Author: Ohart

British divers who rescued young soccer players trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand are among those being recognized in Britain’s New Year’s Honors List, along with 1960s model Twiggy and Monty Python star Michael Palin.

Twiggy, a model who shot to stardom during the Beatles era, will become a Dame — the female equivalent of a knight — while Palin, whose second career has seen him become an acclaimed travel documentary maker, receives a knighthood.

Jim Carter, who played the acerbic Mr. Carson in “Downton Abbey,” was also recognized, as was filmmaker Christopher Nolan, director of “Inception” and “Dunkirk,” and best-selling author Philip Pullman, creator of the Dark Materials trilogy.

The list released Friday also named 43 people who responded quickly to the extremist attacks in Manchester and London in 2017.

The honors process starts with nominations from the public, which are winnowed down by committees and sent to the prime minister before the various honors are bestowed by Queen Elizabeth II or senior royals next year.

The 92-year-old monarch has increasingly called on her children and grandchildren to hand out the coveted awards.

Divers

Divers Joshua Bratchley, Lance Corporal Connor Roe and Vernon Unsworth will be made Members of the Order of the British Empire for their roles in the risky Thai cave rescue last summer.

Four other British cave divers will receive civilian gallantry awards for their roles in the thrilling rescue of 12 boys and their coach, who were trapped in the cave for more than two weeks.

Richard Stanton and John Volanthen, the first to reach the stranded children and their coach, have been awarded the George Medal, while Christopher Jewell and Jason Mallinson received the Queen’s Gallantry Medal.

Twiggy​

Twiggy, whose modeling career lasted for decades, burst on the London Mod scene as one of the original “It” girls. She earned worldwide fame by 17 and went on to a career in theater and films.

“It’s wonderful, but it makes me giggle,” said Twiggy, 69, whose real name is Lesley Lawson. “The hardest thing has been keeping it a secret.”

Michael Palin

Palin’s knighthood recognizes his contribution to travel, culture and geography. He said the news had not sunk in yet but noted “I have been a knight before, in Python films. I have been several knights, including Sir Galahad.”

“I don’t think it will (sink in) until I see the envelopes addressing me as Sir Michael Palin,” said the 75-year-old. 

 
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Renowned Israeli writer Amos Oz, a passionate peace advocate whose stirring memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness became a worldwide bestseller, died Friday at age 79, his daughter said.

Fania Oz-Salzberger said on Twitter that her father had died and offered thanks to “those who loved him.”

“My beloved father, Amos Oz, a wonderful family man, an author, a man of peace and moderation, died today peacefully after a short battle with cancer,” she wrote.

Tributes poured in for Oz, including from Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon, who called his death “a loss for us all and for the world.”

While Oz’s writing is widely acclaimed, he is perhaps equally known as one of the earliest and most forceful critics of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands captured in the Six-Day War of 1967.

In recent years, Oz spoke out against the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, shunning official Israeli functions abroad in protest at what he called the “growing extremism” of his country’s government.

Netanyahu on Friday celebrated Oz as “among the greatest writers from the state of Israel.”

“Despite our diverging views on numerous issues, I have deeply appreciated his contribution to the Hebrew language and the revival of Hebrew literature,” the premier said in a statement released by his office.

Oz was described as a “literary great” by Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin.

“A tale of love and light and henceforth, great darkness,” he wrote on Twitter.
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Fifty years after the Woodstock music festival became one of the watersheds of hippie counterculture, an anniversary event will take place in August 2019 on the same field north of New York City.

The Bethel Woods Center for the Arts announced a three-day festival of “music, culture and community” that will celebrate “the golden anniversary at the historic site of the 1969 Woodstock festival.”

The Bethel Woods Center, a nonprofit that now owns the 37-acre (15-hectare) field that was the site of the 1969 Woodstock festival, said in a Facebook posting Thursday that the Aug. 16-18 festival will be a “pan-generational event.”

It will feature live performances from prominent and emerging artists across multiple genres and decades, as well as talks from leading futurists and tech experts. The festival is a joint venture with concert promoters Live Nation.

Details of performers, tickets and other participants will be announced at a later date, the Bethel Woods Center said.

The August 1969 Woodstock festival, billed as “three days of peace and music,” is regarded as one of the pivotal moments in music history and 1960s counterculture.

Over three sometimes-rainy days, more than 30 acts — including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, The Band, and the Grateful Dead — performed around the clock to a 400,000-strong audience, most of whom watched for free and camped onsite in the mud. The festival was documented in the 1970 film Woodstock, which won an Oscar.

Although it was known as Woodstock, the festival actually took place in Bethel, some 70 miles (110 km) south of the village of Woodstock in upstate New York. Bethel is 90 miles (144 km) north of New York City.

“Fifty years ago, people gathered peacefully on our site inspired to change the world through music,” Darlene Fedun, chief executive of the Bethel Woods Center, said in a statement announcing the 50th-anniversary event.

“We remain committed to preserving this rich history and spirit, and to educating and inspiring new generations to contribute positively to the world through music, culture, and community,” Fedun added.

The Bethel Woods festival is not affiliated with Michael Lang, a promoter of the 1969 festival, who has also spoken of plans to organize a 50th-anniversary event but has yet to make any announcement. Woodstock anniversary festivals were also held in 1994, 1998 and 1999.

