YCLOAK

The Academy Awards have always loved a comeback story. This year, the Oscars are attempting to star in one, too. 

On Sunday, the Academy Awards will try to bounce back from a 2021 ceremony that was plagued by pandemic restrictions, a botched ending and record-low ratings. The 94th Academy Awards will return to their usual home, Los Angeles’ Dolby Theatre, and be broadcast live on ABC beginning at 8 p.m. EDT. (It’s also possible to stream it live on services like Hulu Live TV, YouTubeTV and on ABC.com with provider authentication.) 

How much of the Oscars’ downturn should be chalked up to COVID-19? How much is it the new normal? These are just some of the questions that hang over an Academy Awards that feels like a crossroads for one of America’s most enduring pop-culture institutions, and still the most-watched annual show outside the Super Bowl. 

Can the Will Packer-produced awards shrug off the pandemic, reverse years of declining ratings for network TV award shows and coalesce a big-tent event for a fast-evolving movie landscape? In the interminable run-up to the springtime Oscars, many in the industry have been skeptical. Which leads us to the first of five questions heading into the show. 

Will the Oscars’ latest makeover work? 

The biggest drama heading into Sunday revolves around a broadcast that has been substantially retooled to stem the ratings slide. As if making up for several host-less years, this time there are three: Amy Schumer, Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes. Will their combined star power move the needle at all? 

Facing pressure from ABC, the academy will also first present eight categories — production design, editing, sound, score, makeup and hairstyling, and the three short film awards — before the telecast begins. Clips of their wins and speeches will be edited into the show. Critics throughout the industry, though, have lined up to decry the change. The largest union representing behind-the-scenes workers, IATSE, on Monday called the decision detrimental to the “fundamental purpose” of the Oscars. 

So what will Packer do with the extra time? Beyoncé and Billie Eilish will perform their nominated songs. An eclectic group of presenters has also been announced, including some unexpected names like DJ Khaled, Tony Hawk, Sean “Diddy” Combs and Shaun White — so this could finally be the year that Judi Dench learns how to perform a “McTwist.” 

Will a streamer take home Best Picture? 

The two favorites both hail from streaming services, which have ever won best picture.

The lead nominee, Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog,” up for 12 awards, had long been the presumed frontrunner, and possibly Netflix’s best chance yet to win Hollywood’s top award. But after back-to-back wins with the Screen Actors Guild and the Producers Guild, Sian Heder’s deaf family drama “CODA” may have the edge. The film’s deep-pocketed backer, Apple TV+, has spent big to push a feel-good underdog indie to the front of the pack. If “CODA” wins, it will be the first time since 1932’s “Grand Hotel” that a film with fewer than four nominations (“CODA” has three) took best picture. 

Some predictions this year have been wildly off, though, so other nominees like Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast” could still pull off an upset. 

How much will COVID-19 drag down the party? 

Last year’s Oscars decamped to Union Station for an intimate show with a small number of attendees and lots of social distancing. This year, a full stage show and red carpet is planned, albeit with uneven COVID-19 protocols.  

Attendees are required to submit two negative tests and proof of vaccination. Those presenting or performing don’t have to be vaccinated but need recent negative tests. Masks will be in the mix, too, for attendees sitting outside the orchestra at the Dolby and for media on the red carpet. After numerous attendees contracted the virus after attending the March 13 BAFTAs in London, several nominees have been quarantining, including Branagh and “Belfast” co-star Ciarán Hinds. With infection and hospitalization rates way down, Los Angeles County is set to lift many virus restrictions for indoor events on April 1, five days after the Oscars. 

Will Will Smith win his first Oscar? 

Nominated twice before for best actor (for “Ali” and “The Pursuit of Happyness”), Will Smith appears a lock to win his first Academy Award. Smith’s performance as Richard Williams, father to Venus and Serena, in “King Richard” has remained the most likely choice throughout the season. And the speech by the exuberant 53-year-old star should be one of the most lively of the night. A win, though, will have to come over some formidable competition — including the actor who bested Smith’s “Ali” performance 20 years ago: Denzel Washington, a winner then for “Training Day” and a threat this time for “The Tragedy of Macbeth.” 

Who’s set to make history? 

Many of the top awards could feature some major milestones. Ari Wegner, cinematographer of “The Power of Dog,” may become the first woman to ever win that award. Her director, Jane Campion, is also poised to make history. Campion, the first women ever nominated twice for best director, is set to become only the third woman to win the category. It would mark the first time the directing award has ever gone to women in back-to-back years, after “Nomadland” filmmaker Chloé Zhao won last year. 

Troy Kotsur of “CODA” is in line to be the first deaf male actor to win an Oscar. His widely expected win would make him and his “CODA” co-star Marlee Matlin the only deaf actors to land Academy Awards. And supporting actress, which Ariana DeBose seemingly has sewn up for her breakthrough role in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story,” may see the first Afro-Latina and openly LGBTQ actor win in the category. A win for DeBose would come 60 years after Rita Moreno won for the same role, Anita, in the 1961 original. That would be the third time that two actors have won for playing the same role, following Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker, and Marlon Brando and Robert DeNiro as Vito Corleone. But we’ll have to wait and see if DeBose’s “West Side Story” co-star Rachel Zegler is there to cheer her on. 
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Beyoncé, Billie Eilish and other nominees for best original song will perform at Sunday’s Oscars, the show’s producers announced Tuesday.

Beyoncé will perform her nominated song “Be Alive” from “King Richard,” and Eilish and her brother and co-writer Finneas will perform “No Time To Die” from the James Bond film of the same name. 

Sebastián Yatra will perform “Dos Oruguitas,” the nominated song from “Encanto” written by Lin-Manuel Miranda. 

Reba McEntire will sing writer Diane Warren’s “Somehow You Do” from the film “Four Good Days.” 

Van Morrison, who wrote and sings the nominated song “Down to Joy” from “Belfast,” will not be able to make the show because of his touring schedule. The song will not be performed. 

The original song Academy Award goes to the songwriter, not the artist who performs it, and whoever wins this year will get their first Oscar. 

That includes Beyoncé, a 28-time Grammy winner, who co-wrote “Be Alive” with Dixson. 

Warren was nominated this year for the 13th time but is still seeking her first win.

Miranda will join the elite “EGOT” club of winners of an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony should “Dos Oruguitas” win. The song was tapped as the Oscar submission from “Encanto” before another Miranda-penned song from the Disney movie, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” became a runaway hit. 

The Oscars are returning to Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre after the pandemic sent the show to Union Station for a smaller, more intimate ceremony last year. 
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Russian and Belarusian swimmers, divers, water polo players and artistic swimmers will no longer be able to compete in the upcoming world championships over the war in Ukraine, swimming’s governing body announced Wednesday. 

Soon after the invasion, swimming’s governing body, FINA, said it would allow the swimmers to compete, but as neutral athletes who didn’t use national symbols. 

“Following the review of an independent risk assessment, the FINA Bureau met today and confirmed that athletes and officials from Russia and Belarus will not take part (in the world championships),” FINA said. 

“FINA maintains its strongest condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” it said in a press release. 

The world championships will be held in Hungary in June. 

In the last world championships held in 2019, Russia got the third most medals after the United States and China. 

FINA also said it was investigating double Olympic backstroke champion Yevgeny Rylov over his alleged participation in a pro-Putin rally in Moscow last week. 

Governing bodies for many sports, including soccer, track, gymnastics, skiing and ice skating, have taken measures to ban or restrict Russian and Belarusian athletes from competing. 

Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press. 

 
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“West Side Story” star Rachel Zegler may get her Oscars moment after all. The 20-year-old actor has been invited to be a presenter at the ceremony, according to a report in The Hollywood Reporter. 

The gesture came two days after Zegler, who plays Maria, posted on social media that she had not been invited to the awards and would be rooting for “West Side Story” from her couch. The Steven Spielberg film is nominated for seven Academy Awards, including best picture, director and supporting actress for Ariana DeBose, who is expected to win. 

