish faithful. Released March 20.

May 1, 2010: Orders major overhaul of Legion of Christ after Vatican investigation determines founder was a fraud.

Sept. 16-19, 2010: During first state visit by a pope to Britain, meets with Queen Elizabeth II, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and beatifies Anglican convert John Henry Newman.

Nov. 20, 2010: Revises controversial condom-AIDS comments in book and says male prostitutes who use condoms may be taking a first step toward a more responsible sexuality.

March 2, 2011: Issues sweeping exoneration of Jews for the death of Christ in Jesus of Nazareth-Part II. Book released March 10.

May 1, 2011: Beatifies John Paul II before 1.5 million people.

June 28, 2011: Tweets for the first time, announcing launch of Vatican news information portal.

Oct. 6, 2012: Pope’s former butler is convicted on charges he stole the pontiff’s private letters and leaked them to a journalist.

Feb. 11, 2013: Reveals in Latin that he is stepping down Feb. 28 during a meeting of Vatican cardinals, surprising even his closest collaborators.

Feb. 28, 2013: Departs Vatican City in a helicopter bound for Castel Gandolfo, where he begins his final journey as a “simple pilgrim.”

March 23, 2013: Receives Pope Francis for lunch at Castel Gandolfo; the two men pray side by side and Francis insists “We are brothers.”

April 28, 2014: Joins Francis on altar to canonize St. John Paul II and St. John XXIII, the first time a reigning and retired pope celebrate Mass together.

April 11, 2019: In an essay, blames the clergy sex abuse scandal on the sexual revolution of the 1960s and an absence of God.

January 2020: Contributes to a book reaffirming celibacy for priests at a time when Francis was considering an exception, sparking calls for rules governing future “popes emeritus.”

June 18, 2020: Travels to Germany to visit his ailing brother, the Rev. Georg Ratzinger, who dies two weeks later, on July 1.

July 16, 2021: Has his signature relaxation of restrictions on celebration of old Latin Mass reversed by Pope Francis.

Jan. 21, 2022: Is faulted for his handling of four sex abuse cases while bishop of Munich in the 1970s and 1980s by independent report commissioned by German church.

Feb. 8, 2022: Asks forgiveness for any “grievous faults” in handling of Munich priests, but denies personal or specific wrongdoing.

Dec. 28, 2022: Pope Francis announces Benedict is “very ill,” asks for special prayers and visits him at his home.

Dec. 31, 2022: Benedict dies at 9:34 a.m. at his home in the Vatican Gardens at age 95.
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The rudeness pandemic, the actual pandemic, and all things gray. There’s a lot to leave behind when 2022 ends and uncertainty rules around the world.

The health crisis brought on the dawn of slow living, but it crushed many families forced to hustle for their living. Rudeness went on the rise. Crypto currencies tanked. Pete Davidson’s love thing with Kim Kardashian made headlines.

A list of what we’re over as we hope for better times in 2023:

Incivility be gone

The pandemic released a tsunami of overwrought people, but heightened incivility has stretched well beyond their raucous ranks.

Researcher Christine Porath restricted herself to rudeness, disrespect or insensitive behavior when she recently wrote about the subject in Harvard Business Review. The professor of management at Georgetown University found incidents of incivility way up, in line with a steady climb stretching back nearly 20 years.

Particularly hammered this year, Porath wrote, were frontline workers in health care, retail, transportation, hospitality and education. All were declared heroes when the pandemic struck. It didn’t take long for that to become a beat down.

Noting that incivility can and does escalate to physical aggression and other violence, Axios dubbed it the rudeness pandemic.

Crypto craziness

Will the implosion of FTX, the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency exchange, bring on broader chaos in a digital world that millions of people already distrust?

Time will tell as other and otherwise healthy crypto companies face a liquidity crisis. And there’s the philanthropic implications of the FTX bankruptcy collapse here in the real world, since founder Sam Bankman-Fried donated millions to numerous causes in “effective altruism” fashion.

The FTX bankruptcy filing followed a bruising of crypto companies throughout 2022, due in part to rising interest rates and the broader market downturn that has many investors rethinking their lust for risk. That includes mom-and-pop investors along for the ride.

ASMR, pipe down

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. It began, innocently enough, as brain tingles brought on by whispering, tapping, brushing or scraping. Then, bam, it took off on social media like a really loud rocket on a mission to annoy.

Today, we’ve got millions of videos filled with people attempting to calm by speaking in low tones, armed with anything they can get their hands on in conjunction with their expensive, ultra-sensitive mics.

Companies are selling beer and chocolate, paint and home goods using ASMR. All the calming — and commerce — is deafening.

Gray, the color

Gray walls, gray floors, gray furniture. Is gray passé? Here’s hoping.

The color spent much of 2022 as a purportedly neutral “it.” The problem was, we were already feeling gray on the inside.

Of course, gray has been around since color itself, but it took over as an alternative to beige and Tuscan brown. Gray took a tumble midyear, but one doesn’t paint or swap out the couch as quickly as trends fade. We’ve been stuck with gray, thanks to TV home shows and social media loops.

“What would your reaction be if I told you that color is disappearing from the world? A graph suggesting that the color gray has become the dominant shade has been circulating on TikTok, and boy does it have folks in a tizzy,” wrote Loney Abrams in Architectural Digest in October.

By that, she explained, the upset folks she mentioned stand firmly behind the notion that a lack of color “spells tragedy.”

Abrams, a Brooklyn artist and pop culture curator, speaks of the fixer-uppers of Chip and Joanna Gaines and the Calabasas compound of Kim Kardashian. And she cites Tash Bradley, a trained color psychologist who works for the U.K. wallpaper and paint brand Lick.

Bradley, Abrams wrote, points to the hustle-bustle of pre-pandemic life as one villain leading to The Great Gray Washing. Bradley, the interior design director for Lick, sees no psychological benefits to gray.

Pete Davidson’s love life

Not the King of Staten Island himself, per se. Look deeply into your hearts and decide for yourselves whether to love him or Ye him.