Many of the 1969 Woodstock artists are now dead. Surviving musicians who are still performing into their 70s include Joan Baez, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend of The Who, and David Crosby, Neil Young, Graham Nash and Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
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Tourists in Philadelphia for the holidays will be able to see the Liberty Bell this weekend despite a partial federal government shutdown that closed many national parks throughout the country.

Most of the buildings in the Independence National Historic Park including Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell Center have been shuttered since Saturday morning because of the partial shutdown.

That was bad news for tourists and the city of Philadelphia, which sees the second highest attendance at the Liberty Bell during the weekend before New Year’s Day annually.

Officials at VISIT PHILADELPHIA, a tourism and marketing group, say they’re giving the park $32,000 to open Friday, Saturday and Sunday to let in the estimated 25,000 people who had planned to see the Liberty Bell this weekend.

 
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The head of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency has asked for President Vladimir Putin’s help in getting Russian officials to hand over key doping data to World Anti-Doping Agency inspectors.

WADA reinstated the suspended RUSADA in September on the condition Russian authorities hand over lab data, which could help confirm a number of violations uncovered during an investigation that revealed a state-sponsored doping program designed to win medals at the 2014 Olympics and other major events.

WADA officials said earlier this month they were leaving Moscow empty-handed after Russian authorities prevented them from accessing data.

In a letter released Thursday, RUSADA chief Yuri Ganus appealed to Putin to reverse the decision and allow the data to be given to WADA inspectors. Ganus warned that refusal to do so would hurt Russia’s efforts to clean up its sports from doping.

WADA has previously said that Russia unexpectedly demanded its equipment be “certified under Russian law.” The deadline to turn over the data is Dec. 31.
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Preparations for New Year’s Eve in Times Square are taking shape, and some of those shapes are 192 new crystal triangles on the famous ball.

The new Waterford crystal triangles will join about 2,500 others Thursday on the big, sparkling sphere. Some new crystals are swapped in every year.

This year’s additions feature rosette cuts designed to make them appear to flow harmoniously into each other. That’s in keeping with this year’s “gift of harmony” theme.

The ball measures 3.5 meters (12 feet) in diameter and weighs almost 5,450 kg (nearly 12,000 pounds). It’s positioned atop One Times Square.

 
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She showed up in Paris wearing a black catsuit, a reminder that nobody can command the Grand Slam stage quite like Serena Williams.

She reached the finals at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, proving again how well she can play no matter how little she practices.

Williams didn’t win those or any other tournaments, which in every other situation might have made for a forgettable year.

In 2018, it was a remarkable one.

Her rapid return to tennis after a health scare following childbirth was a victory in itself, and for that, Williams was voted The Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for the fifth time.

Williams received 93 points in balloting by U.S. editors and news directors announced Wednesday, while gymnast Simone Biles was second with 68. Notre Dame basketball player Arike Ogunbowale was third, while Olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim and swimmer Katie Ledecky, the 2017 winner, rounded out the top five.

All of those players won a title or titles in 2018, while Williams had to settle for just coming close a couple of times.

Now 37 and a new mother facing some players who weren’t even born when she turned pro in 1995, Williams isn’t the same person who ruthlessly ran her way to 23 Grand Slam singles titles — the last of which came at the 2017 Australian Open when she was pregnant.

“I’m still waiting to get to be the Serena that I was, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be that, physically, emotionally, mentally. But I’m on my way,” Williams said on the eve of the U.S. Open final. “I feel like I still have a ways to go. Once I get there, I’ll be able to play even hopefully better.”

The Male Athlete of the Year will be announced Thursday.

The women’s award has been won more only by Babe Didrikson Zaharias, whose six wins included one for track and five for golf.

Williams’ previous times winning the AP honor, in 2002, 2009, 2013 and 2015, were because of her dominance.

This one was about her perseverance.

Williams developed blood clots after giving birth to daughter Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr. on Sept. 1, 2017, and four surgeries would follow. She returned to the WTA Tour in March and played in just a pair of events before the French Open, where she competed in a skin-tight, full-length black catsuit .

She said the outfit — worn partly for health reasons because of the clots — made her feel like a superhero, but her game was rarely in superstar shape. She had to withdraw in Paris because of a right pectoral injury and didn’t play again until Wimbledon, where she lost to Angelique Kerber in the final.

Williams came up short again in New York, where her loss to Naomi Osaka in the final will be remembered best for her outburst toward chair umpire Carlos Ramos, who had penalized Williams for receiving coaching and later penalized her an entire game for calling him a “thief” while arguing.

That loss leaves her one major title shy of Margaret Court’s record as she starts play next year in a WTA Tour that will look different in part because of new rules coming about after issues involving Williams. Players returning to the tour may use a “special ranking” for up to three years from the birth of a child, and the exemption can be used for seedings at big events. Also, the tour says players can wear leggings or compression shorts at its tournaments without a skirt over them.

Williams insists she is still driven to play and win as much if not more than before she was a mother. That drive is the focus of a Nike ad showing her in action.

“Getting this far, crazy,” it says. “Stopping now, crazier.”

Williams won’t.

“I’m still on the way up,” she said. “There’s still much more that I plan on doing.”

The rest of the top five:

Simone Biles, gymnastics . The American won four golds and six medals overall in the world championships in Qatar, giving her 20 in her career to tie Russia’s Svetlana Khorkina for the most by a female gymnast.