The post drew a lot of attention online as many couldn’t fathom why the lead of a best picture nominee wouldn’t have been invited to the ceremony or at least been asked to present an award. 

“I hope some last minute miracle occurs and I can celebrate our film in person but hey, that’s how it goes sometimes, I guess,” Zegler wrote on Instagram Sunday. “Thanks for all the shock and outrage — I’m disappointed, too. But that’s OK. So proud of our movie.” 

Next role: Snow White

Best picture nominees are allotted a certain number of tickets by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which the film’s studio then doles out as they see fit. 

Presenters and individual nominees get a pair of tickets. And other spots in the room go to the broadcaster, sponsors and academy members, who can enter a lottery. 

Zegler is not nominated, but her next big role is as Snow White, which she is currently filming in London. Some wondered why The Walt Disney Co., which owns Oscars broadcaster ABC, wouldn’t want their new Snow White there in some capacity, like presenting or performing. Others saw it as a missed opportunity to have a rising young Latina star represented at the show. 

Russ Tamblyn, who played Riff in the 1961 “West Side Story” and is a voting member of the Academy, tweeted that it was the Academy’s, “duty to find Rachel a seat at the Oscars. … When they say representation matters, this is what that means. Please do right by her.” 

Alec Baldwin tweeted that he would buy Zegler two tickets to the show. 

And “One Day at a Time” showrunner Gloria Calderón Kellett tweeted at ABC and the Academy, “How about the rare time that Latine people have a movie nominated for an OSCAR you invite the lead. Latine people are 18.5% of this country. ENOUGH!” 

 

Tickets hard to get

Oscars tickets are always hot commodities, and this year are even more limited than usual because of efforts to maintain more space between guests to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. Most Academy members have never gotten to attend. 

And the outrage has only intensified as more and more presenters with limited connections to the nominated movies or the movie business at all are announced. On Monday, producers revealed that DJ Khaled, Tony Hawk, Kelly Slater and Shaun White would all be presenting awards at the show, which will be broadcast live on ABC on Sunday starting at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. 

News of Zegler’s invitation to present came Tuesday afternoon. Zegler has yet to comment and it is still unclear if she’ll be able to attend on this short notice and with her Snow White production schedule. 

Representatives for the Academy, Disney and Zegler did not respond immediately to requests for comment. 
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An Oscar-nominated Danish documentary chronicling a gay Afghan refugee’s perilous journey to Europe tries to show that being a refugee is what happens to you, not who you are, its director told AFP.

“Flee,” an animated film which is up for three Academy Awards, is in the spotlight ahead of Sunday’s Oscars ceremony as the world witnesses another mass exodus, the millions of Ukrainians fleeing the war in their country.

“I really hope that we can give some nuance and some perspective,” director Jonas Poher Rasmussen told AFP in an interview held on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Being a refugee is not an identity. It’s a circumstance of life.”

In 2015, “we had Syrian refugees on the highways here in Denmark, and all over Europe. And I felt a need to give these people a human face,” he said.

The idea for the documentary stemmed from a conversation between the 40-year-old director and his childhood friend, dubbed “Amin” in the movie to protect his identity.

Amin arrived as a teenage refugee in Rasmussen’s small village near Copenhagen in 1996.

“The story is told from inside a friendship,” Rasmussen said. In the beginning, “I didn’t think about making a political film.” But his perspective changed over the 10 years between the film’s conception and the start of production.

Combining 2D, sketch animation and archive newsreel footage, “Flee” is as much a reflection on the agony of a refugee’s flight as the universal theme of man’s quest for a place in the world.

“I think people can really relate to the universality of the story,” Rasmussen said. “Most people at some point of their life look for that place where they feel they can be, honestly, who they are.”

The film also evokes parallels with the Taliban’s seizure of power again in Afghanistan last summer.

As a young boy and teenager in the 1980s and 1990s, Amin donned his sister’s dresses and later fantasized about secret crushes, such as Hollywood muscleman Jean-Claude Van Damme.

But he was not able to freely express his homosexuality.

His situation grew even more untenable with the Taliban’s seizure of power in Afghanistan in 1990s.

“It’s really a story about someone who’s had to flee himself all his life,” said Rasmussen. It is “about looking for a place in the world where you can be who you are, with everything that entails, with your sexuality, with your past, and everything else.”

Amin spent years not daring to speak about his past and his secrets, building up walls that prevented him from opening up to others.

Now married, he is thrilled that animation allowed him to tell his story incognito, without everyone he meets having to know his personal traumas and his innermost secrets, the director said.

“Flee,” which won the Sundance festival’s jury prize, has been nominated for three Academy Awards: best international film, best documentary, and best animated feature.

Ironically, Denmark is known for its ultra-restrictive immigration policy, even if it has eased its curbs during the Ukraine crisis.

Rasmussen said he was surprised by the success of “Flee.”

A former radio documentary-maker, he has made several other films, but the success enjoyed by his Danish contemporaries Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg has thus far eluded him.

This is his international breakthrough.

“At the beginning … our criteria for success was going to be a national TV broadcast here (in Denmark). And then the project grew and grew and grew and all of a sudden here we are with three nominations for the Academy Awards,” Rasmussen said. 
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As the war unfolds in Ukraine, the owner of Amazing Piñatas in Los Angeles, has found a creative way to help Ukrainian refugees. Originally from Nicaragua, Lorena Robletto tells VOA’s Verónica Villafañe why she wants to help.
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One million tickets for the 2024 Paris Olympics will be sold for $26.50 (24 euros) each with availability for all 32 sports, organizers said Monday.

The Paris proposal to the International Olympic Committee sets the basic price lower than that of the 2012 London Olympics, where the tickets cost more than $31.

“This is something important for us,” Paris organizing committee president Tony Estanguet said. “This is a very strong promise to offer accessibility of everyone to Olympic sports.”

A centralized global sales program unveiled by Paris Olympics organizers calls for pricing nearly half of the 10 million total tickets at no more than $55 (50 euros).

For the 2024 Paralympics, prices start at $15.60 (15 euros), and about half of the 3.4 million tickets will cost no more than $27.50 (25 euros).

Paris aims to raise $1.22 billion (1.1 billion euros) in revenue — about 30% of its budget — from ticket sales, Estanguet said.

Hitting that target would lift ticket income for Paris above the $1 billion raised by London from more than 8 million tickets sold.

Tokyo organizers aimed for $800 million from ticket sales before the COVID-19 pandemic prevented fans from attending nearly all the events at the 2020 Games, which were postponed to 2021.

Fans wanting to secure tickets for Paris events can start toward the end of this year in a process overhauled to include buyers worldwide. Previously, tickets were sold in the host country and a network of agents worldwide handled sales elsewhere.

Estanguet said the new system should “limit the frustration” of people who previously specified their preferred tickets with no guarantee of getting them.

Instead, a two-month registration period will let prospective buyers sign up for a lottery that will allocate the winners a time slot next February of several hours to choose the tickets they want for multiple sports sessions.

“We can then guarantee that if you buy those tickets, you will receive them,” Estanguet said.

Single tickets for events will go on sale in May 2023, and a third sales phase will start toward the end of next year.

Estanguet said a new ticketing portal managed by French companies would also offer a resale platform.

Asked if discussions were made about limiting portal access for residents of Russia and Belarus because of the invasion of Ukraine, Estanguet said no decision was needed for several months.
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Final preparations are underway for the 94th Academy Awards and a long awaited return to Hollywood’s glamorous normalcy after a muted ceremony and ratings low last year. Here’s everything you need to know about the 2022 Oscars, including where to watch the live show, who’s expected to win and what the big controversies are this year. 

When are the Oscars?

The Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 27, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. The ceremony is set to begin at 8 p.m. ET and will be broadcast live on ABC. 

Who is hosting the 2022 Oscars?

Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes are taking the stage to co-host the ceremony, which has been without an emcee for the past three years. Producer Will Packer said each woman brings something different to the show. 

Who is presenting?