We’re talking about the vast quantities of air volume his love life has sucked up on a near-hourly basis, especially in 2022, otherwise known as his Kim Kardashian era (which actually started in late 2021 for the obsessives).

Davidson’s love roster has puzzled for years, stretching back to his MTV “Guy Code” days in 2013 while still a teenager, leading to his Carly Aquilino phase.

There were stops along the way with Cazzie David (Larry Davidson’s daughter), Ariana Grande, Kate Beckinsale (briefly), Kaia Gerber (even more briefly), and others, including his latest: model Emily Ratajkowski.

The “SNL” alum and self-described — in appearance — “crack baby” is a paparazzi, social media, gossip monger magnet. Rather, his love life is.

Movie upchuck madness

The film industry, to state the obvious, has produced decades of genre-spanning grossness, much of it significant and legit to show on camera.

However, there’s one particular cinematic exclamation point we could do without, or at the very least, with significantly less of: The dispensable spew.

Implied vomiting with an urgent rush to a curb, hand to a mouth or turn of a head would sometimes suffice, thanks. Who spread the word in Hollywood that movie watchers actually desire all the nauseating details. The projectile-ness, the color combinations, the chunks.

Well, in some cases, audiences themselves.

That notable dress shop scene in the 2011 smash hit “Bridesmaids” was a gender test of sorts, according to The Daily Beast. Would audiences accept all the spewing and other grand scatology from women in a wedding-themed movie as they do for the bros of producer Judd Apatow’s other comedies?

Apatow and director Paul Feig extensively tested “Bridesmaids” with audiences, and they were fine.

Fast forward to 2022’s notables. There’s the satire “The Triangle of Sadness,” which could hardly do without, but there’s also “Tár,” a far more serious film that wouldn’t make the vomit hall of fame with Lydia Tár’s one fleeting gush. We ask, what’s the point of that? Meaning, the upchuck as aside.

Cate Blanchett’s Tár has far bigger problems, so let’s rein in all the gratuitous spewing.

The ultra hustle

Elon Musk put it thusly in an email to his remaining employees:

“Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore. This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”

Musk is Musk, but he illustrates a moment: A need to remain in motion, to work harder, climb higher, sweat longer. With the volatile economy, political chaos, extreme weather and wars, it’s no wonder that a blanket of anxiety has kept the ultra-hustle alive.

As if all the slow living and work-life balance talk is meaningless, or more to the point, can’t exist for many.

“We’re hustling to make ends meet, `building our brand,’ ensuring our startup doesn’t tank, or dreaming about the day our side hustle takes off and we can walk into the office and give everyone the bird,” wrote Benjamin Sledge on Medium.

It stands to reason, he said, that “most of us are hustling because we literally have to in order to survive.”
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Barbara Walters, one of the most visible women on U.S. television as the first female anchor on an evening news broadcast and one of TV’s most prominent interviewers, has died at age 93, her longtime ABC home network said on Friday.

Walters, who created the popular ABC women’s talk show The View in 1997, died Friday at her home in New York, Robert Iger, chief executive of ABC’s corporate parent, the Walt Disney Co., said on Twitter.

In a broadcast career spanning five decades, Walters interviewed an array of world leaders, including Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, Libyan ruler Moammar Gadhafi, Saddam Hussein of Iraq and every U.S. president and first lady since Richard and Pat Nixon.

She earned 12 Emmy awards, 11 of those while at ABC News, the network said.

Walters began her journalism career on NBC’s The Today Show in the 1960s as a writer and segment producer. She made broadcast history as the first woman co-anchor on a U.S. evening newscast, opposite Harry Reasoner.
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Web searches reveal what America really cared about this year  
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Brazil and the world said goodbye Thursday to a man who many consider the greatest football player of the last century. Pele died in São Paulo at the age of 82. Brazilians took to the streets to honor their greatest idol in the country’s most popular sport. For VOA, Edgar Maciel reports from Sao Paulo.
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As the person who dressed the Sex Pistols, Vivienne Westwood, who died Thursday at 81, was synonymous with 1970s punk rock, a rebelliousness that remained the hallmark of an unapologetically political designer who became one of British fashion’s biggest names.

“Vivienne Westwood died today, peacefully and surrounded by her family, in Clapham, South London. The world needs people like Vivienne to make a change for the better,” her fashion house said on Twitter.

Climate change, pollution and her support for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange were all fodder for protest T-shirts or banners carried by her models on the runway.

She dressed up as then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for a magazine cover in 1989 and drove a white tank near the country home of a later British leader, David Cameron, to protest fracking.

The rebel was inducted into Britain’s establishment in 1992 by Queen Elizabeth, who awarded her the Order of the British Empire medal. But, ever keen to shock, Westwood turned up at Buckingham Palace without underwear — a fact she proved to photographers by a revealing twirl of her skirt.

“The only reason I am in fashion is to destroy the word ‘conformity,'” Westwood said in her 2014 biography. “Nothing is interesting to me unless it’s got that element.”

Instantly recognizable with her orange or white hair, Westwood first made a name for herself in punk fashion in 1970s London, dressing the punk rock band that defined the genre.

Together with the Sex Pistols’ manager, Malcolm McLaren, she defied the hippie trends of the time to sell rock ‘n’ roll-inspired clothing.

They moved on to torn outfits adorned with chains as well as latex and fetish pieces that they sold at their shop in London’s King’s Road variously called “Let It Rock,” “Sex” and “Seditionaries,” among other names.

They used prints of swastikas, naked breasts and, perhaps most well-known, an image of the queen with a safety pin through her lips. Favorite items included sleeveless black T-shirts, studded, with zips, safety pins or bleached chicken bones.

“There was no punk before me and Malcolm,” Westwood said in the biography. “And the other thing you should know about punk too: it was a total blast.”

‘Buy less’

Born Vivienne Isabel Swire on April 8, 1941, in the English Midlands town of Glossop, Westwood grew up at a time of rationing during and after World War II.