Arike Ogunbowale, women’s basketball . She hit one jumper to knock off previously unbeaten Connecticut in the Final Four, then a 3-pointer in the championship game to lift Notre Dame over Mississippi State.

Chloe Kim, snowboarding . At 17, the Californian won the halfpipe Olympic gold medal in South Korea, where her parents were from before they immigrated to the United States.

Katie Ledecky, swimming . The 21-year-old U.S. Olympian tuned up for the 2020 Games in Tokyo by winning five medals in the city at the Pan Pacific Championships.
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Two dozen large-screen TVs showing football and other sports line the walls. There’s beer on tap, bar top seating and leather chairs. Chicken wings are on the menu. And at this American Indian casino in the heart of college-football mad Mississippi, you can legally bet on the games.

The sports book owned by the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians is the first to open on tribal lands outside of Nevada following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this year, a no-brainer business decision given the sports fans among its gambling clientele.

“We are basically two hours from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and then, we are just an hour from Mississippi State. We have Ole Miss just to the north of that, and we have Southern Miss — they’re not SEC, but they are a player. We are not that far from Louisiana,” said Neal Atkinson, the tribe’s director of gaming.

The book at Pearl River Resort is packed every college football Saturday, but remains an outlier months after the high court opened the door for expanded sports gambling across the United States by striking down a federal ban.

Tribes enthusiastically welcomed the decision in May but since then, the regulatory challenges and low-margin nature of the business have sunk in. Few Indian casinos have an enviable location like the Choctaw and many need state approval to add sports betting to their offerings.

Indian casinos started small three decades ago, but they have grown to be an annual $32.4 billion segment of the U.S. gambling industry. The roughly 475 casinos operated by nearly 240 tribes create jobs for tribal members and profits that help pay a variety of services, including health care and housing.

Some casinos only have games like bingo or pull tabs that don’t need state approval. But the majority of them also have state-authorized slot machines, blackjack and other table games, according to the National Indian Gaming Commission.

Many tribes share a portion of casino profits with state governments in exchange for exclusive rights to conduct gambling operations within their states.

To offer sports betting, the majority of tribes would have to renegotiate compacts that vary widely in cycles and the issues covered, though some tribes believe their existing agreements already give them the right to offer the new wagers.

“There’s a broad spectrum in Indian Country covering two extremes: Tribal nations that would not benefit at all, and on the other end, tribal nations that would significantly benefit,” commission chairman Jonodev Osceola Chaudhuri said. “Those are largely business decisions that each tribe will have to make given its own economic landscape and its unique market realities.”

Some federal lawmakers have also proposed regulating sports gambling more widely, adding yet another layer to a complex debate already involving commercial casinos and lotteries, plus sports leagues themselves.

So far, only the Santa Ana Pueblo near Albuquerque, New Mexico, has followed the Choctaw’s effort into sports gambling. Neither tribe was required to obtain additional state approvals.

Contrary to popular belief, sports betting is a low-profit business that requires highly skilled employees. In Nevada, sportsbooks last year contributed only 2.4 percent of the gambling revenue of casinos statewide — dwarfed by the proceeds from table games and slots. The limited payoff has tribal casinos balancing the allure of a Las Vegas-style amenity with the risks of opening compacts for negotiations.

“Tribal leadership is extremely protective of what they have because it’s meant so much to us, and there’s always a risk of upsetting the apple cart,” Washington State Gambling Commission member Chris Stearns said. “Is this going to help us? Is this going to hurt us? That’s really at the heart of why you see Indian tribes gently venturing into sports betting. … In a lot of states, tribes write a check out to the state in exchange for exclusivity. So, any time there’s a new gambling product, and you ask the state to authorize it, there is a risk the state will say ‘Sure, but it is going to cost you.’”

The only sports book in New Mexico, inside the Santa Ana Star Casino Hotel, began taking wagers in October. It offers bets on professional and college sports, but not for games involving two public in-state universities.

In Washington state, all casinos are tribally operated. Changing the state’s laws to allow betting on sports would require a 60 percent supermajority vote in the legislature or a ballot initiative. Only then could sports betting be added to a tribal-state compact.

In California, where tribes have exclusivity on casino-style gambling, voters would have to approve a change to the state constitution.

Casinos are operated on and off reservations in South Dakota. Before the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe can try to to edge out its nearest competition across the state line in Iowa, South Dakota’s constitution will have to be amended through a public vote.

The legislature could choose to put the question before voters or supporters could gather enough signatures to add the measure to the 2020 ballot. If the measure passes, it would open the opportunity for tribes to negotiate their compacts with the state.

Tribal councilman Kenny Weston said a sports book could attract new patrons who may also choose to play games already offered and spend nights at the hotel for big sporting events, like MMA fights.

“Normally, with the brick-and-mortar casino like we have, we attract a lot of older crowds and retired people,” Weston said. “I think with sports betting we can bring a different age demographic and different people … and have the opportunity to do the same that they do in Vegas.”
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The Museum of Black Civilizations in Senegal opened this month amid a global conversation about the ownership and legacy of African art. The West African nation’s culture minister isn’t shy: He wants the thousands of pieces of cherished heritage taken from the continent over the centuries to come home.

“It’s entirely logical that Africans should get back their artworks,” Abdou Latif Coulibaly told The Associated Press. “These works were taken in conditions that were perhaps legitimate at the time but illegitimate today.”