Show producers will continue adding names throughout the week, but at the moment stars expected to hand out awards Oscar night include Bill Murray, Lady Gaga, Kevin Costner, Samuel L. Jackson, Zoë Kravitz, Anthony Hopkins, Lily James, Daniel Kaluuya, Mila Kunis, John Leguizamo, Simu Liu, Rami Malek, Lupita Nyong’o, Rosie Perez, Chris Rock, Naomi Scott, Wesley Snipes, Uma Thurman, John Travolta, Yuh-jung Youn, Ruth E. Carter, Halle Bailey, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Jamie Lee Curtis, Woody Harrelson, Shawn Mendes, Tyler Perry, Tracee Ellis Ross, Stephanie Beatriz, DJ Khaled, Jennifer Garner, H.E.R., Tiffany Haddish, Tony Hawk, Elliot Page, Kelly Slater and Shaun White.

Which movies are nominated for best picture at the 2022 Oscars?

The 10 movies competing for best picture this year are: “Belfast”; “CODA”; “Don’t Look Up”; “Drive My Car”; “Dune”; “King Richard”; “Licorice Pizza”; “Nightmare Alley”; “The Power of the Dog”; “West Side Story.” Here’s the full list of 2022 Oscar nominations. (( https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/2022 )) 

What were the most surprising Oscar snubs?

There were a lot of surprises Oscar nominations morning. 

Some exclusions that stood out include Denis Villeneuve, whose “Dune” got the second most nominations (10) behind “The Power of the Dog” (12) including best picture, but who failed to get a directing nomination for himself. 

The best actress category was especially brutal this year, leaving out Lady Gaga for “House of Gucci,” Jennifer Hudson for “Respect,” Caitriona Balfe for “Belfast” and Renate Reinsve for “The Worst Person in the World.” 

What are the predictions for the winners on Oscar night? 

“The Power of the Dog” is the presumed frontrunner for best picture and best director, for Jane Campion, but there is also the possibility that “CODA” will take best picture, especially after it won at the Producer’s Guild Awards. Either way, it’ll be the first time a streaming service has won best picture. Other likely winners include Will Smith for best actor (“King Richard”), Jessica Chastain for best actress (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”), Troy Kotsur for best supporting actor (“CODA”) and Ariana DeBose for best supporting actress (“West Side Story”). 

What else can we expect from the Oscars?

Organizers have promised that they will keep the broadcast to three hours and Packer (whose films include crowd pleasers like “Girls Trip”) wants to make it as entertaining as possible while still honoring the nominees and winners. 

“The show will flow, not unlike a movie, in that there will be different themes and a different feel and different energy throughout the night,” Packer said in an interview with IndieWire. “It will not feel or look or sound like one show for three hours. It’s taking you through the course of this cinematic journey.” 

Best song nominees like Beyoncé, Van Morrison and Billie Eilish are also in talks to perform. 

Are there any controversies this year?

The Oscars are so high profile that every year someone is upset about something (especially when changes are involved) but this year the biggest controversy is over the decision to present some awards before the live broadcast begins and edit them into the show later. The eight awards are for shorts (live action, animated and documentary), editing, score, hair and makeup, sound and production design. The decision has its defenders, but also an army of high-profile detractors, including Campion, Villeneuve, Steven Spielberg, Chastain and Penelope Cruz. 

 
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The last musher has arrived in Nome, ending the 50th running of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog race across Alaska.

Musher Apayauq Reitan of Kaktovik, Alaska, crossed the finish late Saturday night, winning the Red Lantern award and $1,000 for being the final sled dog team to reach the Bering Sea coastal community on Alaska’s western coast.

Reitan also extinguished the widow’s lamp on the burled arch that towers over the finish line, a tradition that means there are no other mushers on the trail.

The world’s most famous sled dog race started for 49 mushers March 6 north of Anchorage. The nearly 1,000-mile (1,609-kilometer) trail took them over two mountain ranges, along the frozen Yukon River and then along the Bering Sea ice on Alaska’s western coast.

Twelve mushers scratched, half of them on Friday during a vicious storm that hammered mushers with high winds as they attempted to make the final 77 miles (124 kilometers) to Nome.

Brent Sass, a Minnesota native now living in Eureka, Alaska, won the race Tuesday.
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“CODA” won the top prize at Saturday night’s Producers Guild Awards, giving momentum to the possibility that the small film could have a big night at next week’s Oscars.

The story of three adult family members who are deaf and a fourth who is not and seeks a singing career beat out bigger contenders including “The Power of the Dog,” “Dune” and “West Side Story” to take an award that — more often than not — goes on to win the Academy Award for best picture.

“This movie has been an amazing ride, it was such a special one to make, there was so much love and so much heart put into it,” said Fabrice Gianfermi as he accepted the award with his “CODA” co-producers Philippe Rousselet and Patrick Wachsberger at the 33rd PGA Awards.

An American Sign Language translator, who had been off to one side of the stage throughout the night’s speeches, stood front and center during the “CODA” acceptance and another stood in front of the stage to translate for the three actors from the film who are deaf: Troy Kotsur, Marlee Matlin and Daniel Durant.

“CODA,” an acronym for “children of deaf adults,” is nominated for three Oscars at the March 27 ceremony, including best adapted screenplay for writer-director Sian Heder and best supporting actor for Kotsur, who is expected by most to become the first actor who is deaf since Matlin in 1987 to win an Oscar.

After it won best ensemble at last month’s Screen Actors Guild Awards it began to appear “CODA” could get real consideration for best picture. The odds may be getting better. The top PGA award winner has gone on to win the top Oscar in three of the past four years and 10 of the past 13. Academy Award voting closes Tuesday.

The PGA Awards, an untelevised show from the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles honoring producers of film and television, is as much like a company awards banquet as a typical awards show, with no speeches cut short for time or curses bleeped out.

Issa Rae, producer of “Insecure” and “A Black Lady Sketch Show,” accepted the guild’s Visionary Award.

Ninety-year-old Rita Moreno, star of the both the 1961 and 2021 versions of “West Side Story,” accepted the guild’s Stanley Kramer Award, which honors someone who has combined a career of artistry and activism.

“This business has taken tenacity and hard work,” Moreno said. “Advocating for issues of social justice for the last 60 years, it’s been exhausting, exhilarating and life-giving.”

Moreno said the night itself was both joyful and exhausting after taking the stage at 11 p.m. local time, nearly three hours into the show.

“I was really getting tired,” she said. “My buttocks are a bit sore.”

George Lucas and Kathleen Kennedy, stewards of the “Star Wars” universe and producers of many other notable motion pictures, were honored for their careers with the PGA’s Milestone Award.

Presenter Steven Spielberg, whose films have been produced by both Lucas and Kennedy, called them “two titans” who are “still just like kids playing in a sandbox.”

Lucas acknowledged that his favorite achievement may not be the most popular among his peers, including the one who introduced him Saturday.

“The thing I’m the most proud of is digital cinema. That was something that I worked on for 20 years. Spent many many millions of dollars to make it happen,” Lucas said. “Some still don’t believe in it. Where’s Steven?”

Spielberg, standing in the wings, acted out the operation of a traditional film camera, to laughs from the crowd.

“But we’re all friends,” Lucas said.

“Summer of Soul” won the PGA’s documentary film category and “Encanto” won the award for animated movies. Both are also nominated for Oscars.

In the PGA’s television categories, awards went to the producers of “Succession,” “Mare of Easttown” and “Ted Lasso.”

Greg Berlanti, producer of shows including “Dawson’s Creek” and several series from the D.C. comic universe, was given the guild’s Norman Lear Award and was praised for advancing LGBTQ characters and storylines.

Outgoing co-presidents of the guild Gail Berman and Lucy Fisher were tearful as they expressed joy that they could finally see their gathered peers in person after two years during which the pandemic forced the show to go virtual.

They praised their fellow producers for keeping the industry alive during their tough tenure.