A recycling mentality pervaded her work, and she repeatedly told fashionistas to “choose well” and “buy less.” From the late 1960s, she lived in a small flat in south London for some 30 years and cycled to work.

When she was a teenager, her parents, a greengrocer and a cotton weaver, moved the family to north London where she studied jewelry-making and silversmithing before retraining as a teacher.

While she taught at a primary school, she met her first husband, Derek Westwood, marrying him in a homemade dress. Their son, Ben, was born in 1963, and the couple divorced in 1966.

Now a single mother, Westwood was selling jewelry on London’s Portobello Road when she met art student McLaren, who would go on to be her partner romantically and professionally. They had a son, Joe Corre, co-founder of lingerie brand Agent Provocateur.

After the Sex Pistols split, the two held their first catwalk show in 1981, presenting a “new romantic” look of African-style patterns, buccaneer trousers and sashes.

Westwood, by then in her 40s, began to slowly forge her own path in fashion, eventually separating from McLaren in the early 1980s.

Often looking to history, her influential designs have included corsets, Harris Tweed suits and taffeta ballgowns.

Her 1985 “Mini-Crini” line introduced her short puffed skirt and a more fitted silhouette. Her sky-high platform shoes garnered worldwide attention in 1993 when model Naomi Campbell stumbled on the catwalk in a pair.

“My clothes have a story. They have an identity. They have character and a purpose,” Westwood said.

“That’s why they become classics. Because they keep on telling a story. They are still telling it.”

The Westwood brand flourished in the 1990s, with fashionistas flocking to her runway shows in Paris, and stores opening around the world selling her lines, accessories and perfumes.

She met her second husband, Andreas Kronthaler, teaching fashion in Vienna. They married in 1993, and he later became her creative partner.

Westwood used her public profile to champion issues including nuclear disarmament and to protest anti-terrorism laws and government spending policies that hit the poor. She held a large “climate revolution” banner at the 2012 Paralympics closing ceremony in London, and frequently turned her models into catwalk eco-warriors.

“I’ve always had a political agenda,” Westwood told L’Officiel fashion magazine in 2018.

“I’ve used fashion to challenge the status quo.”
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Brazilian football legend Pelé has died at the age of 82, after battling cancer and cardiac problems the past year. Over the course of his legendary career, the man who led his national team to an unprecedented three World Cup titles became known as one of the sport’s greatest players. VOA’s Robert Raffaele has more on the life of the international icon.
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Before Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo came along, the enduring debate in soccer about who was the greatest player centered on two men: Pele and Diego Maradona.

It was an argument that played out for years on terraces and in bars, on radio and on television.

Brazil’s Pele, a prolific goal scorer who died aged 82 on Thursday in Sao Paulo, won the World Cup an unprecedented three times as a player in 1958, 1962 and 1970 and put the small town of Santos on the map before conquering the United States with the New York Cosmos.

Maradona, who died at the age of 60 in 2020, guided Argentina to the World Cup in 1986 with perhaps the most influential performance ever at a major tournament and lifted Napoli to unparalleled heights in Italy and Europe.

The argument about whose legacy was greater so divided the football world that when Maradona was voted the player of the 20th century in a FIFA internet poll, there was widespread outrage, with many griping that Pele’s earlier career put him at a disadvantage with younger fans.

FIFA held another poll voted on by its own “football family,” won by Pele, allowing the pair to share the glory.

“Here Pele, the striker whose territory was the penalty box, a player who scored goals for fun and became Minister of Sport, more your quiet type of person,” FIFA wrote at the time.

“There Maradona, possibly the most complete player ever, playmaker and goal-scorer, technically brilliant, unpredictable and impulsive, both on and off the field, a player plagued by a variety of problems for many years.”

The cases made on both sides came with a host of subtexts: the Argentine versus the Brazilian, the man of the people versus the establishment figure, the party animal versus the quiet man, the rebel versus the conformist.

Everyone took a side, and the two protagonists were not shy about making their own feelings known.

Pele thought Maradona was gauche and undignified, and Maradona thought Pele was a sellout.

“As a player he was great. … But he thinks politically,” Maradona said, in one of his kinder criticisms.

Pele called the Argentine, who struggled with addiction, “a bad example” and much more besides.

Still, the two South Americans got on well when they met for the first time in 1979, Maradona flying to Rio to meet Pele.

Pele was happy to counsel the budding star, and Maradona excited to be fulfilling his dream of meeting the Brazilian.

But their relationship soured in 1982 after Pele criticized Maradona when he was sent off for stamping on a Brazilian in a World Cup tie in Spain.

From then on, they spent decades criticizing each other and then making up, with the praise as sincere as the insults.

Pele was magnanimous on hearing of Maradona’s death, saying: “I lost a great friend, and the world lost a legend.”

Messi, who strengthened his own claim to sporting immortality by leading Argentina to their third World Cup victory this month, shared a photo of himself with Pele in a terse tribute to the Brazilian star on Instagram, saying: “Rest in peace Pele.”

Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo, eclipsed by Messi at the Qatar World Cup, was more expansive, calling the Brazilian “King Pelé” and an inspiration to millions. “He will never be forgotten, and his memory will last forever in all of us football lovers,” he said.
…

Brazilian football legend Pele, who burst onto the world scene as a goal-scoring teenager and led his national team to an unprecedented three World Cup titles, died Thursday at the age of 82.

He was hospitalized in late November, and doctors said in December he was dealing with cancer that had advanced along with kidney and cardiac problems. In September 2021, he had surgery to remove a tumor from his colon.

Widely considered one of the greatest football players of all time, Pele dazzled on the World Cup stage for Brazil and in club games and international tours with his team Santos before helping generate a surge of excitement around the sport in the United States with a late-career stint with the New York Cosmos.

Born Edson Arantes do Nascimento in 1940 in Tres Coracoes, about 250 kilometers northwest of Rio de Janeiro, Pele signed with Santos at the age of 15.

By 16, he was part of Brazil’s national team, and in 1958 he made his World Cup debut at age 17, announcing himself on football’s biggest stage with a goal in his first match. He is the youngest player to ever score in the men’s World Cup and the youngest to ever score three goals in one game, which he accomplished in Brazil’s second match of the tournament.

