Author: Ohart

With so much attention focused on the World Cup in Russia, the popularity of women’s soccer in the United States is expected to grow as the sport attracts new fans and more parents encourage their daughters to play the sport. The U.S. women’s national soccer team has already won three Women’s World Cup titles – a record that will only increase the sport’s appeal for young girls. Genia Dulot has more from Los Angeles, California.
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Manny Pacquiao clinched his 60th victory with a seventh-round knockout Sunday of Argentinian Lucas Matthysse, his first stoppage in nine years.

Pacquiao said he worked hard but was surprised by the swift win in the World Boxing Association welterweight title fight.

Pacquiao rebounded from his disappointing loss last year to Australian Jeff Horn, and his victory could extend a boxing career that had taken a backseat to his political life as a Filipino senator.

“This is part of boxing. You win some, you lose some,” Matthysse said. He hailed Pacquiao as a “great legend” and said he will take a break after his loss.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad also attended the fight, the biggest boxing match in the country since the 1975 heavyweight clash between Muhammad Ali and Australian Joe Bugner.

“I would like to congratulate Senator Manny Pacquiao for giving us pride and bringing the Filipino nation together once more,” Duterte said.
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The game of basketball is finding fans in an unlikely place — among young Tibetan Buddhist monks in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh, where many monasteries are nestled along verdant Himalayan slopes. Anjana Pasricha reports, several monasteries have changed centuries old traditions and allowed monks to play sports.
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At more than a century old, a giant pipe organ in New York City’s St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral has been played during thousands of Masses, weddings and funerals. Although the organ still works, it may soon fall silent forever. Elena Wolf has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.
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Angelique Kerber was so steady, so patient, so accurate throughout the Wimbledon final, she never really gave Serena Williams much of a chance.

Kerber won her first championship at the All England Club and third major overall by playing cleanly and picking her spots for big shots, beating Williams 6-3, 6-3 on Saturday.

“I knew that I had to play my best tennis against a champion like Serena,” said Kerber, the first German woman to win Wimbledon since Steffi Graff in 1996.

Kerber made only five unforced errors the entire match, 19 fewer than Williams. Perhaps more impressive was that she broke Williams in four of nine service games.

The 30-year-old German lost to Williams in the 2016 Wimbledon final. She beat Williams in the Australian Open final that year, then won that year’s U.S. Open to briefly replace her at No. 1 in the rankings.

Kerber addressed Williams during the on-court interviews, saying: “You’re such an inspiration for everybody, for all of us. I’m sure you will have your next Grand Slam title soon. I’m really, really sure.”

‘I can compete’

Williams was indeed ready to look ahead.

“I didn’t know a couple of months ago where I was, where I would be, how I would do, how I would be able to come back. It was such a long way to see light at the end of the road, kind of,” said Williams, who gave birth to a daughter last September, then dealt with complications involving blood clots.

“So I think these two weeks have really showed me that, OK, I can compete. Obviously I can compete for the long run in a Grand Slam,” the 36-year-old American said. “I can, you know, come out and be a contender to win Grand Slams.”

There was a time, not all that long ago, that Williams was ranked No. 1 for years at a time. She won four major tournaments in a row and came close to a calendar-year Grand Slam. She was the favorite every time she entered a tournament.

Williams appeared to be regaining that form this fortnight. Barring some sort of setback in the next six weeks, she will head into the U.S. Open at the end of August as the player to beat.

If Williams does earn one more, it’ll tie her with Margaret Court for the all-time record of 24. As it is, Williams has the mark for the most majors in the professional era; she moved one ahead of Graf by winning the 2017 Australian Open.

She was pregnant at the time. It would be her last tournament for more than a year, in part because of a series of medical procedures that followed a difficult childbirth. As she put it this week: “I lost count after, like, four surgeries.”

Williams didn’t enter another major until this May, at the French Open, where she won the three matches she played before withdrawing with a chest muscle injury. After a little more time off, she played the fourth tournament of her comeback at Wimbledon.