“Hollywood loves a comeback story,” Fisher said, “and boy, yours is one for the ages.” 
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With many small businesses failing during the economic downturn of coronavirus lockdowns, three sisters in the U.S. state of Colorado chose the pandemic to open Denver’s first Vietnamese coffee shop. VOA’s Scott Stearns went to their café to hear their story.
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World-famous ballet dancers from Russia and Ukraine, Argentina, Cuba, France and Japan come together Saturday for a gala to raise funds for Ukraine and send a message of peace.

“We as artists have talent and we need to use this talent to say what we believe in,” Ukraine’s Ivan Putrov, co-organizer of the event to be held at the English National Opera’s London Coliseum, told AFP.

“Art has a voice and is the voice that we use,” said Putrov, who was a principal dancer with London’s prestigious Royal Ballet from 2002-10.

Putrov and Romanian ballerina Alina Cojocaru both trained in Kyiv and decided to mobilize the world of ballet for this “humanitarian appeal” in the face of Russia’s invasion.

Now, they have united a team of exceptional dancers to “raise funds that will save lives,” Putrov said.

The message is not only for the West and those in Ukraine, but also Russia.

“Some Russians will hear us and will raise their voice… because what’s happening is outrageous,” he said.

Stars taking the stage include Russia’s Natalia Osipova, Argentina’s Marianela Nunez and Japan’s Fumi Kaneko, all from the Royal Ballet, and France’s Mathieu Ganio from the Paris Opera.

Ukraine’s Katja Khaniukova, Spain’s Aitor Arrieta and the United States’ Emma Hawes of the English National Ballet will also perform on the night.

The evening hopes to raise more than $130,000 for the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) UK charity collective which includes the British Red Cross and is helping victims of the war.

“Is art appropriate in such a horrible circumstance? Of course it is, because it gives hope, it gives inspiration to people,” said Putrov.

Loaded with symbolism

The Ukrainian national anthem will open the evening, which will close with The Triumph of Love from the ballet Raymonda, with music by Russia’s Alexander Glazunov.

In between there will be 13 symbolism-laden choreographies such as No Man’s Land by Liam Scarlett, Lacrimosa by Gyula Pandi and Ashes by Jason Kittelberger.

Russian composers including Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff will also be played.

“Russian culture doesn’t have anything to do with (President Vladimir) Putin, and equally Putin has nothing to do with Russian culture,” said Putrov.

Osipova, one of the most famous Russian dancers outside her country, declined to be interviewed.

But her presence “signifies that Russia doesn’t equal aggression,” said Putrov.

Cuba’s Javier Torres of the Northern Ballet will perform The Death of a Swan by Camille Saint-Saens.

The piece is about a paraplegic who loses one of his limbs and “represents fighting for what you have lost,” Torres told AFP.

“It talks about fighting to the end and that’s how I wanted to interpret it,” he said, thinking of “people who try to resist what happens to them,” like the Ukrainians mired in war or the Cubans who have suffered under decades of U.S. sanctions and embargoes, and “even by the Russians” in Soviet times.

“I have that pain, I have that anguish that every Cuban who lives outside of Cuba has, because we know the needs that are experienced there,” he said.

He said he has not previously mixed art with politics, but Saturday’s gala is “a humanitarian duty as a dancer, as a human rights defender, first as a person and then as an artist.”
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Finland has been named the world’s happiest country for the fifth year running, in an annual U.N.-sponsored index that again ranked Afghanistan as the unhappiest, followed closely by Lebanon.

Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania recorded the biggest boosts in wellbeing. The largest falls in the World Happiness table, released on Friday, came in Lebanon, Venezuela and Afghanistan.

Lebanon, which is facing economic meltdown, fell to second from last on the index of 146 nations, just below Zimbabwe.

War-traumatized Afghanistan, already bottom of the table, has seen its humanitarian crisis deepen since the Taliban took power again last August.  

U.N. agency UNICEF estimates one million children under five could die of hunger this winter if not aided.

“This (index) presents a stark reminder of the material and immaterial damage that war does to its many victims,” co-author Jan-Emmanuel De Neve said.

The World Happiness Report, now in its 10th year, is based on people’s own assessment of their happiness, as well as economic and social data. 

It assigns a happiness score on a scale of zero to 10, based on an average of data over a three-year period. This latest edition was completed before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

Northern Europeans once again dominated the top spots — with the Danes second behind the Finns, followed by the Icelandic, the Swiss and the Dutch.

The United States rose three places to 16th, one ahead of Britain, while France climbed to 20th, its highest ranking yet.

As well as a personal sense of wellbeing, based on Gallup polls in each country, the happiness score takes account of GDP, social support, personal freedom and levels of corruption. 

This year the authors also used data from social media to compare people’s emotions before and after the Covid-19 pandemic. They found “strong increases in anxiety and sadness” in 18 countries but a fall in feelings of anger.

“The lesson of the World Happiness Report over the years is that social support, generosity to one another and honesty in government are crucial for wellbeing,” report co-author Jeffrey Sachs wrote.

“World leaders should take heed.” 

The report raised some eyebrows when it first placed Finland at the top of its listings in 2018. 

Many of the Nordic country’s 5.5 million people describe themselves as taciturn and prone to melancholy, and admit to eyeing public displays of joyfulness with suspicion.  

But the country of vast forests and lakes is also known for its well-functioning public services, ubiquitous saunas, widespread trust in authority and low levels of crime and inequality.
…

Film icon Arnold Schwarzenegger told Russians in a video posted on social media Thursday they’re being lied to about the war in Ukraine and accused President Vladimir Putin of sacrificing Russian soldiers’ lives for his own ambitions.

Schwarzenegger is hugely popular in Russia, and apparently also with Putin. The President of Russia Twitter account follows only 22 accounts — one of them the actor’s.

In the nine-minute video, Schwarzenegger said Russian soldiers were told they’d be fighting Nazis in Ukraine, or to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine or that were going on military exercises, and that they’d be greeted like heroes. He said many of the troops now know those claims were false.

“This is an illegal war,” Schwarzenegger said, looking straight into the camera while seated at a desk in a study. “Your lives, your limbs, your futures are being sacrificed for a senseless war condemned by the entire world.”

Schwarzenegger posted his emotional video on Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. While some of those services are blocked in Russia, he also posted it on the Telegram messaging app — which is not — where it got more than a half-million views. It was subtitled in Russian.

The former California governor brought up painful memories about how his own father was lied to as he fought with Adolf Hitler’s forces during World War II, and how he returned to Austria a broken man, physically and emotionally after being wounded at Leningrad.

He asked Russians to let their fellow citizens know about “the human catastrophe that is happening in Ukraine.” The video showed bombed out buildings in Ukraine and people coming under Russian shelling.

He then addressed Putin directly, saying: “You started this war. You are leading this war. You can stop this war.”

Schwarzenegger described his long ties to Russia, having traveled there as a body builder and film action hero. In 2010, as California governor, he led a delegation of Silicon Valley business leaders and venture capitalists on a trip to Moscow.

He called all the Russians who have been in the streets protesting the invasion of Ukraine, and who have been arrested and manhandled, “my new heroes.”

An adviser to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry who works to disseminate information about the course of the war urged Ukrainians to share the video with friends and relatives in Russia.

“Putin and his propagandists call us Ukrainians fascists and Nazis,” the adviser, Anton Gerashchenko, said on Telegram. “But their propaganda is blown to smithereens when super famous people all over the world speak with one voice: ‘No to war!’”

Gerashchenko has more than 385,000 subscribers to his channel on Telegram. He included a link to a version of Schwarzenegger’s video with a Russian voice-over that he posted on his YouTube channel.
…

St. Patrick’s Day celebrations across the country are back after a two-year hiatus, including the nation’s largest in New York City, in a sign of growing hope that the worst of the coronavirus pandemic may be over.

The holiday served as a key marker in the outbreak’s progression, with parades celebrating Irish heritage among the first big public events to be called off in 2020. An ominous acceleration in infections quickly cascaded into broad shutdowns.