Two more goals in the tournament’s final match helped Pele lead Brazil to the championship. He won two more World Cups with Brazil, in 1962 and 1970.

His international career included 77 goals in 92 matches, and he was named FIFA’s co-player of the 20th century along with Argentina’s Diego Maradona.

After retiring from Santos and international duty, Pele joined the New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League in 1975 and played three seasons there.

In his post-football life, Pele served as Brazil’s sports minister and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization appointed him UNESCO Champion for Sport for what it said was his “outstanding commitment to promote sport and help disadvantaged children.”

In 2020, Pele tweeted that he was proud of his relationship with the U.N., as well as his involvement in campaigns to promote breastfeeding in Brazil and eradicate illiteracy.

“Today, I insist on being involved in good causes, both with NGO’s, Public institutions and my sponsors. This is part of my legacy and I applaud other football legends that have also been following this path, using the beautiful game to make the world better,” he posted.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
…

Former world number one Novak Djokovic arrived in Australia on Tuesday almost one year after he was deported for refusing to be vaccinated against Covid-19, tennis officials said.

The nine-time Australian Open champion was initially banned from the country for three years after losing a high-stakes legal battle in January over his vaccine status. 

Australia has since lifted its requirement for visitors to show proof of vaccination against Covid.

The government confirmed in November that the unvaccinated Serb was no longer barred and had been granted a visa allowing him to play in the opening Grand Slam of the year, which starts next month. 

Tennis Australia chief executive Craig Tiley said he hoped local fans would embrace Djokovic’s return. 

“We welcome him back to Australia,” he told reporters. 

“I think as we speak, he’s landing in Adelaide, and I think that he is going to be again the player to beat. 

“I have a great deal of confidence in the Australian public. I have a lot of confidence that the fans will react how we hope they will react.”

Tennis Australia confirmed that Djokovic had touched down.

Djokovic, who has won 21 Grand Slams, has been criticized for his part in the saga, which played out as rolling anti-vaccination protests took place in Australia’s major cities. 

He is scheduled to play in the Adelaide International, beginning Sunday, as he warms up for the Open in Melbourne. 

“Over the years I’ve been really fortunate to start very strong in Australia and I love playing there,” the world number five said in Dubai last week after ending 2022 with a record-equaling sixth ATP Tour Finals crown. 

“After obviously what happened earlier this year, hopefully I can have a decent reception there and hopefully that can help me play some good tennis.” 

Djokovic last set foot in Australia nearly a year ago, claiming he had obtained a medical exemption to enter the country without being vaccinated because he had recently recovered from Covid-19.

However, Australian border officials said he did not meet the requirements to be exempted from strict vaccination rules and he was detained for five days while pursuing an ultimately fruitless legal appeal. 
…

“Avatar: The Way of Water” sailed to the top of the box office in its second weekend, bringing in what studios estimate Sunday will be a strong $56 million in North America — a sign that the sequel may stay afloat into the new year and approach the massive expectations that met its release.

James Cameron’s digital extravaganza for 20th Century Studios has made $253.7 million domestically in its first 10 days of release, compared to $212.7 million in the same stretch for 2009’s first “Avatar,” which would go on to become the highest-grossing film of all time.

While Cameron’s films like the “Avatar” original and “Titanic” tend to have serious legs at the box office, sequels tend to open big and decline quickly, complicating guesses on where the film will end up. Its second-weekend drop-off from the $134 million it made in its first was not precipitous, given the way blockbusters open.

“This is James Cameron’s first $100 million opener,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore “For this movie to have opened that big and only dropped 58%, it shows it has staying power.”

Globally, “The Way of Water” is already the third highest-grossing film released in 2022, bringing in $855 million — putting it behind only “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Jurassic World Dominion” — and is a lock to surpass $1 billion.

It’s also clear sailing for the film looking ahead, with more holiday time coming and no comparable competition until February, when Marvel’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” is released.

Storms across the U.S. could keep people home, however.

“The biggest foe that Avatar is facing at this moment is the weather,” Dergarabedian said.

Universal’s animated Shrek spinoff, “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” featuring the voices of Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek, finished a distant second with $11.35 million in its opening weekend.

Sony’s biopic “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” finished third with $5.3 million.

The weekend’s biggest disappointment was “Babylon,” the epic of early Hollywood from “La La Land” director Damian Chazelle starring Brad Pitt and Margo Robbie. In a nationwide release it brought in just $3.5 million, finishing fourth.

The tepid, $6.5 million opening weekend in October of director David O. Russell’s “Amsterdam,” another film, set in a similar period, that combined prestige, scope, star power and a celebrated auteur, brought industry worries that audiences just weren’t flocking to theaters for such films.

The concerns proved justified, as “Babylon” barely made more than half of the opening of “Amsterdam.”

The coming weeks in theaters, streaming showings and any nominations it may get could help “Babylon” rise above bomb status.

“I would say Babylon is a movie that isn’t about the opening weekend,” Dergarabedian said. “We’ll have to see what it does in the coming weeks then into the new year, particularly if it gets more awards buzz.”

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

"Avatar: The Way of Water," $56 million.
"Puss in Boots: The Last Wish," 11.35 million.
"Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody," $5.3 million.
"Babylon," $3.5 million.
"Violent Night," $3.14 million.
"Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," $3 million.
"The Whale," $924,000.
"The Menu," $617,000.
"The Fabelmans," $550,000.
"Strange World," $410,000.

…

The streets of Bethlehem are crowded for Christmas again, after two years of COVID-related restrictions. In the Church of the Nativity, the faithful celebrated Jesus’s birth as the number of Palestinian Christians continues to dwindle.

Christian tourists from around the world have come to Bethlehem to celebrate the birth of Jesus. While the numbers have not quite reached pre-pandemic levels, hotels and restaurants are almost full bringing an economic boost to the West Bank.

Thousands filled the Church of the Nativity, on the site where Christians believe Jesus was born, for the traditional midnight mass which was broadcast around the world.