Last month, a report commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron recommended that French museums give back works taken without consent, if African countries request them. Macron has stressed the “undeniable crimes of European colonization,” adding that “I cannot accept that a large part of African heritage is in France.”

The new museum in Dakar is the latest sign that welcoming spaces across the continent are being prepared.

The museum, with its focus on Africa and the diaspora, is decades in the making. The idea was conceived when Senegal’s first president, internationally acclaimed poet Leopold Sedar Senghor, hosted the World Black Festival of Arts in 1966.

At the museum’s vibrant opening, sculptors from Los Angeles, singers from Cameroon and professors from Europe and the Americas came to celebrate, some in tears. “This moment is historic,” Senegalese President Macky Sall said. “It is part of the continuity of history.”

Perhaps reflecting the tenuous hold that African nations still have on their own legacy objects, the museum will not have a permanent collection. Filling the 148,000-square-foot circular structure, one of the largest of its kind on the continent, is complicated by the fact that countless artifacts have been dispersed around the world.

Both the inaugural exhibition, “African Civilizations: Continuous Creation of Humanity,” and the museum’s curator take a far longer view than the recent centuries of colonization and turmoil. Current works highlight the continent as the “cradle of civilization” and the echoes found among millions of people in the diaspora today.

“Colonization? That’s just two centuries,” curator Hamady Bocoum told the AP, saying that proof of African civilization is at least 7,000 years old, referencing a skull discovered in present-day Chad.

Like others, Bocoum is eager to see artifacts return for good. The exhibition includes 50 pieces on loan from France, including more than a dozen from the Quai Branly museum in Paris.

More than 5,000 pieces in the Quai Branly come from Senegal alone, Bocoum said.

“When we see the inventory of the Senegalese objects that are found in France, we’re going to ask for certain of those objects,” Bocoum said. “For the moment, we have not yet started negotiations.”

He brushed off concerns that African institutions might be unable to care for their own heritage, pointing to the new museum’s humidified, air-conditioned storage space.

The history of some of the objects in the opening exhibition is grim. Pointing to the saber of El Hadj Umar Tall, a 19th-century West African thinker who fought against French colonialism, Bocoum described how French troops fighting him stripped local women of their elaborate jewelry by cutting off their ears.

Contemporary works in the exhibition touch on both triumph and tragedy. There are black-and-white photographs of African nightclubs in the 1960s shot by famous Malian photographer Malick Sidibe, and a stark mural by Haitian artist Philippe Dodard depicting African religions and the middle passage.

Works by Yrneh Gabon Brown, based in Los Angeles, reference slavery and contemporary race relations in America.

“Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,” Brown told the AP. “And here, as a member of Africa’s English-speaking diaspora, I am proud, reaffirmed.”

France, whose president in recent weeks has pledged to return 26 pieces to Benin, is just one of many countries loaning works for the new museum’s opening exhibition. Bocoum now is working with dozens of institutions around the world to plan future exhibits.

“This museum is celebrating the resilience of black people,” professor Linda Carty, who teaches African American studies at Syracuse University, told the AP at its opening. “This is a forced recognition of how much black people have brought to the world. We were first. That’s been taken away from us, and we now have reclaimed it.”
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The 81-year-old author is often called a dean of Chicano literature. The illustrator is a younger muralist steeped in the visual traditions of Mexican-American pop culture and low-rider cars. 

 

Together, novelist Rudolfo Anaya and painter Moises Salcedo — who goes by El Moises — have created a bilingual children’s book with parallel texts in Spanish and English about the adventures of a tiny owl named Ollie who longs to read on his own, even as he skips school and tangles with a cast of conniving animal characters in the hills and skies of northern New Mexico. 

 

Anaya achieved lasting literary fame with the novel Bless Me, Ultima in 1972 about a boy’s coming of age in post-World War II New Mexico under the guidance of a traditional spiritual healer. The book became a movie — and recently an opera. 

Local, traditional references

 

The new children’s book from the Museum of New Mexico Press — titled Owl in a Straw Hat, or El Tecolote del Sombrero de Paja — is chock-full of references to northern New Mexico geography and homespun Hispanic tradition — from posole soup and pinon nuts to the “acequia” organizations that help irrigate fields and lend a special order to local rural life. 

 

Anaya said the work is a heartfelt effort to encourage shared family reading in English or Spanish, with eye-grabbing imagery. 

 

The book’s illustrations spring from the brush of Mexican-born, Arizona-raised El Moises — who made New Mexico his adopted home nearly a decade ago. His other recent commissions include urban murals, a tequila logo, CD covers and more.  

The 45-year-old illustrator is a father of five who often paints at a weathered living-room table amid the bustle of family. El Moises says people call him a Chicano artist, but it’s really just his take on everyday life. 

 

“Bold and bright has always been my thing,” he said. “I love low-riders because I grew up around them. … I just think that I’m an artist who is narrating his life.” 

 

One of the new book’s characters — a hungry and untrustworthy wolf in sunglasses named Luis Lobo — is adapted from a self-designed tattoo on the artist’s upper arm. Other characters include a young raven and crow who prefer video games to school. There are positive role models, too — a disciplined roadrunner who drives a dazzling low-rider car and a loving grandmother “Nana” owl. 

 

El Moises and Anaya already are working on a sequel that explores concerns about childhood bullying, something the illustrator and a 13-year-old son have been grappling with recently in Albuquerque, culminating in the decision to do home schooling.