The full-fledged return of New York’s parade on Thursday coincides with the city’s wider reopening. Major mask and vaccination rules were recently lifted.

“Psychologically, it means a lot,” said Sean Lane, the chair of the parade’s organizing group. “New York really needs this.”

The city’s entertainment and nightlife scenes have particularly welcomed the return to a normal St. Patrick’s Day party.

“This is the best thing that happened to us in two years,” said Mike Carty, the Ireland-born owner of Rosie O’Grady’s, a restaurant and pub in the Theater District.

“We need the business, and this really kicked it off,” said Carty, who will be hosting the parade’s grand marshal after the procession.

Celebrations are back in other cities, too.

Over the weekend, Chicago dyed its river green, after doing so without much fanfare last year and skipping the tradition altogether during the initial virus onslaught.

Boston, home to one of the country’s largest Irish enclaves, is resuming its annual parade Sunday after a two-year absence. So is Savannah, Georgia, where the parade’s cancellation disrupted a nearly two-century tradition.

Some communities in Florida, one of the first states to reopen its economy, were also bringing their parades back.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis chose St. Patrick’s Day two years ago to shutter restaurants, bars and nightclubs — a dramatic move by the Republican and which underscored the fear and uncertainty of the time.

Since then, DeSantis has been one of the country’s leading voices against mask and vaccine mandates, as well as other pandemic measures.

New York’s parade — the largest and oldest of them all, first held in 1762 — starts at 11 a.m. and runs 35 blocks along Fifth Avenue, past St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Central Park.

It’s being held as the city emerges from a discouraging bout with the highly contagious omicron variant, which killed more than 4,000 people in New York City in January and February.

New infections and hospitalizations have declined since the surge, prompting city officials to green-light the procession.

On the eve of the holiday, Mayor Eric Adams raised the Irish flag at a park located on the southern tip of Manhattan, not far from Ellis Island, to honor the city’s Irish history.

“This St. Patrick’s Day, we honor those Irish immigrants who relocated and helped build our city, and the many Irish Americans who serve New York City to this day,” the mayor said. “Today, we celebrate the fighting spirit of the Irish with the courage and resilience of this entire city.”

Currently, you don’t need to show proof of vaccination to dine indoors at a restaurant in New York, but huge numbers of people still wear masks in public and avoid big crowds. Office towers remain partially empty, as many businesses still haven’t called employees back to their cubicles. Tourists, once thick enough to obstruct Manhattan sidewalks, are still not back in their usual numbers.

“If you walk around the city, it’s still very different,” said Lane, the parade organizer and a financial adviser at a major Wall Street firm. “It’s a very different vibe when you walk in Manhattan versus what it would have been two years ago, because the people aren’t fully back yet.”

Allowing the parade to proceed, he said, could provide a surge of confidence among New Yorkers to return to public life.

This year’s parade is two years in the making, after token processions during the pandemic.

To keep the tradition going, organizers in 2020 and 2021 quietly held small parades on St. Patrick’s Day, right around sunrise, when the streets were empty. Bagpipes accompanied a tiny contingent of officials and a smattering of people drawn by the music.

It remains to be seen if big crowds will show up for this year’s parade, although organizers expect hordes — even if many New Yorkers remain skittish about massive, potentially virus-spreading public events.

Organizers hope people will turn out not just to commemorate the holiday, but to honor the first responders who helped the city get through the pandemic, as well as in support of a delegation of Ukrainian marchers bringing attention to the war in their homeland.
…

The Pritzker Prize, architecture’s most prestigious award, was awarded Tuesday to Burkina Faso-born architect Diebedo Francis Kere, the first African to win the honor in its more than 40-year history.

Kere, 56, was hailed for his “pioneering” designs that are “sustainable to the earth and its inhabitants — in lands of extreme scarcity,” said Tom Pritzker, chairman of the Hyatt Foundation that sponsors the award, in a statement.

Kere, a dual citizen of Burkina Faso and Germany, said he was the “happiest man on this planet” to become the 51st recipient of the illustrious prize since it was first awarded in 1979.

“I have a feeling of an overwhelming honor but also a sense of responsibility,” he told AFP during an interview in his office in Berlin.

Kere is renowned for building schools, health facilities, housing, civic buildings and public spaces across Africa, including Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Togo, Kenya, Mozambique, Togo and Sudan.

“He is equally architect and servant, improving upon the lives and experiences of countless citizens in a region of the world that is at times forgotten,” Pritzker said.

Kere won plaudits for his 2001 project for a primary school in Gando village, in Burkina Faso, where he was born.

Unlike traditional school buildings, which used concrete, Kere’s innovative design combined local clay, fortified with cement to form bricks that helped retain cooler air inside.

A wide, raised tin roof protects the building from rain while helping the air circulate, meaning natural ventilation without any need for air conditioning.

Kere engaged the local community during the design and building phase, and the number of students at the school increased from 120 to 700, the Hyatt Foundation said in its release.

The success of the project saw the creation of an extension, a library and teachers’ housing in later years.

Kere “empowers and transforms communities through the process of architecture,” designing buildings “where resources are fragile and fellowship is vital,” the Pritzker statement added.

“Through his commitment to social justice and engagement, and intelligent use of local materials to connect and respond to the natural climate, he works in marginalized countries laden with constraints and adversity,” the organizers said.

In Kere’s native Burkina Faso, his accolade was hailed as a reminder that Burkina Faso should be known internationally for more than a violent jihadi insurgency that has gripped the country.

Groups affiliated to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have killed more than 2,000 people and displaced at least 1.7 million.

“In the current pain of the security crisis, our country must remember that it is also the nation of exceptional men like Francis Kere,” said Ra-Sablga Seydou Ouedraogo, of the non-profit Free Afrik.

Nebila Aristide Bazie, head of the Burkina Faso architects’ council, said the award “highlights the African architect and the people of Burkina Faso.”

In 2017, Kere designed the Serpentine pavilion in London’s Hyde Park, a prestigious assignment given to a world-famous architect every year.

He was also one of the architects behind Geneva’s International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum and has held solo museum shows in Munich and Philadelphia.

“I am totally convinced that everyone deserves quality,” he said in his office, where he celebrated his award with his team.

“I’m always thinking how can I get the best for my clients, for those who can afford but also for those who cannot afford.

“This is my way of doing things, of using my architecture to create structures to serve people, let’s say to serve humanity,” Kere added.
…

“The Outfit,” a film noir by Academy Award winning writer Graham Moore, tells a fictional story of an expert tailor who finds himself caught up in a turf war among dangerous gangsters in 1950s Chicago. Moore, who won an Oscar for the film drama “The Imitation Game,” spoke to VOA’s Penelope Poulou about his interest in the characters in the film and how “The Outfit” resonates with today’s grim realities.
…

Musher Brent Sass won the arduous Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race across Alaska on Tuesday as his team of 11 dogs dashed off the Bering Sea ice through a crowd of fans in downtown Nome.

Sass mushed down Front Street and across the finish line just before 6 a.m.

“It’s awesome, it’s a dream come true,” Sass said before he was presented the prize-winning check of $50,000, his beard and mustache partially encased in ice during the post-race interview.

“When I started mushing, my goal was to win the Yukon Quest and win the Iditarod. Checked them both off the list now,” he said.

Sass said he was “super, super, super proud” of his dog team. “It’s all on them. They did an excellent job the whole race. I asked a lot of them, and they preformed perfectly,” he said.

“Every one of these dogs I’ve raised since puppies, and we’ve been working towards this goal the whole time, and we’re here,” he said, his voice cracking. “It’s crazy.”

Fans lined the street welcoming the popular musher, who was escorted by police for the final few blocks to the famous burled arch that marked his victory.

It’s the first Iditarod win for Sass, a wilderness guide and kennel owner who was running in his seventh Iditarod. His previous best finish was third last year.

Sass took command of this year’s race early on and never was challenged, but the final stretch of the race might have been the toughest, with extreme winds blowing on the Bering Sea ice leading into Nome.