Palestinian officials including President Mahmoud Abbas attended the service in Bethlehem.

Latin Patriarch Pierbatista Pizzabella said that the world is no longer focusing on the Palestinians, who are still waiting for their right to live in dignity and freedom.

He said that Palestinians are living through difficult challenges, but the message of Christmas is a message of peace. Christmas comes as the Palestinian Christian population in the West Bank has dwindled to less than 1% of the total population.

Hani al-Hayek is the mayor of Beit Sahour, one of the few places in the West Bank that still has a Christian majority. He says he worries the Christian presence could decline even further.

“We are facing big immigration from here to Europe, to United States, especially to United States, we have big immigration from Beit Sahour, Beit Lehem, Beit Jallah, and it’s not good for us,” he said. “We encourage people to stay here, to keep in their homes, their lands, but they need safety, they need security for their children, their future.

He was referring to the ongoing clashes between Israelis and Palestinians, in which 150 Palestinians have been killed according to the Palestinian health ministry. That makes this the deadliest year for Palestinians in 16 years. Twenty Israelis have been killed in the violence.

Israeli officials say most of the Palestinians killed were gunmen who attacked Israeli soldiers when they tried to make arrests; Palestinian officials said some of those killed were not involved in any clashes.

 
…

Maxi Jazz, the lead singer of the British electronic band Faithless, has died at the age of 65, the group announced Saturday.

The musician and DJ, whose real name was Maxwell Fraser, passed away at his home in south London, according to the dance music act behind 1990s hits including Insomnia and God is a DJ.

No details were given for the cause of his death.

“We are heartbroken to say Maxi Jazz died peacefully in his sleep last night,” Faithless tweeted, paying tribute to one of its legendary 1995 founding members.

“He was a man who changed our lives in so many ways. He gave proper meaning and a message to our music,” they said. “He was a lovely human being with time for everyone and wisdom that was both profound and accessible.”

Faithless first emerged in the mid-1990s, earning widespread recognition and critical acclaim with their album Insomnia.

They were seen as pioneers of the emerging dance music genre at the time.

The group, whose other core members included Rollo and Sister Bliss, went on to release six more studio albums as well as several compilation albums during their decades-spanning collaboration.

The most recent release was 2020’s All Blessed.

Jazz, who also fronted a band of musicians named Maxi Jazz & The E-Type Boys, will be best remembered for Faithless’ earlier tracks, including the 2001 club classic We Come 1.

The band was also renowned for its live performances and headlined some of the biggest festivals in the world, including on Glastonbury’s Pyramid stage in 2002.

Sister Bliss paid tribute to her bandmate by sharing a black and white photo of him on Twitter.

“Sending love to all of you who shared our musical journey,” she wrote in the post. 

Jazz, who hailed from Brixton in south London, was a lifelong supporter of Premier League football team Crystal Palace and was made an associate director of the club in 2012.

Its official Twitter account described him as a “legendary musician” and said the team would walk out to a Faithless track on Monday, a public holiday known as Boxing Day in the U.K., in tribute. 
…

Back when 2022 started, Kristina Kadashevych surely could not have envisioned ending the year in the city of Richmond, in the U.S. state of Virginia, performing as the sugarplum fairy (and two other roles) in Richmond Ballet’s annual holiday extravaganza, The Nutcracker.

But then, the Ukrainian ballerina never could have imagined the year would turn out the way it has.

Kadashevych arrived for our interview in a second-floor studio at the Richmond Ballet dressed in a leotard, leggings and soft, puffy booties to keep her feet toasty. She started off, apologizing in advance for her English. “My English is not perfect,” she said — but it was really good — and then she told her story.

Last February, on the day before she was supposed to fly to Paris to join the Kyiv City Ballet for a tour as a guest principal dancer, Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Instead of boarding a plane for Paris, Kadashevych, her 2-year-old son and her parents had to flee their home in Kharkiv, in the eastern part of Ukraine; crowd onto a train; and evacuate to the presumed safer western reaches of the country.

“It was dangerous,” she said, “and we were scared.”

What did they take with them?

“Just kid stuff,” she said with a smile, “and kid. That’s all.”

More soberingly, she recalled how difficult it was to leave home, not knowing when they would be able to return.

“You don’t know where you’re going. You have nothing. It’s a strange feeling.”

‘You cannot plan anything’

They eventually took refuge at the home of another ballet dancer, and Kadashevych, 33, made the difficult decision to leave her family and go ahead and join the ballet company in Paris.

“I needed to work because I have no practice,” she said. “I was just sitting and losing my profession.”

Artistic director Stoner Winslett explained why Richmond Ballet dancers went to great lengths to keep dancing through the pandemic.

“Dancers are like Olympic athletes; if you lie around your apartment and don’t train, you lose your skill,” she said.

Kadashevych has been dancing since she was 9 and professionally for the past 15 years. She never considered another line of work, saying that dancing brought her interesting experiences, extensive travel and unmatched joy. “Ballet gives you everything.”

She left her family, thinking she would return soon. A month or two. It didn’t work out that way as the war raged on.

“Everything is so — how to explain — you cannot plan anything.”

Kadashevych and the Kyiv City Ballet went on a tour — France, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom and later the United States — and were warmly greeted everywhere they went.

“In Europe, our performances were like a charity to help Ukraine,” she said. “Often, a lot of refugees from Ukraine came to those performances, so we felt we were doing important things and helping our country the way we can.

“Here in the U.S., we also have found huge support all over. Here, I also feel that everybody cares about me a lot, and I appreciate that.”

In between the tours, she went home to Ukraine for a month over the summer to visit her son, Lev, who will turn 4 in March.

“It was a very happy time,” she said. “I remember the moment when I come. It was early morning, and my son was sleeping, and I just lay next to him and waited until he woke up, and he could not believe it. ‘Really, Mommy, really?!’ He was so happy.”

‘Unexpected and very interesting’

So, how did Richmond happen?