Anaya, a widower who lives in Albuquerque with a dachshund at his side, continues to work steadily on essays and novels for grown-up readers. 

 

He said Owl in a Straw Hat is an outgrowth of his enduring concern for children, including children living far away in war-torn countries. 

‘Something positive’

 

“Maybe that’s why I write books for children — to get a lift, to think there is something positive on Earth that might offset the evil that we see,” Anaya said, on a day where violence in Syria dominated news headlines. “As I’m writing, I’m speaking to a child, to children. I’m kind of telling them, ‘Look at Oli and Raven and Crow.’ The children are always there, they’re always there wanting to hear a story.” 

 

The English text of the new book contains a smattering of colloquial Spanish words and phrases — such as “mi’jito” for my little son. A Spanish-English glossary at the back of the book resolves any mysteries. 

 

That aims to help young readers from various cultures feel comfortable, according to Enrique Lamadrid, who wrote the book’s full Spanish translation.
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U.S. actor Kevin Spacey is facing a felony charge for allegedly sexually assaulting the teenage at a Nantucket, Massachusetts, restaurant more than two years ago.

The Oscar-winning actor is set to be arraigned on a charge of indecent assault and battery on January 7.

In November last year, Boston-based news anchor Heather Unruh held a news conference to share her son’s allegation of sexual assault against Spacey.

She said her then-18-year-old son was was sexually assaulted by Spacey in a late-night encounter at the Club Car restaurant and bar in Nantucket on July 7, 2016. She said her son didn’t report the assault right away because he was embarrassed.

On Monday, soon after the charge became public, Spacey posted a video on YouTube titled “Let Me Be Frank,” breaking his year-long silence on the accusation.

On the video, Spacey delivers a monologue in the voice of Frank Underwood, his character on Netflix’s House of Cards, who was written off the show after the sexual misconduct allegations emerged.

He tells his audience, ““Of course some believed everything and have just been waiting with bated breath to hear me confess it all, they’re just dying to have me declare that everything they said is true and I got what I deserved. … I’m certainly not going to pay the price for the thing I didn’t do.”

It is unclear whether Spacey is referring to the charge he faces.  

Spacey is also being investigated for an alleged assault in Los Angeles in 2016. He had also faced accusations of sexual misconduct while he was the artistic director of London’s Old Vic Theatre.
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As Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recovers from surgery on Friday for early stage lung cancer, two new films are paying tribute to her life and many accomplishments. VOA’s Penelope Poulou reports how the senior justice of Court’s liberal wing is being portrayed on film.
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As Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recovers from surgery on Friday for early stage lung cancer, two new films are paying tribute to her life and many accomplishments. VOA’s Penelope Poulou reports how the senior justice of Court’s liberal wing is being portrayed on film.
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You don’t often get a second chance to make a first impression, unless, of course, you’re one of the world’s most popular dinosaurs.

“It’s a different profile, a much more impressive profile in many ways, a pretty scary large animal, as opposed to a lighter, swifter animal,” says the Field Museum’s Director of Exhibitions, Jaap Hoogstraten, who has courted the leading lady of the dinosaurs since she arrived in Chicago nearly twenty years ago.

“Since we put her up in 2000, we’ve made discoveries about the pose. We’ve added the gastralia, which are the belly ribs which changes the outline of Sue quite a bit. Sue is much bulkier.”

The belly ribs are not a new discovery… they’ve existed since the fossil was recovered from obscurity in the rock formations of South Dakota in the early 1990s. That was the beginning of a long legal and physical journey for the world’s largest Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton. Known as Sue, named for paleontologist Sue Hendrickson who discovered it, the well-preserved specimen arrived as the star attraction in Stanley Hall at the Field Museum in 2000.

But scientists only recently learned how the belly ribs fit onto the overall specimen, which now fundamentally changes what we know about the Tyrannosaurus Rex. 

After a nearly year-long transition to a new exhibit specifically designed for her, Sue will look different to the millions who have seen the dinosaur before. 

“I didn’t really realize that Sue weighed nine tons in real life,” says Hilary Hansen, project manager at the Field Museum. “I think really adding this gastralia, these belly ribs, really changes the profile for Sue, and you can get a sense of how formidable and imposing it must have been to share an environment with this animal.”

Hansen explains that the new exhibit doesn’t just change our understanding of the animal itself, such as the fact it probably couldn’t run, but it also show visitors Sue’s natural environment, and place in history.

“What we’re trying to do is bring together everything about Sue that was all over the museum into one space so our visitors can see this as a one stop shop for all things Sue.”

“It pushes what we know about T-Rex forward,” says Hoogstraten, including possible answers to how Sue met her fate.

“One possibility is that there was an infection, and that she possibly starved to death.”

The Field museum typically welcomes over one million visitors a year, a number Hilary Hansen expects to spike when the new Sue exhibit opens to the public just in time for the holiday rush.

“For the next three weeks or so, we’re expecting between seven to ten thousand visitors coming through a day.” Some, revisiting an old friend with a new look. 

But even though science marches on, one mystery about Sue remains. 

Despite the name, experts are still not sure if the dinosaur behind this fossil was male or female.
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A Venetian cloth dyer’s son, Tintoretto spent his entire career in Venice, becoming widely considered the last great painter of the Renaissance.