“I had to make it very interesting at the end,” Sass said.

At one point during the last few miles of the race, he took a tumble, and the sled went off the trail. He thought he was going to have to hunker down, stopping with his dogs to wait until the weather improved.

“I couldn’t see anything,” he said. “The dogs, the only reason we got out of there is because they trusted me to get them back to the trail. And once we got back to the trail, they just took off a hundred miles an hour again, and we were able to stay on the trail and get in here. It was a lot of work,” he said.

The 42-year-old native of Minnesota who moved north in 1998 to ski for the University of Alaska Fairbanks had about a 90 minute lead over the defending champion, Dallas Seavey, early Tuesday as he left the last checkpoint in Safety, which is 22 miles (35 kilometers) from Nome.

Seavey is tied with musher Rick Swenson for the most Iditarod wins ever at 5. Seavey earlier told The Associated Press that he was planning to take some time off after the race to spend with his daughter whether he won or lost it.

Sass said Seavey is “the best right now and being able to to sort of keep him at bay the whole entire race and and race against the best guy in the business, that just makes this victory even sweeter.”

Seavey toward the end of the race said he was resigned to runner-up status, telling KTUU-TV at the checkpoint in White Mountain that he couldn’t win unless something went wrong for Sass.

Seavey joked: “We’ve got a pretty solid lead over third.”

The third place musher, Jessie Holmes, was about 50 miles (80 kilometers) behind Seavey on Tuesday.

The nearly 1,000-mile (1,609-kilometer) race across Alaska began March 6 just north of Anchorage. The route took mushers along Alaska’s untamed and unforgiving wilderness, including two mountain ranges, the frozen Yukon River and Bering Sea ice along the state’s western coastline.

This is the 50th running of the race, which started in 1973. This year’s event began with 49 mushers, and five have dropped out along the trail.

Sass was the Iditarod’s rookie of the year in 2012 when he finished 13th. The next year he fell back to 22nd place, before skipping the 2014 race.

In 2015 he was disqualified when race officials found he had an iPod Touch with him on the trail, a violation of race rules banning two-way communication devices because the iPod Touch could connect to the Internet. He said he was clueless, and wanted his fans to know he had no intention of cheating.

Sass placed 16th the following year before taking a three-year break from the Iditarod. In 2020, he placed fourth and was third last year.

Sass, who lives in the tiny area of Eureka, about a four-hour drive northwest of Fairbanks, had more success in the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race.

He claimed titles in that 1,000-mile (1,609-kilometer) race between Fairbanks and Whitehorse, Yukon, in 2015, 2019 and 2020. This year, the race was shortened to smaller races on both sides of the border, with Sass winning both the 350-mile (563-kilometer) Alaska race and the 300-mile (483-kilometer) Canadian contest.
…

Clarissa Ward interrupted her live TV report on Ukrainian refugees to help a distraught older man, then a woman, down a steep and explosion-mangled path, gently urging them on in their language.

A day later, Lynsey Addario, a photographer for The New York Times, captured a grim image of a Russian mortar attack’s immediate outcome: the bodies of a mother and her two children crumpled on a road, amid their suitcase, backpacks and a pet carrier.

The memorable reports illustrate both the skill and gutsiness of female journalists serving as eyewitnesses to Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine and the way their presence — hard-won after overcoming ingrained notions of why women shouldn’t cover combat — has changed the nature of war reporting.

They cover the tactics of war but give equal measure to its toll.

“People are so exhausted, they can barely walk,” Ward told viewers in her report. “It’s just an awful, awful scene. And they’re the lucky ones.” 

The author of “You Don’t Belong Here,” a 2021 book that profiles three pioneering women who covered the Vietnam War, said there’s “absolutely no doubt that the reporting is what I would call more humane, looking at the human side of war.”

Elizabeth Becker argues that Frances FitzGerald of the U.S., Kate Webb of Australia and Catherine Leroy of France were foundational to modern war reporting. Arriving in Southeast Asia on their own dime, without a staff job and little or no journalism experience, they broke the male grip on war reporting with daring and innovation.

Traditionally, “the coverage was the battlefield, which is important,” said award-winning journalist Becker, a 1970s Cambodian war correspondent. She said it took newcomer FitzGerald to ask, “‘OK, what does this mean in terms of the Vietnamese and the villages?'”

FitzGerald earned a 1973 Pulitzer and other honors for “Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam,” and her 2017 work, “The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America,” was short-listed for the National Book Award.

In major 20th-century conflicts before Vietnam, including World War II and the Korean War, women faced military obstacles and professional bias. Reporter-novelist Martha Gellhorn famously stowed away on a hospital ship to cover the WWII D-Day landing in France after she and other female journalists were denied frontline access.

Newspaper reporter Marguerite Higgins, who had covered WWII, was ordered out of Korea by a U.S. officer when war broke out in 1950, a decision she successfully appealed to Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Higgins earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1951 for her acclaimed reporting, with the jury noting she was “entitled to special consideration by reason of being a woman, since she had to work under unusual dangers.”

Women went on to excel in reporting on the Vietnam War, including Edith M. Lederer of The Associated Press, who was the first woman assigned full-time to its staff there and is now AP’s chief United Nations correspondent. Their numbers increased in subsequent conflicts, including Ukraine — where newspapers, online sites and other media outlets are well-represented by female reporters, known by name if not by their on-camera reporting.

War reporting is “a sense of mission, it’s a sense of purpose, it’s a sense of being able to tell a story,” said Christiane Amanpour, the London-born chief international anchor for CNN. “And women are really very good at it, it seems.”

It’s also a matter of logic, said Holly Williams, the Istanbul-based correspondent for CBS News on assignment in Ukraine.

“I’m acutely aware of the fact that if you don’t tell women’s stories, you’re missing at least half of the picture,” said the Australian-born Williams, who has reported on conflicts in Asia, Europe and the Middle East and worked for BBC News.

Ward, who also has hopscotched across those regions, worked for CBS News prior to joining CNN and, before that, was based in Moscow and Beijing for ABC News.

“Often women do have a different perspective on war, and for a long time that was not really at the forefront of a lot of coverage,” Ward said. She strives to include “the humanity behind the story, the experience of ordinary people who are living in war zones. To me, that is equally as important as the military component.”

The prominence of TV correspondents and the reach of their outlets adds to their impact. Oprah Winfrey offered online praise of network reporters “risking their lives to show the world the truth,” singling out Ward as a “fierce, unshakable and outstanding journalist.”

Many of their male colleagues also contribute nuanced reporting, as ABC News veteran Martha Raddatz and others noted. But Raddatz recalls a not-so-distant time when men tended to “love the equipment, love the airplanes.”

Ward and other female journalists tip their cap to their predecessors, including FitzGerald and the late Martha Gellhorn, whose reporting stretched from WWII to the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989-90. They also praise recent trailblazers, including Amanpour.

Her decades of conflict reporting include the 1991 Gulf War, subsequent clashes in the Middle East region and, in southeastern Europe, the deadly 1992-96 siege of Sarajevo during the war between Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“I think my generation and myself, we were perhaps the last line of the rare woman foreign correspondent,” Amanpour said. In every form of media it’s “exploded into a very female friendly profession.”

But parity has yet to be achieved in pay, Amanpour said. Or in all journalism jobs, according to Ward.

The growing number of female TV correspondents belies “a fairly male-dominated profession in general,” Ward said. “Don’t forget, the person in front of the camera is one person. Then you have, for TV, four people holding the camera, behind the camera, and most of them are still men.”

In journalism overall, men retain a numerical advantage over women even in a changing media industry. according to “The Missing Perspectives of Women in News,” a 2020 report from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Despite progress, “the majority of journalists in newsrooms globally are men,” the report said, citing several multi-country studies.

Female reporters face additional challenges in non-democratic countries and some regions, Amanpour said.

“They come under a huge amount of societal pressure in many parts of the developing world, and certainly in the Islamic world and other areas of what I call the patriarchy,” she said. “It’s very difficult, but they’re doing it and coming out into this profession more and more, and I really applaud them.”