She shares a common acquaintance with Igor Antonov, another native Ukrainian who was a longtime dancer with the Richmond Ballet and now is an artistic associate with the company and director of Richmond Ballet II. He texted Kadashevych and asked if she’d like to join the Richmond Ballet on a temporary basis. Her answer: Yes.

“It was unexpected and very interesting for me,” said Kadashevych, who came to Richmond while the rest of the Kyiv company returned to Europe.

Kadashevych is temporarily replacing a Richmond Ballet dancer on maternity leave. Winslett said “bringing a ballerina here who is unable to currently dance in her home country would be another way that our organization could further” the ballet’s mission “to awaken, uplift and unite human spirits through the power of dance.”

Kadashevych will remain with the company through February and also will perform in Firebird with Serenade, Feb. 17-19.

For The Nutcracker, Kadashevych danced the roles of the Sugarplum Fairy, the Snow Queen and Mrs. Silberhaus, though not all in the same performances. Kadashevych said she has danced in several versions of Nutcracker, but never one quite like Richmond’s — “It’s absolutely different, so it’s a new Nutcracker for me,” she said — and never three roles in one production.

“For me, it’s unusual … but it’s interesting to try everything because all roles are interesting and beautiful, and I really want to dance them all,” she said. “It’s a challenge, but it’s a good challenge.”

And as for being in Richmond, she said, “I love it. I really love it. The city and the company, as well, because they have really nice dancers, as professionals and as humans. So, I enjoy being here.”

The future? She does not know. She hopes to return to Ukraine soon, perhaps after Christmas, for a short visit. Beyond that, she’s not certain of much of anything, including if the situation will be better at home sooner rather than later.

“We all hope that it will,” she said, “but I’m not sure.”
…

Pope Francis on Saturday led the world’s Catholics into Christmas, saying in an apparent reference to the war in Ukraine and other conflicts that the level of greed and hunger for power was such that some wanted to “consume even their neighbors.”

Francis, celebrating the 10th Christmas of his pontificate, presided at a solemn Christmas Eve Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica. It was the first with a capacity crowd of about 7,000 following several years of restricted attendance because of COVID.

About 4,000 more people participated outside in St. Peter’s Square on a relatively warm night.

As has been the case for the past several months, a knee ailment prevented Francis from standing for long periods, delegating a cardinal to be the main celebrant at the altar of the largest church in Christendom.

Sitting to the side of the altar for most of the Mass, he wove his homily around the theme of greed and consumption on various levels, asking people to look beyond the consumerism that has “packaged” the feast, rediscover its meaning, and remember those suffering from war and poverty.

“Men and women in our world, in their hunger for wealth and power, consume even their neighbors, their brothers and sisters,” he said. “How many wars have we seen! And in how many places, even today, are human dignity and freedom treated with contempt!”

Since Russia invaded it neighbor in February, Francis has spoken out against the war at nearly every public event, at least twice a week, denouncing what he has called atrocities and unprovoked aggression.

He did not specifically mention Ukraine on Saturday night.

“As always, the principal victims of this human greed are the weak and the vulnerable,” he said, denouncing “a world ravenous for money, power and pleasure.”

“I think above all of the children devoured by war, poverty and injustice,” he said, also mentioning “unborn, poor and forgotten children.”

Drawing a parallel between the infant Jesus born in a manger and the poverty of today, the pope said: “In the manger of rejection and discomfort, God makes himself present. He comes there because there we see the problem of our humanity: the indifference produced by the greedy rush to possess and consume.”

Earlier this month, the pope urged people to spend less on Christmas celebrations and gifts and send the difference to Ukrainians to help them get through the winter.

The pope marked his 86th birthday last week and, apart from the knee ailment, appears to be in overall good health.

On Sunday, he is to deliver his twice-year “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) blessing and message from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica to tens of thousands of people in the square below.
…

Washington Capitals star Alex Ovechkin scored his 801st and 802nd career goals Friday against the visiting Winnipeg Jets, passing Detroit Red Wings great Gordie Howe for second place on the NHL’s all-time list.

Ovechkin, 37, drew within 93 of breaking Wayne Gretzky’s all-time record of 894 goals.

Ovechkin’s second tally Friday night came into an empty net with exactly one minute left. The goal, from above the left circle just inside the blue line, capped Washington’s 4-1 win.

“It’s nice to get it done at home in front of our house, family and friends,” Ovechkin said postgame. “It’s a great feeling. It’s a tremendous feeling. We just have to keep going and we’ll see what’s going to happen.”

The Capitals played a video on the stadium screen from Mark Howe, Gordie’s son and himself a Hall of Fame hockey player.

Mark Howe said, “I’ve had the opportunity to watch you play so many games as a scout, and you’ve been a pleasure to watch. You’re one of very few people in this game to me to bring a wow factor. You embrace the fans. You’re everything that my mother and father would be very proud of. I know if they were here today they would be at this hockey game. They would be the first ones to congratulate you. Congratulations — job well done. And now it’s time to set new goals for (passing Gretzky).”

With time winding down in a scoreless first period, Dylan Strome entered the offensive zone and left a drop pass for a trailing Ovechkin, whose snap shot beat Winnipeg goalie David Rittich five-hole at the 18:22 mark.

Ovechkin has 22 goals in 36 games this season. He became the third player to reach 800 goals when he notched a hat trick on Dec. 13 in a road win over the Chicago Blackhawks.
…

After being arrested for creating antigovernment propaganda in 2010, the Iranian director Jafar Panahi was banned from making films for 20 years.

Since then, he’s made five widely acclaimed features.

His latest, No Bears, opens soon in U.S. theaters while Panahi is in prison.

In July, Panahi went to the Tehran prosecutor’s office to inquire about the arrest of Mohammad Rasoulof, a filmmaker detained in the government’s crackdown on protests.

Panahi himself was arrested and, on a decade-old charge, sentenced to six years in jail.