The lagoon city’s churches and palazzi essentially serve as a permanent retrospective of this native son’s formidable talents in using dramatic color, bold brushstrokes and daringly innovative perspective on often-enormous canvasses.

Still, curators here have encountered challenges when mounting tributes this year to mark the 500th anniversary of his birth.

Some of Tintoretto’s paintings couldn’t be included in the main exhibition, hosted at the landmark Palazzo Ducale (Doges’ Palace), because they couldn’t fit through its 16th-century stone doorways.

And several Venetian churches, where the painter did much of his best work, balked at loaning their masterpieces. Not surprisingly, they are eager for visitors making the Tintoretto pilgrimage to visit their venues and not just the stellar show, which, since opening in September, has drawn more than 100,000 visitors.

​On to Washington

After it closes here Jan. 6, the exhibition travels to the National Gallery of Art in Washington for a four-month run starting March 10. That will be the first Tintoretto retrospective outside of Europe.

When Venice last hosted a Tintoretto retrospective, in 1937, church paintings were cut out of their frames, rolled up and carted off to the exhibition. That method would be met with horror by today’s art world, especially since nearly a score of Tintoretto paintings were recently restored, thanks to the Save Venice organization.

“The churches generally felt, and we understood, it didn’t make sense to move his masterpieces across the city,” said Robert Echols, a Boston-based art historian who is one of the curators. Some of those church works will go to the U.S. exhibition, however.

Weeding out impostors

Some of Tintoretto’s greatest works can never travel, of course, and are being celebrated here.

In the Chapter House in the Scuola di San Rocco, admirers can lie on their backs to see Tintoretto’s work, which has been likened to the monumental achievement of Michelangelo in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel. Thanks to new lighting and strategically placed mirrors, the Chapter House last month had its own renaissance of sorts. Now visitors can see details in what before had seemed like a gloomy, cavernous room.

Echols and co-curator Frederick Ilchman, chair of European art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, devoted much of their art historian careers to weeding out paintings that had been dubiously attributed to Tintoretto, whittling down what had been a list of 468 works to just more than 300 paintings of his authorship.

“Tintoretto, to some extent, is a painter who was a victim of his own success,” Echols said.

Tintoretto, a pseudonym of Jacopo Rubusti, obtained so many commissions, particularly in his later years, that he farmed out some work, notably to his son, Domenico. While his genius was acknowledged in his own day, some works done by imitators or his workshop had been incorrectly attributed to Tintoretto in successive centuries.

Tintoretto cleverly maneuvered to snag commissions from nobles and churches during the heady years of the sea-going Most Serene Republic of Venice.

“The Shakespeare play is not the ‘Merchant of Florence,’ it’s the ‘Merchant of Venice,’” Ilchman noted, recounting how Tintoretto sometimes offered discounts to ensure commissions didn’t go to his rivals, which included Tiepolo, Titian and Veronese.

Scandalous at times

Tintoretto’s imaginative use of perspective and his dynamic, inventive interpretations of mythological and religious themes are on convincing display, including one that sparked scandal in his day. In “St. Louis, St. George and The Princess,” a dragon’s head emerges from between the legs of a woman and from under her billowing, burnt-orange gown.

In the “The Abduction of Helen,” the kidnapped woman, with a nipple poking out above her blouse, seems to be tumbling out of the frame toward the viewer.

Tintoretto had an impressive production of portraits. The exhibition displays many of his finest in a long, narrow hall, as if in a noble family’s own palazzo.

Riveting self-portraits — one of Tintoretto in his 20s on loan by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and another of Tintoretto as an old man sent by the Louvre — open and close the retrospective.

The Venice show to honor Tintoretto’s birth anniversary began in 2018. The companion Washington show starts in 2019. The different years are fitting, for, while the year of his death, 1594, is undisputed, and his grave prominent in a Venice church decorated with some of his masterpieces, historians aren’t sure just when he was born. The artist’s birth year is often written as 1518/1519.
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During the Christmas season, nights are bright across the United States, as families, businesses and churches put up outdoor light decorations — a simple string of white lights along a roof edge, to elaborate displays with moving figures and music. VOA’s Deborah Block shows us a few of the beautiful light displays in the Washington area.
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A father-son business in Damascus, Maryland, is achieving success by restoring old, rusty cars into magnificent-looking vehicles. This is thanks to the work and inspiration of Bobby and Andy Cohen, who are featured in a multiseason television show “Junkyard Empire.” Maxim Moskalkov filed this report for VOA.
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Scientists have discovered a colorful “underwater garden” at depths of up to 2 kilometers during a recent research voyage south of Tasmania in Australia.

The researchers used special cameras to probe 45 undersea mountains, finding more than 100 unnamed species of corals, lobsters and mollusks. The expedition also discovered bioluminescent squids, deep-water sharks and basketwork eels.

Experts spent a month onboard the research vessel Investigator, which is operated by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, or the CSIRO. It is an independent Australian government agency responsible for scientific research.

Scientists have been exploring the Tasmanian cluster of ridges known as seamounts in Australia’s Tasman Fracture and Huon marine parks.

The coral they found is soft, which means it is different from the coral in a tropical reef.

The expedition’s chief scientist is Alan Williams from the CSIRO.

“Quite amazingly at these kinds of depths there are coral reefs that in many ways look similar to the kinds of reefs you see in shallow tropical areas, and so what we were seeing on our screens delivered in real time from the cameras were just absolutely fantastic images of these extensive, delicate, colorful and very rich coral reef systems,” he said.