“I just like to tell all the moms, like, I had such a long struggle to come back, and it was really difficult,” Williams said. “Honestly, I feel like if I can do it, they can do it.”
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Nancy Sinatra Sr., the childhood sweetheart of Frank Sinatra who became the first of his four wives and the mother of his three children, has died. She was 101.

Her daughter, Nancy Sinatra Jr., tweeted that her mother died Friday and a posting on her web page said she died at 6:02 p.m. but didn’t indicate where she died.

“She was a blessing and the light of my life,” her daughter said.

Attempts to reach representatives for Sinatra Jr. late Friday were unsuccessful.

Childhood sweethearts

Nancy and Frank Sinatra had been dating as teenagers and married at Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic church in Jersey City, New Jersey, Feb. 4, 1939, just as Frank’s singing career was about to take off. Three years before marrying the former Nancy Barbato, he had landed a 15-minute radio show on local station WAAT.

During the marriage’s early years, the Sinatras lived in a modest apartment in Jersey City, where their two eldest children were born. For a time she was employed as a secretary while her husband worked as a singing waiter.

After Sinatra became a pop-music sensation in the 1940s, the couple moved to Los Angeles, where the singer would also become a movie star, raconteur, man about town and notorious womanizer.

That latter accomplishment led Sinatra to leave him after an affair with actress Ava Gardner became public knowledge. Weeks after the pair’s divorce became final in 1951, Sinatra’s ex-husband married Gardner, while Sinatra went on to raise the couple’s three children: Nancy, Frank Jr. and Tina.

After the gossip over the divorce and Gardner marriage died down, Nancy Sinatra devoted herself to family and numerous celebrity friends, largely withdrawing from the spotlight. She not only outlived her husband, who died in 1998, but her son, who died in 2016.

She is credited, under the name Nancy Barbato, on the Internet Movie Database with two TV and film appearances, in her daughter Nancy’s 1975 concert film, “Nancy and Lee in Las Vegas,” and in 1974 on her friend Dinah Shore’s talk show.

Respect and affection

In later years she would become known as Nancy Sr., especially after daughter Nancy became a 1960s singing star in her own right with “These Boots Are Made For Walking” and other hit songs.

She also remained friendly with her ex-husband, the latter being said to have put in requests over the years for pasta and other Italian food dishes she was known to be an expert at preparing. She never remarried.

“There is no bitterness, only great respect and affection between Sinatra and his first wife,” Gay Talese wrote in 1966, “and he has long been welcome in her home and has even been known to wander in at odd hours, stoke the fire, lie on the sofa, and fall asleep.”
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Pakistan is not a soccer powerhouse. But there’s a strong link between the country and the sport. A lot of the credit goes to the city of Sialkot where about 40 percent of the world’s soccer balls are produced. Many wonder how a small city in northeastern Pakistan can compete on the global stage in manufacturing high quality soccer balls. VOA’s Saman Khan visited several factories in Sialkot to learn more. Bezhan Hamdard narrates.
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Woody Guthrie’s Oklahoma hometown has doubled in population as thousands gather for a music festival in honor of the “This Land Is Your Land” singer.

The Journal Record reports that the town of Okemah jumps from about 3,000 to 6,000 people during the annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival.

Performers this year include Grammy winner Jason Mraz, Oklahoma’s Turnpike Troubadours, and Annie Guthrie, daughter of Arlo Guthrie and the granddaughter of Woody Guthrie.

Festival organizer Kay Thompson says it brings music fans from around the world to Okemah, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) east of Oklahoma City. Thompson says some come from as far away as Scotland and Australia.

Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen have cited Woody Guthrie as an influence.

This is the festival’s 21st year. It continues through July 15, 2018.
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A movie is to be made of “Downton Abbey,” the award-winning television period drama about a British household in the early 20th century, and the original stars will reunite for the project.

Julian Fellowes, who created the show, has written the screenplay and will also produce the movie, production and distribution company Focus Features said on Friday.

Brian Percival, who directed the first and several other episodes, will reprise the role for the film, and production will start later this summer.