Panahi’s films, made in Iran without government approval, are sly feats of artistic resistance. He plays himself in meta self-portraitures that clandestinely capture the mechanics of Iranian society with a humanity both playful and devastating. Panahi made This is Not a Film in his apartment. Taxi was shot almost entirely inside a car, with a smiling Panahi playing the driver and picking up passengers along the way.

In No Bears, Panahi plays a fictionalized version of himself while making a film in a rural town along the Iran-Turkey border. It’s one of the most acclaimed films of the year.

The New York Times and The Associated Press named it one of the top 10 films of the year. Film critic Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times called No Bears 2022’s best movie.

No Bears is landing at a time when the Iranian film community is increasingly ensnarled in a harsh government crackdown. A week after No Bears premiered at the Venice Film Festival, with Panahi already behind bars, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died while being held by Iran’s morality police. Her death sparked three months of women-led protests, still ongoing, that have rocked Iran’s theocracy.

More than 500 protesters have been killed in the crackdown since Sept. 17, according to the group Human Rights Activists in Iran. More than 18,200 people have been detained.

Saturday, the prominent Iranian actress Taraneh Alidoosti, star of Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning The Salesman, was arrested after posting an Instagram message expressing solidarity with a man recently executed for crimes allegedly committed during the protests.

In the outcry that followed Alidoosti’s arrest, Farhadi — the director of A Separation and A Hero — called for Alidoosti’s release “alongside that of my other fellow cineastes Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof and all the other less-known prisoners whose only crime is the attempt for a better life.”

“If showing such support is a crime, then tens of millions of people of this land are criminals,” Farhadi wrote on Instagram.

Panahi’s absence has been acutely felt on the world’s top movie stages. At Venice, where No Bears was given a special jury prize, a red-carpet walkout was staged at the film’s premiere. Festival director Alberto Barbera and jury president Julianne Moore were among the throngs silently protesting the imprisonment of Panahi and other filmmakers.

No Bears will also again test a long-criticized Academy Awards policy. Submissions for the Oscars’ best international film category are made only by a country’s government. Critics have said that allows authoritative regimes to dictate which films compete for the sought-after prize.

Arthouse distributors Sideshow and Janus Films, which helped lead Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Japanese drama Drive My Car to four Oscar nominations a year ago, acquired No Bears with the hope that its merit and Panahi’s cause would outshine that restriction.

“He puts himself at risk every time he does something like this,” says Jonathan Sehring, Sideshow founder and a veteran independent film executive. “When you have regimes that won’t even let a filmmaker make a movie and in spite of it they do, it’s inspiring.”

“We knew it wasn’t going to be the Iranian submission, obviously,” adds Sehring. “But we wanted to position Jafar as a potential best director, best screenplay, a number of different categories. And we also believe the film can work theatrically.”

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences declined to comment on possible reforms to the international film category. Among the 15 shortlisted films for the award announced Wednesday was the Danish entry Holy Spider, set in Iran. After Iranian authorities declined to authorize it, director Ali Abbasi shot the film, based on real-life serial killings, in Jordan.

No Bears opens in New York on Friday and Los Angeles on Jan. 10 before rolling out nationally.

In it, Panahi rents an apartment from which he, with a fitful internet signal, directs a film with the help of assistants. Their handing off cameras and memory cards gives, perhaps, an illuminating window into how Panahi has worked under government restrictions. In No Bears, he comes under increasing pressure from village authorities who believe he’s accidentally captured a compromising image.

“It’s not easy to make a movie to begin with, but to make it secretly is very difficult, especially in Iran where a totalitarian government has such tight control over the country and spies everywhere,” says Iranian film scholar and documentarian Jamsheed Akrami.

“It’s really a triumph. I can’t compare him with any other filmmaker.”

In one of the film’s most moving scenes, Panahi stands along the border at night.

Gazing at the lights in the distance, he contemplates crossing it — a life in exile that Panahi in real life steadfastly refused to ever adopt.

Some aspects of the film are incredibly close to reality. Parts of No Bears were shot in Turkey just like the film within the film. In Turkey, an Iranian couple (played by Mina Kavani and Bakhiyar Panjeei) are trying to obtain stolen passports to reach Europe.

Kavani herself has been living in exile for the last seven years. She starred in Sepideh Farsi’s 2014 romance Red Rose. When nudity in the film led to media harassment, Kavani chose to live in Paris. Kavani was struck by the profound irony of Panahi directing her by video chat from over the border.

“This is the genius of his art. The idea that we were both in exile but on a different side was magic,” says Kavani. “He was the first person that talked about that, what’s happening to exiled Iranian people outside of Iran. This is very interesting to me, that he is in exile in his own country, but he’s talking about those who left his country.”

Many of Panahi’s colleagues imagine that even in his jail cell, Panahi is probably thinking through his next film — whether he ever gets to make it or not. When No Bears played at the New York Film Festival, Kavani read a statement from Panahi.

“The history of Iranian cinema witnesses the constant and active presence of independent directors who have struggled to push back censorship and to ensure the survival of this art,” it said. “While on this path, some were banned from making films, others were forced into exile or reduced to isolation. And yet, the hope of creating again is a reason for existence. No matter where, when, or under what circumstances, an independent filmmaker is either creating or thinking.”
…

Hundreds of high-profile figures from the global cinema industry called Wednesday for Iran to release actor Taraneh Alidoosti, who was jailed over her support for the country’s three-month-old protest movement. 

Actors Emma Thompson, Penelope Cruz, Kate Winslet and Ian McKellen and directors Ken Loach and Mike Leigh were among a host of luminaries to sign an open letter demanding the star of “The Salesman” be freed. 

“We demand the immediate release” of Alidoosti, “who was arrested on 17 December 2022 and has been taken into custody at Evin prison, Iran, where many other political prisoners also remain,” the letter says. 

Alidoosti, 38, was arrested last Saturday, official media said, after issuing a string of social media posts supporting the protest movement, including removing her headscarf and condemning the execution of protesters. 

The actor is one of the most prominent figures arrested in a crackdown by Iran’s hard-line regime that has seen the detention of lawyers, cultural figures, journalists and campaigners. 