The research teams also saw images of the lasting damage inflicted on the ocean-floor by fishing crews. Trawl fishing was banned in the 1990s but much of the region’s coral is still to fully recover.

Experts say science knows more about the surface of the moon than it does about the deep sea. Despite their research south of Tasmania, they still do not understand why bright corals can survive in a pitch-black world far beneath the surface of the ocean.
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The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington recently hosted a two-day art market offering visitors a chance to purchase artworks by some of the finest Native American artists from across the hemisphere. The hand-crafted items in traditional and contemporary styles included silver and semiprecious jewelry, ceramics, fine apparel, handwoven baskets, traditional beadwork, dolls, paintings and sculptures. VOA’s Julie Taboh spoke with a few of the artists about their work.
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A combination of ice, snow, lights and exciting acrobatics are what characterize “Crystal,” Cirque du Soleil’s new show, which opened in Washington recently. Iacopo Luzi went behind the scenes of this unique display of acrobatics to learn the troupe’s secrets for putting on a show.
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The Christmas season is in full swing here in the United States, and that means shopping for the kids. Economists say consumers are spending lots of money, but when it comes to traditional gifts for small kids, it looks like the days of blue for boys and pink for girls are long gone. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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This time of year, all across the United States, empty lots are turned into miniature forests as live Christmas trees are displayed for sale. But The Christmas Tree Promotion Board worries that more Americans are opting for artificial trees as they become more realistic-looking. So Christmas tree farmers in the U.S. have launched a social media campaign to get Americans to buy real trees this season. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Rudolph and friends no longer need to rely on the famous reindeer’s red nose to avoid getting lost. Now they have wireless technology.

To keep track of their animals in Lapland, Northern Finland’s vast and remote snow-covered forests, reindeer herders are turning to technology by fitting them with internet-connected collars.

Herders who previously spent weeks searching for their reindeer in sub-zero wilderness can now instantly see where they are on a mobile app that receives up-to-date location data.

“In all sectors of society, this (tech) efficiency is playing a big role. It’s the same in reindeer husbandry,” said Seppo Koivisto, whose hundreds of reindeer roam Lapland’s 4,000 square-kilometer (1,545 square-mile) Palojarvi District.

Lapland’s reindeer are the main source of livelihood for about 1,500 herders, so there’s high interest in technology that can help manage them. Koivisto is using the latest generation of wireless collars made possible by a group that includes Helsinki-based communications firm Digita and Finland’s Reindeer Herding Association. The association is based in Rovaniemi, which bills itself as the “official hometown of Santa Claus.”

“We have fewer workers, so their actions should be more and more efficient all the time,” and this technology lets them do that, said Koivisto. Since he started using the technology, he has only had to hire half the usual number of workers.

The technology can also help herders account for attacks from predators such as wolverines and lynx that roam across the Russian border.

At least 5,000 reindeer are killed every year, according to the herding association. Most that die in Lapland’s forests are never found. Koivisto says he loses about 8 percent of his herd annually.

The collars, which use GPS satellite positioning and special long-distance wireless networks, help herders find reindeer corpses so they can claim valuable compensation from the Finnish government.

If a collar-fitted reindeer doesn’t move after about four hours, its icon changes from green to red on the app, signaling a potential attack.

To best locate groups of reindeer, which are bred for their meat, milk and fur, the trackers are fitted on the herd’s female leader.

“In the old days, we roughly knew reindeer locations, in which part of the district they were,” said herder Jarno Konttaniemi. “But today, with this technology, we know exactly where they are.”

Digita built the long-range network, which it says is the world’s most northerly “Internet of Things” network. The “Internet of Things” refers to the next generation of devices and everyday objects that are connected to the internet.

While reindeer herding has roots going back hundreds of years, “at least some of the reindeer owners are really up-to-date when it comes to using technology,” said Ari Kuukka, Digita’s head of “Internet of Things” services.

The herding association has been working for years on a reliable GPS reindeer tracking system. The main challenge was coming up with a device that was cheap but had a long-lasting battery.

The third and latest prototype is the size of a deck of cards, stays charged for about a year, and costs about 90 euros ($102).

The herding association hopes to eventually shrink the transmitter down to a coin-sized microchip that can be attached to a reindeer’s ear, said Matti Sarkela, the herding association’s head of office who has previously helped develop a mobile app that alerts drivers to reindeer near Finland’s often icy roads.

He hopes embracing new technologies can inspire the younger generation to carry on the herding tradition.

“It has brought a lot of young people into our industry all the time,” said Sarkela. “It’s a really positive thing.”

 
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A New York judge on Thursday refused to dismiss sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood movie mogul who came to symbolize the MeToo movement which exposed sexual harassment by powerful men against women in the workplace.

Weinstein’s lawyers had sought to get the charges dismissed, claiming that the case against him was “irreparably tainted” by a police detective who allegedly coached a potential witness and one of the accusers. Prosecutors said there was plenty of evidence to proceed with the case.

Judge James Burke denied the defense request and set the next hearing in the case for March 7.

“We are obviously disappointed that the charges were not dismissed today,” said Weinstein’s lawyer, Ben Brafman. He predicted that Weinstein, who faces life imprisonment if convicted, will be “completely exonerated.”