“When the television series drew to a close it was our dream to bring the millions of global fans a movie and now, after getting many stars aligned, we are shortly to go into production,” producer Gareth Neame said in a statement.

“Julian’s script charms, thrills and entertains and in Brian Percival’s hands we aim to deliver everything that one would hope for as Downton comes to the big screen.”

The show, which first aired in 2011 and went on for six seasons gaining a huge following in Britain and the United States, followed the Crawley family in their huge country home as well as the lives of their servants.

It went on to win several Golden Globes and Primetime Emmy awards and there has long been speculation that it would be turned into a film.

Fans as well as cast members took to Twitter to express their delight at the news.

“Delighted to announce we’re getting the band back together!” actress Joanne Froggatt wrote on Twitter alongside a picture of her with fellow cast members Michelle Dockery and Maggie Smith.
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The mother of a jailed Ukrainian filmmaker who has been refusing food for nearly two months asked Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday to pardon him.

Oleg Sentsov, a vocal opponent of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, was sentenced in 2015 to 20 years for conspiracy to commit terror acts. He denies the charges and has been on a hunger strike since mid-May.

In a letter written on Sentsov’s 42nd birthday, Lyudmila Sentsova pleaded with Putin to show mercy and pardon her son. The letter was published by the liberal Ekho Moskvy radio station Friday.

“I will not trying to convince you of Oleg’s innocence, although I myself believe it. I will simply say that he didn’t kill anyone,” Sentsova wrote. “He has already spent four years in jail. His children are waiting for him.”

She exhorted Putin “not to ruin his life and the life of his loved ones.”

Sentsov has lost about 20 kilograms (44 pounds) and is very frail, according to his lawyer. He is receiving vitamins and other nutrients through an intravenous line.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Putin would consider the request. But Peskov added that he wasn’t sure whether pardoning Sentsov was even legally possible since under Russian law, the president can only pardon a convict if he or she personally asks. Sentsov has refused to do that.
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Suspiciously cheap diamonds, jeans for a dollar and a pair of skis for next to nothing are all bargains that can be found at a store in a small Alabama town that sells are the contents of lost airline baggage. Every year airline companies lose about 20 million suitcases, and while most of them do find their way back to their owners, thousands of bags are never picked up. As Daria Dieguts found out, some of these lost items end up at the lost baggage store in Alabama.
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From mutton soup to caviar to veal tongue, Russian gastronomy is now being enjoyed by football fans from around the world who are in Russia for the World Cup. We get more from VOA’s Mariama Diallo.
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India has emerged as the most dangerous country in the world for women, according to a survey by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The survey is a repeat of one conducted by the foundation in 2011, which rated India as the fourth most dangerous country for women, after Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Pakistan. The survey is not well received by the Indian government or field experts who have raised questions about the survey’s methodology. Ritul Joshi has more from New Delhi.
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President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser H.R. McMaster has signed a book deal. 

Battlegrounds will cover the retired lieutenant general’s 34-year military career and his time in the Trump administration. 

The book is expected to be released in 2020, when Trump is expected to run for a second term in office.

McMaster had a tumultuous one year on Trump’s staff. He was picked to replace Michael Flynn, who was forced to resign after it was revealed that he’d lied about his dealings with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

McMaster resigned in March and was replaced by John Bolton.

The book is expected to take a harsher view of the administration than books by former Trump staffers Sean Spicer and Anthony Scaramucci.

Publisher Harper Collins released a statement by McMaster in which he said he was “looking forward to researching and writing about the greatest challenges to the free world and how we can work together with like-minded nations to seize opportunities, defeat threats to security and preserve our way of life.”

Battlegrounds will be the second book by McMaster, who in 1997 wrote Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies that Led to Vietnam. 
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Actor George Clooney slammed his motorbike into an oncoming car that turned suddenly into his lane Tuesday and was thrown several meters (yards) in the air on the Italian island of Sardinia, according to video of the crash.

“He is recovering at his home and will be fine,” Clooney spokesman Stan Rosenfield told The Associated Press in an email.