The presence of women reporting in Ukraine is set against a backdrop of traditional roles and expectations, with women and children allowed to flee war’s violence while men are required to stay behind and defend their country.

Yonat Friling, a Jerusalem-based senior producer for Fox News Channel who worked in Ukraine with correspondent Trey Yingst, is aware of how attitudes can vary. In 2004, she was on the international desk for an Israeli TV channel when she asked her boss to switch her to field producer.

“He told me, ‘This is a job for men. Only men can do that,'” recalled the Israeli native. “Then I left, I joined Fox (in 2005). And on several occasions, including this time, I keep texting him, ‘A job for men? Yeah, right.'”

The Ukraine assignment proved deeply emotional for Friling. When she recently joined the stream of refugees leaving Kyiv, it was a reminder of grandparents who fled Nazism and Soviet occupiers in Europe in the 1940s.

“I saw children and women, and I (saw) my grandparents in their faces. … I know how much this is going to influence their whole life and the next generations,” she said.

Raddatz, who covered early refugee evacuations and returned to Ukraine on Friday, realizes how much has changed for her and her female colleagues over the years. The chief global affairs correspondent for ABC News covered the Bosnian crisis in the late 1990s and has focused on Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I remember in Iraq, I always thought that if something happened to me, it (the reaction) would be, ‘How could she do that, go over there when she has two children?’ whereas they would never say that with a guy,” she said. “Now, I don’t think they would do that.” 

Family needs and concerns add to the burden of war reporting.

NBC News correspondent Erin McLaughlin said that before Russia struck at Ukraine, the threat of what might happen made her parents worry more than they had over her previous assignments, including in Iraq.

“My brother went to stay with them for the weekend because they were so nervous,” McLaughlin said. “It was really tough, but at the same time they understand that this is my calling. It’s an important job, and someone needs to do it.”

Ward, married and with two children, said her work takes an inevitable toll.

“It’s my son’s 4th birthday today, which has been really hard to miss,” Ward said at the end of another draining day in Ukraine, her voice emotional. “There’s the entire juggling act — you’re FaceTiming with your kids and there’s air raid sirens and bombs going off in the distance.”

“I’m not going to pretend this isn’t hard. But I also wouldn’t be anywhere else right now,” she said. 
…

Leon Schwarzbaum, a survivor of the Nazis’ death camp at Auschwitz and a lifelong fighter for justice for the victims of the Holocaust, has died. He was 101.

Schwarzbaum died early Monday in Potsdam near Berlin, the International Auschwitz Committee reported on its website. No cause of death was given.

“It is with great sadness, respect and gratitude that Holocaust survivors around the world bid farewell to their friend, fellow sufferer and companion Leon Schwarzbaum, who in the last decades of his life became one of the most important contemporary witnesses of the Shoah,” the committee said.

Schwarzbaum was the only one of his family to survive the concentration camps at Auschwitz, Buchenwald and a subcamp Sachsenhausen, the Auschwitz committee said.

He became known to a wider audience when film director Hans Erich Viet made a movie in 2018 about his life. “The Last of the Jolly Boys” was shot with Schwarzbaum himself at original locations.

Schwarzbaum was born in 1921 to a Polish-Jewish family in Hamburg in northern Germany. He grew up in Bedzin, Poland, from where the family was deported to Auschwitz in 1943 after the ghetto there was dissolved.

After the war, he lived in Berlin for many years where he worked as an art and antiques dealer. He was married twice, but had no children, daily newspaper Bild reported.

Well into his 90s, Schwarzbaum still appeared on German television to speak about the unbearable sufferings he lived through at Auschwitz and the other concentration camps he was deported to. He also visited schools in Germany regularly to tell the children about his life.

“Especially in his last years, Leon Schwarzbaum was driven again and again by the urge to remember his parents who were murdered in Auschwitz and all the other victims of the Holocaust. He spoke on their behalf,” said Christoph Heubner, the Executive Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee.

“But he was also driven by his anger at the fact that so few SS perpetrators ever saw the inside of a German courtroom,” Heubner added, referring to the Nazis’ brutal paramilitary organization.

In 2016, he gave testimony at the trial against former Auschwitz death guard Reinhold Hanning in Germany.

In an 2019 interview with the Associated Press at his Berlin apartment, which was covered with paintings and old back-and-white pictures of his 35 relatives who perished in the Holocaust, Schwarzbaum expressed deep worry about the reemergence of antisemitism across Europe.

“If things get worse, I would not want to live through such times again,” he said. “I would immigrate to Israel right away.”

In a letter of condolence to Schwarzbaum’s widow, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that “we are losing a wonderful human being and an important eyewitness to history.”

“Leon Schwarzbaum experienced himself what it means when a criminal regime suspends human rights and human dignity,” Steinmeier said, praising him for testifying about “Germany’s darkest period” after the war and warning about the dangers of far-right extremism and xenophobia. 
…

American actor William Hurt, known for much-loved films such as “The Big Chill” and “A History of Violence,” has died at age 71, US media reported Sunday.

Multiple outlets cited Hurt’s son, Will, who said in a statement: “It is with great sadness that the Hurt family mourns the passing of William Hurt, beloved father and Oscar winning actor, on March 13, 2022, one week before his 72nd birthday. He died peacefully, among family, of natural causes.”

The actor had been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer in May 2018, but his son’s statement did not specify whether the disease contributed to Hurt’s passing.

Hurt built his reputation on his willingness to play quirky and unusual characters such as a Russian police officer in “Gorky Park” (1983), a wealthy and aloof husband in Woody Allen’s “Alice” (1990) and a man seeking to build a machine that would benefit blind people in “Until the End of the World” (1991).

His first film role was as an obsessed scientist in Ken Russell’s 1980 film “Altered States.” Appearing opposite Kathleen Turner in “Body Heat” in 1981 turned him into a sex symbol, and he won the best actor Oscar in 1985 for playing a gay prisoner in “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”

Hurt was also nominated for Oscars as a teacher of deaf students in “Children of a Lesser God” (1986) and as a slow-witted television anchorman in “Broadcast News” (1987).

For his second Academy Award, Hurt played a Philadelphia mobster in David Cronenberg’s “A History of Violence.” He appears in the film for only about 10 minutes, but he made a huge impact with critics, who praised his “creepy” and “funny” character.

In recent years, Hurt made himself known to younger moviegoers through his turn in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Thaddeus Ross, a blustering general who was present on the day Bruce Banner became the Hulk.

In addition to “The Incredible Hulk,” Hurt’s character appeared in four Marvel films including “Captain America: Civil War,” “Avengers: Infinity War,” “Avengers: Endgame” and “Black Widow.”

Hurt was born March 20, 1950 in Washington, DC, but as his father was a U.S. diplomat, he traveled widely as a child.

After his parents divorced, his mother married Henry Luce III, the heir to the Time-Life empire, and moved to New York.

Hurt stayed close by, studying theology at Tufts University before enrolling at the renowned Juilliard School of performing arts in New York.

Despite his spreading fame, Hurt did not settle in Hollywood but set up his home in Oregon. In interviews, he had shown he was uneasy with stardom.

“I’m not comfortable with all this. I’m not comfortable with walking the red carpet in a tuxedo and seeing all the women with their boobs pushed up and all the men dressed as penguins,” he told one interviewer.

His private life, however, read like something straight out of Hollywood.

Hurt married aspiring actress Mary Beth Supinger after finishing his studies at Tufts and followed her to London to study drama. They divorced on their return to New York.

In the late 1980s, he was sued by a former live-in love, ballet dancer Sandra Jennings, who is the mother of one of his sons.

He had two other sons from another marriage and a daughter, Jeanne, from a relationship with French actress Sandrine Bonnaire.

Hurt spoke fluent French and was also an avid private pilot.
…

Sci-fi epic “Dune” took four early prizes from a field-leading 11 nominations as the British Academy Film Awards returned Sunday with a live, black-tie ceremony after a pandemic-curtailed event in 2021.