“The Iranian authorities have strategically chosen to arrest Taraneh before Christmas to ensure her international peers would be distracted,” the letter continues. 

“But we are not distracted. We are outraged. Taraneh Alidoosti, like all citizens of Iran, has a right to freedom of expression, freedom of association, and freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention.  

“We hereby stand in solidarity with her and demand her immediate release and safe return to her family.” 

The Islamic Republic has been shaken by protests since the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini in custody after her arrest by the morality police for allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress rules for women. 

At least 14,000 people have been arrested since the nationwide unrest began, the United Nations said last month. 

The United States on Tuesday condemned Alidoosti’s arrest as “part of the regime’s effort to sow fear and suppress these peaceful protests.”  

The open letter came after “The Salesman” director Asghar Farhadi took to Instagram to demand Alidoosti’s freedom. 

Alidoosti appeared in two of Farhadi’s earliest films before he won international renown, “Beautiful City” (2004) and “Fireworks Wednesday” (2006). 

She then appeared in the 2009 film “About Elly,” which earned Farhadi the Silver Bear for best director at the Berlin film festival, before reuniting for “The Salesman” in 2016. 

“The Salesman” won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2017.
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Harvey Weinstein was found guilty Monday of rape at a Los Angeles trial in another #MeToo moment of reckoning, five years after he became a magnet for the movement. 

After deliberating for nine days spanning more than two weeks, the jury of eight men and four women reached the verdict at the second criminal trial of the 70-year-old onetime powerful movie mogul, who is two years into a 23-year sentence for a rape and sexual assault conviction in New York. 

Weinstein was found guilty of rape, forced oral copulation and another sexual misconduct count involving a woman known as Jane Doe 1. The jury was unable to reach a decision on several counts, notably charges involving Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.  

The jury reported it was unable to reach verdicts in her allegations and the allegations of another woman. A mistrial was declared on those counts. 

Jurors were 10-2 in favor of conviction of the sexual battery of a massage therapist. They were 8-4 in favor of conviction on the rape and sexual assault counts involving Siebel Newsom. 

Weinstein was also acquitted of a sexual battery allegation made by another woman. 

He faces up to 24 years in prison when he is sentenced. Prosecutors and defense attorneys had no immediate comment on the verdict. 

“Harvey Weinstein will never be able to rape another woman. He will spend the rest of his life behind bars where he belongs,’” Siebel Newsom said in a statement. “Throughout the trial, Weinstein’s lawyers used sexism, misogyny, and bullying tactics to intimidate, demean, and ridicule us survivors. The trial was a stark reminder that we as a society have work to do.” 

“It is time for the defendant’s reign of terror to end,” Deputy District Attorney Marlene Martinez said in the prosecution’s closing argument. “It is time for the kingmaker to be brought to justice.” 

Lacking any forensic evidence or eyewitness accounts of assaults Weinstein’s accusers said happened from 2005 to 2013, the case hinged heavily on the stories and credibility of the four women at the center of the charges. 

The accusers included Newsom, a documentary filmmaker whose husband is California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Her intense and emotional testimony of being raped by Weinstein in a hotel room in 2005 brought the trial its most dramatic moments. 

Another was an Italian model and actor who said Weinstein appeared uninvited at her hotel room door during a 2013 film festival and raped her. 

Lauren Young, the only accuser who testified at both Weinstein trials, said she was a model aspiring to be an actor and screenwriter who was meeting with Weinstein about a script in 2013 when he trapped her in a hotel bathroom, groped her and masturbated in front of her. 

The jury was unable to reach a verdict on the charges involving Young. 

A massage therapist testified that Weinstein did the same to her after getting a massage in 2010. 

Martinez said in her closing that the women entered Weinstein’s hotel suites or let him into their rooms, with no idea of what awaited them. 

“Who would suspect that such an entertainment industry titan would be a degenerate rapist?” she said. 

The women’s stories echoed the allegations of dozens of others who have emerged since Weinstein became a #MeToo lightning rod starting with stories in the New York Times in 2017. A movie about that reporting, “She Said,” was released during the trial, and jurors were repeatedly warned not to see it. 

It was the defense that made #MeToo an issue during the trial, however, emphasizing that none of the four women went to the authorities until after the movement made Weinstein a target. 

Defense lawyers said two of the women were entirely lying about their encounters with Weinstein, and that the other two had “100% consensual” sexual interactions that they later reframed.  

“Regret is not the same thing as rape,” Weinstein attorney Alan Jackson said in his closing argument. 

He urged jurors to look past the the women’s emotional testimony and focus on the factual evidence. 

“Believe us because we’re mad, believe us because we cried,” Jackson said jurors were being asked to do. “Well, fury does not make fact. And tears do not make truth.” 

All the women involved in the charges went by Jane Doe in court. The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly or agree to be named through their attorneys, as the women named here did. 

Prosecutors called 40 other witnesses in an attempt to give context and corroboration to those stories. Four were other women who were not part of the charges but testified that Weinstein raped or sexually assaulted them. They were brought to the stand to establish a pattern of sexual predation. 

Weinstein beat four other felony charges before the trial even ended when prosecutors said a woman he was charged with raping twice and sexually assaulting twice would not appear to testify. They declined to give a reason. Judge Lisa Lench dismissed those charges.  

Weinstein’s latest conviction hands a victory to victims of sexual misconduct of famous men in the wake of some legal setbacks, including the dismissal of Bill Cosby’s conviction last year. The rape trial of “That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson, held simultaneously and just down the hall from Weinstein’s, ended in a mistrial. And actor Kevin Spacey was victorious at a sexual battery civil trial in New York last month. 

Weinstein’s New York conviction survived an initial appeal, but the case is set to be heard by the state’s highest court next year. The California conviction, also likely to be appealed, means he will not walk free even if the East Coast conviction is thrown out. 
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Prince’s guitar, Dorothy’s ruby slippers, Jim Henson’s original handmade Kermit the Frog — these are among the 200-plus items on display at the new exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Maxim Moskalkov has the story. Videographer: Artyom Kokhan 
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