Surveillance video of the crash, apparently taken by a fixed security video, was obtained late Tuesday by the newspaper Corriere della Sera. It shows a blue Mercedes veering into oncoming traffic apparently to turn into a residential compound near Olbia. The video shows what is reported as Clooney’s scooter crashing into the car while another scooter alongside him manages to veer around it.

Clooney is thrown over the front of his bike and up in the air before landing on the asphalt, where the car driver and other witnesses come to help.

The John Paul II hospital in Olbia confirmed Clooney was treated there and released after a few hours.

Local media representatives who gathered at the hospital said the Oscar-winning actor-director left in a van through a side exit.

The newspaper La Nuova Sardegna said the 57-year-old Clooney was heading to a film set when the accident happened at a curve in the road near the entrance to the Costa Corallina residential compound in the province of Olbia.

An oil stain and police paint remained on the road. Photographs taken by someone passing the scene showed the car’s front right bumper damaged and Clooney’s bike on its side.

Clooney reportedly was in Sardinia filming a television miniseries adapted from Joseph Heller’s World War II novel “Catch-22.”

He has been staying at a lush, gated rental villa in the high-end Puntaldia neighborhood on Sardinia’s northeastern coast, which overlooks the Tyrrhenian Sea. Staff at the home declined to comment.

Clooney is a frequent visitor to Italy. He has a home on Lake Como and was married in Venice in 2014 to the British human rights attorney Amal Clooney.
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Hundreds of well-wishers turned out to catch a glimpse of Prince Harry and his wife, the former actress Meghan Markle, as they made their first overseas walkabout Wednesday in Dublin.

Students and tourists flocked to the Irish capital’s Trinity College, screaming and shouting to greet the royal couple, who were on their first official trip abroad as a married couple.

Soccer was a hot topic, with England playing Croatia later Wednesday in the semi-final World Cup match. Harry asked the crowd: “Are you all cheering for England?” and chatted away with university students about soccer.

Earlier, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, as they are formally known, met with Irish President Michael D. Higgins at his official residence.

When asked by a reporter if “football was coming home” — a reference to England’s chances of winning the World Cup — Harry triggered laughter when he answered with a grin: “Most definitely.”

The royal couple also visited the headquarters of the Gaelic Athletic Association, the scene of the Bloody Sunday massacre committed by British troops against civilians in 1920.

Harry said Tuesday that he hoped to take the opportunity to reflect on the “difficult passages” in the history between Britain and Ireland.
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As Croatia’s national team braces for a major World Cup battle Wednesday, FIFA is penalizing two members of the team for shouting a salute to Ukraine after Croatia defeated host Russia in a quarter-final match on Saturday. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports Ukraine has jumped to the Croats’ defense.
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Charlie Puth is done playing by the rules.

 

“I’ve wanted to make music like this for a very, very long time, but I almost wasn’t, dare I say, allowed?” Puth said of his recently released sophomore album, “Voicenotes.” “No one wanted to hear too much jazz in pop music.”

 

His response: “Let me prove to you that it’s possible.”

 

While perched behind a piano — one of dozen or so keyboards stacked up in every corner of his cozy home recording studio in Beverly Hills — Puth recalled his humble beginnings as man on a mission.

“The hardest thing was just getting people on board, convincing people that I did write good music. Granted, I mean, just four years ago my music was not nearly as — in my opinion — good as it is now,” said the 26-year-old. “So I don’t blame A&Rs for looking at their phones while they were in meetings with me and half listening to the songs.”

 

So Puth, a YouTube star who rocketed to fame with the 2015 Wiz Khalifa collaboration “See You Again,” perfected his craft.

 

His 2016 debut album, “Nine Track Mind,” offered a slew of hits including the Meghan Trainor-assisted doo-wop “Marvin Gaye” and the Selena Gomez duet “We Don’t Talk Anymore.” He was also busy behind-the-scenes creating hits for the likes of Liam Payne, Maroon 5, Pitbull, Jason Derulo and Trey Songz.