Weinstein, 66, who faces five charges linked to an alleged rape in March 2013 and a forced act of oral sex in 2006, has denied all allegations of nonconsensual sex. More than 80 women have accused him of sexual misconduct.

After allegations against the powerful movie producer first surfaced, dozens of women throughout the U.S. made their own public accusations of sexual abuse against men in their lives, often bosses in the corporate world, the media and academia.

As the MeToo movement took hold, powerful men across the country were forced to apologize for their actions, with many of them resigning or being fired from their positions.
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Christmas is a time for giving. For one man that means decorating his house with over-the-top Christmas displays to warm people’s hearts. It’s a family tradition that Kurt Farmer took over from his father. VOA’s Deborah Block takes us to the home full of Christmas spirit in Alexandria, Virginia.
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When USA Volleyball asked four-time Olympian Lloy Ball to put together a team for a snow volleyball tournament in Moscow this week, the 2008 gold medalist was eager to accept.

Never mind that he’s never played on the snow before.

Or that, at 46, he’s not a likely candidate for the U.S. Olympic team if the discipline eventually is added to the Winter Games.

“I’ve been playing volleyball my entire life. It would just be an amazing feeling to know that me and my friends would be able to help volleyball grow,” Ball said. “To help be one of the forefathers, to get another discipline of volleyball into the Olympics, it would be awesome.”

The son of a volleyball coach and a member of the U.S. indoor team that won gold in Beijing, Ball played professionally in Russia for six years and was a natural choice to be a part of the first American team to play on the European snow volleyball tour. After what he is calling an exploratory mission, he hopes to report back to the national governing body on how it can help the sport grow.

The ultimate goal: helping snow volleyball earn a spot in the Olympics — perhaps by 2026. If it does, volleyball will be the first sport to be included in both the Summer and Winter Games.

“We want to climb this mountain step by step. We do not want to rush,” said Fabio Azevedo, the general director of the sport’s international governing body, adding that snow volleyball will join the Olympics “as soon as the discipline has an amazing relevance in the world.”

“We have our road map, we have our timeline,” he said. “We really believe it is premature now to mention anything about Winter Olympic Games. I cannot say to you 2026 is realistic or not.”

Still, they are plowing ahead.

U.S. team

After a demonstration at February’s Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the European governing body held its first snow championships in March. With its 2018-19 tour starting this weekend in Moscow, it has invited teams from the United States to compete. (Teams from Kazakhstan and Brazil were also offered wild-card entries.)

Knowing that he spent time in Russia and would make a good ambassador, USA Volleyball chief Jamie Davis called Ball, who remains active as a coach and a semi-pro grass and beach volleyball player. He pulled together a team with Will Robbins, Kevin Owens and Tomas Goldsmith.

Although they have been training outside in Indiana to get used to the cold, the first time they will play on a snow court will be in Moscow.

“I’m going to rely on my massive amount of repetition and skill training and experience,” Ball said with a laugh. “Hopefully we won’t embarrass ourselves too badly and hopefully we’ll know what to do better next time. I’m going to come back and sit down with Jamie, and maybe say `Hey, this is something that can take off.”‘

The women’s team for the Moscow tournament, which USA Volleyball put together, consists of Allie Wheeler, Emily Hartong, Katie Spieler and Karissa Cook.

“It’s a milestone for us,” Davis said. “We’re starting at level zero and building this up from scratch.”

“My hope is that we’ll get more and more athletes that are concentrating on snow, in addition to beach and indoor,” he said. “What I would hope for snow volleyball is that we’re going to be able to have players — north, south, east or west — be able to go outdoors to play the sport they love to play.”

Growth of snow volleyball

Although snow volleyball has kicked around Europe for a decade, its growth has accelerated over the last five years. The European volleyball federation officially recognized the sport in 2015, and a seven-stop European tour is planned for 2018-19, starting with this week’s event in Moscow.

Azevedo said the FIVB is hoping to add three more events of its own, including one in Argentina that will be the first outside of Europe. Davis said he hopes to host one in the United States next winter.

From there, the FIVB is planning for a snow volleyball competition at the Youth Olympics and World University Games in 2020 and the winter Military World Games in 2021, along with a possible world championship.

“We are really shaping this new discipline around the world,” Azevedo said, adding that it would have much lower barriers to entry than many winter sports, which require ice rinks or luge runs or mountains.

That could help open the Winter Olympics to countries with successful volleyball programs but no ice or snow.

“Possibly snow volleyball is the only winter sport you can just pass by and play,” Azevedo said. “You just need proper clothes, football cleats and you can play.”

Rules in snow

An earlier incarnation of the sport had two-person teams, like beach volleyball, but organizers have tinkered with the rules and settled on three-on-three, with a fourth teammate as a substitute. While indoor sets go to 25 and the beach goes to 21, snow volleyball games are up to 15.

“Thank God, because it is minus 20 in Russia — Celsius,” Ball said.

Although the court layout is similar to beach, the ball is heavier when it gets wet and players wear thermal clothing and soccer cleats for traction. Ball said the sport puts a premium on ball control and serving, because it’s harder to move quickly in the snow.

“As long as you control the serve receive and serve well, I think on any surface you can be successful,” he said.

Martin Kaswurm, who is credited with inventing the sport when he set up a court outside his restaurant in Austria, said having different rules helps distinguish the sport from “its older brother beach volleyball” and could make it more appealing to Olympic officials.

“This should help to position snow volleyball as a unique version of the game,” he said.
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