Acting nominees Benedict Cumberbatch and Lady Gaga were among the stars walking the red carpet at London’s Royal Albert Hall before a ceremony hosted by Australian actor-comedian Rebel Wilson.

Last year’s event was largely conducted online, with only the hosts and presenters appearing in person. This year, stars were gathering in the shadow of Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine.

Krishnendu Majumdar, chairman of the British Film Academy, known as BAFTA, opened the show with a message of support for Ukraine.

“We stand in solidarity with those who are bravely fighting for their country and we share their hope for a return to peace,” he said.

After that came the glitz, with 85-year-old diva Shirley Bassey and a live orchestra performing “Diamonds Are Forever” to mark the 60th anniversary of the James Bond films.

“Bond is turning 60, and his girlfriends are turning 25,” joked host Wilson, who toned down her usual bawdy material for the ceremony’s early-evening TV broadcast on the BBC.

Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune,” starring Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya, has 11 nominations including best film, cinematography and original score.

The space saga set on a desert planet took awards early in the ceremony for visual effects, sound, Greig Fraser’s cinematography and Hans Zimmer’s score.

Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog,” set in 1920s Montana and starring Cumberbatch as a ranch owner, has eight including best director and best film.

If Campion takes the directing trophy she will be only the third female winner in that category, but the second in two years after Chloe Zhao for “Nomadland” in 2021.

Kenneth Branagh’s semi-autobiographical “Belfast,” the story of a childhood overshadowed by Northern Ireland’s violent “Troubles,” has six nominations including best film. Daniel Craig’s final 007 thriller, “No Time to Die,” Steven Spielberg’s musical “West Side Story” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s coming-of-age drama “Licorice Pizza” has five nominations apiece.

Best-picture nominees are “Dune,” “The Power of the Dog,” “Belfast,” “Licorice Pizza” and disaster comedy “Don’t Look Up.”

The separate category of best British film comprises “After Love,” “Ali & Ava,” “Belfast,” “Boiling Point,” “Cyrano,” “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie,” “House of Gucci,” “Last Night in Soho,” “No Time to Die” and “Passing.”

The contenders for best actor are Cumberbatch, Adeel Akhtar for “Ali & Ava,” Mahershala Ali for “Swan Song,” Stephen Graham for “Boiling Point,” Leonardo DiCaprio for “Don’t Look Up” and Will Smith for “King Richard.”

Leading actress nominees are Lady Gaga for “House of Gucci,” Alana Haim for “Licorice Pizza,” Emilia Jones for “Coda,” Renate Reinsve for “The Worst Person in The World,” Joanna Scanlan for “After Love” and Tessa Thompson for “Passing.” The category is the most unpredictable of the night, with acclaimed performances by Kristen Stewart in the Princess Diana biopic “Spencer” and Olivia Colman in “The Lost Daughter” overlooked for nomination.

The British awards are usually held a week or two before the Academy Awards and have become an important awards-season staging post. This year’s Oscars take place March 27.

The British film academy has expanded its voting membership and shaken up its rules in recent years in an attempt to address a glaring lack of diversity in the nominations. In 2020, no women were nominated as best director for a seventh consecutive year, and all 20 nominees in the lead and supporting performer categories were white.

Awards organizers say they are committed to supporting new talent, and this year all the performers in the supporting actor category are first-time nominees. They include Woody Norman for “C’mon C’mon” — at 11 years old the youngest nominee of the year — and Ariana DeBose, who plays Anita in “West Side Story.”

The celebration of cinema was subdued, with many attendees reflecting on the war raging on the other side of Europe.

Cumberbatch wore a lapel badge in the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag. He said it was to oppose the “megalomaniac” Russian President Vladimir Putin “raining down terror” on Ukraine.

“It’s a very scary and sad time,” he said on the red carpet. “Although this is a gesture, and people can say it’s hollow, it’s just something I can do tonight” — along with pressuring British politicians to take in more refugees from the war.

Jonas Poher Rasmussen, director of the animated feature “Flee,” the story of an Afghan refugee, said it was “surreal” to be at an awards show when “the world is burning.”

But he said images of the millions driven from their homes in Ukraine underscored the message that “these stories need to be told.”
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Jane Campion hailed the shattering of Hollywood’s glass ceiling as her movie “The Power of the Dog” was named the year’s best film by her fellow directors Saturday — a major accolade which historically leads to Oscars glory.

Campion won the Directors Guild of America’s top prize for her Netflix adaptation of a Western novel about the toxic masculinity of sexually repressed cowboys, fending off illustrious rivals at the Los Angeles gala including Steven Spielberg.

Campion is the third woman to ever win the top Directors Guild of America prize, after Kathryn Bigelow for 2008’s “The Hurt Locker,” and Chloe Zhao last year for “Nomadland.”

The New Zealand auteur said it was increasingly common to hear about glass ceilings being shattered during Hollywood’s award season, and that “perhaps it’s time to claim a sense of victory on that front.”

“We’ve come so far and what’s more, we’re never going backwards,” she said, before capping the night by taking the top prize, presented by last year’s winner Zhao.

“I’m so proud of you… I’m here because I care about women having voices as well,” said Campion.

Campion, who was first nominated in 1994 for “The Piano,” earlier in the night reflected on a time when she was frequently “the only woman in the room.”

“I remember that outsider feeling as I fought to get my stories told, to bring dynamic stories from underserved perspectives to light in a male-dominated field.”

Maggie Gyllenhaal won best first-time director for “The Lost Daughter,” a drama about the challenges and taboos surrounding motherhood.

Gyllenhaal — until now primarily known as an actress in films such as “The Dark Knight” and “Secretary” — said watching Campion’s “The Piano” as a teen had “changed my life” and sparked a desire to one day direct.

“I think it is one of the real reasons that I am standing here and that ultimately, I got brave enough to say what I wanted,” said Gyllenhaal.

In the last nine years, only one director — Sam Mendes — has won the top DGA award and failed to then win best director at the Oscars, a fact that propels Campion to firm favorite status for the Academy Awards on March 27. 

While Campion won on Saturday, many stars and nominees also devoted their speeches to fellow nominee Spielberg, with Rita Moreno hailing a “wizard,” Denis Villeneuve a “giant” and Spike Lee “the godfather of cinema.”

Spielberg, on his 12th DGA nomination, admitted that remaking the beloved musical “West Side Story” had been “really scary.”

“It was terrifying, and I gave up a whole bunch of times. And every single time I said ‘this is just too dangerous,'” the legendary director of “Jaws,” “Schindler’s List” and “Jurassic Park” said.

Lee received the DGA’s lifetime achievement award — the 35th person in Hollywood history to be granted the honor, and the first Black man.

“Attica,” by Stanley Nelson, which recounts the United States’ deadliest prison riot, won best documentary, beating musician Questlove’s strongly favored “Summer of Soul.”

The protest at Attica prison in 1971 New York state — by mainly Black and Latino inmates — ended in 43 deaths as law enforcement stormed the prison.

Although not broadcast on television and lower key than some other Hollywood awards, the DGAs are longer-running, and its 18,000 voters including the industry’s top directors offer prestigious recognition.

They also honor the year’s best TV episodes, with an installment of “Hacks” taking best comedy and “The Underground Railroad” limited series.

Best drama prize was a foregone conclusion — all five nominated episodes were from the same show, HBO’s “Succession.”

“We’re so glad that we don’t have to choose the winners,” said Brian Cox, who plays the patriarch of a squabbling media dynasty on “Succession.” 

“Because picking any of these incredible directors is as difficult as a parent picking a successor for his business — and that is something I would never ever do.”
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Many athletes are already looking forward to the 2026 Winter Olympics to be held in Italy. Asian American athletes are sure to be well represented there, thanks in part to a new athletic alliance designed to get Asian Americans into the Games. VOA’s Jessica Stone reports.
Camera: Jessica Stone Produced by: Jessica Stone  Video editor: Keith Lane
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