 

“It just took a couple years for me to get better at producing and get better at writing,” he said. “And then I didn’t have to try to explain it to them anymore. I would just say, ‘Here’s the three-minute MP3 proving that you can put jazz chords into a pop record and it could do really well on the Billboard chart.'”

 

Puth recently invited The Associated Press into his tranquil, mid-century style home to chat about his 2018 Honda Civic Tour with pal Hailee Steinfeld, which kicks off this week, how he catches concerts these days and why Hawaiian punch is the secret to his success.

 

AP: First concert?

 

Puth: James Taylor.

 

AP: You two collaborated on the track “Change” on “Voicenotes.” Talk about a full circle moment.

 

Puth: That is pretty crazy! Second concert was the Beach Boys, which was pretty cool, too. Yeah, I started off right at PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey.

 

AP: How often do you get to see live music now?

 

Puth: I’m a casual concertgoer. I’m not looking at tickets and waiting outside the Roxy per se because nowadays I truly can’t do that. But I will go to concerts casually if my friends happen to be going and the situation is easy. Like, “Oh someone else is driving? Perfect!”

 

AP: Who do you like to go with?

 

Puth: With a large group of people that are going to surround me if I don’t have security because it’s weird, people run up to me. Nowadays with social media they think they can just jump on me. I tried to go out the other day and this person literally almost tackled me.

 

AP: You seem to take it in stride. Is that unnerving?

 

Puth: No, I don’t care. It’s fun. I’m glad they’re so passionate. At the end of the day I look at myself in the mirror and I’m like, “I’m a kid from New Jersey. What’s the big deal?”

 

AP: Can you experience concerts the same way now that you’re famous?

 

Puth: I can. The most important thing for me is I don’t want to make it about me if I’m seeing one of my friends. …I was in London, I saw Harry (Styles) play and I stood behind the projector and nobody knew I was there. His show was amazing!

 

AP: You were trying to blend into the background?

 

Puth: More like hiding.

AP: You’re launching your first headlining tour — what do you want fans to experience?

 

Puth: I want everyone to lose their mind. …I treat the show as I treat a three-minute song when I’m producing it out. There’s no chance that anybody can get bored while listening to a three-minute song on the radio when I put it out because I just won’t allow it. I won’t allow you to change that dial. I want you to be hooked every second that you’re listening to it and that goes for the hour and a half show as well.

 

AP: Any post-show rituals?

 

Puth: Hawaiian Punch, Kool-Aid, every bad drink you can think of. Every time I get offstage I’m just like electric, like, “Let’s make seven songs on the bus right now! Let’s stay up till 7 a.m.!” So I usually cater to that by drinking sugary drinks. That’s something my trainer would not like to hear.

 

AP: How do you prepare to go onstage?

 

Puth: Doing those goofy vocal warm-ups and putting on Stan Getz, Gilberto, Brazilian music, something really relaxing because I get really nervous before shows still, so I like to put myself in like a different place. Like, oh, I’m at a Brazilian cuisine restaurant and I’m just hanging out with my friends — 10 of them so I don’t get tackled.
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Harrison Ford’s big screen return as adventurer Indiana Jones has been pushed back until 2021, Walt Disney Co. announced on Tuesday, two years after the fifth movie in the action franchise was first scheduled to be released.

The film was originally scheduled for release in 2019 but that date was later pushed back to 2020. The new delay follows reports last week in Hollywood industry publications that the script had not been finished and that a new writer was being brought in to polish it. Disney did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday on the delay.

The film will reunite Ford with director Stephen Spielberg in the “Indiana Jones” franchise created by filmmaker George Lucas, that has grossed nearly $2 billion at the world box office with four films and amassed a global fan base. Disney said in 2016 that it was going ahead with a fifth installment.

The delay means Ford will be 79 when he appears as the Fedora-wearing archeologist in theaters. His age has been a running theme in the films since an often-quoted exchange in the first movie, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in 1981.

Karen Allen, playing Jones’s love interest Marion, says “You’re not the man I knew 10 years ago” and Ford responds with a line that has since become famous: “It’s not the years, honey, it’s the mileage.”

Spielberg also has a slate of other projects he is currently working on, including a remake of musical “West Side Story” and religion drama “The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara.”

The as yet untitled fifth “Indiana Jones” film will come 13 years after “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” in which Ford’s Jones reunited with his former love Marion, again played by Allen, and discovered he had a grown son, Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf). The film received mixed reviews.

Ford’s most recent movie appearances were in last year’s “Blade Runner 2049” and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” when he reprised his role as swash-buckling adventurer Han Solo. The 2015 film went on to take more than $2 billion at the global box office and become the third biggest release of all time.
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The original map of Winnie-the-Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood by artist E.H. Shepard was bought for a record-breaking 430,000 pounds ($570,137) on Tuesday, auctioneers Sotheby’s said.

The map for A.A. Milne’s children’s classic, completed in 1926, broke the record for the amount offered for any book illustration at auction, it added.

Unseen for nearly half a century, the map easily surpassed its pre-sale estimate of 100,000 to 150,000 pounds.

Featuring on the opening end-papers of the original book, the map introduces readers to the imagination of Christopher Robin and his woodland friends Eeyore and Roo.

Forty years later, it played a starring role in the Disney film “Winnie-the-Pooh and the Honey Tree” where it was brought to life as an animation in the film’s opening sequence.

Four other original Pooh illustrations were sold alongside the map, with the five fetching a combined total of 917,500 pounds compared with a 310,000 to 440,000-pound estimate.
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Actor and movie idol Tab Hunter, whose striking good looks attracted a huge following among teenage girls in the 1950s, has died at 86.

Hunter’s spouse said the actor died unexpectedly after a blood clot in his leg led to cardiac arrest.

Hunter was born Arthur Kelm in New York and became interested in acting at an early age.

In Hollywood, an agent renamed him Tab Hunter and got him minor movie roles, particularly in war drama and westerns, despite no formal dramatic training.

Hunter was cast as a baseball player in the 1958 musical “Damn Yankees.” The role made him a household name. He also appeared on Broadway and starred in his own television situation comedy.

Hunter won new fans in the 1980s when he was cast in the cult films “Polyester” and “Lust in the Dust.”

In his 2005 memoir, Hunter revealed he was gay. He wrote about his frustration in being forced to hide his true self in 1950s America.

“I believed wholeheartedly — still  do — that a person’s happiness depends on being true to themselves,” he wrote.
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Canadian rapper Drake shattered records with his new album “Scorpion,” which became the first to score one billion streams in its first week and also debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album charts.

Drake’s record company, Republic Records, said the 31-year-old musician, who was the biggest seller in 2016, was the first artist to reach one billion plus streams globally across all platforms in one week of release. The previous record of almost 700 million streams was set in May by Post Malone’s “beerbongs & bentleys.”

According to data on Monday from Nielsen Music, the 25-track double album “Scorpion” sold some 731,000 units in the United States for the week, making the soul-baring record the biggest seller of 2018 by far.

The Billboard 200 album chart tallies units from album sales, song sales (10 songs equal one album) and streaming activity (1,500 streams equal one album).

“Scorpion” also gave Drake seven songs in the top 10 Billboard Hot 100 singles charts, Billboard said on Monday, led by “Nice for What.” That beat a record of five simultaneous songs by The Beatles in 1964 when the British band was at the height of its fame.

“Scorpion” made headlines on its June 29 release because Drake confirmed long-standing rumors that he had fathered a son, but he did not name the mother.

Streaming services in 2017 became the recording industry’s biggest single revenue source, overtaking sales of physical albums and digital downloads. Rap officially surpassed rock in 2017 as the biggest music genre in the United States.

“Scorpion” is a joint release on Warner Bros. and Universal Music-owned labels OVO Sound, Young Money Entertainment, Cash Money Records and Republic Records.
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The plot of the new Incredibles movie features a heroine whose life swings between high adventure and humdrum normality, American actress Holly Hunter, who plays Helen, otherwise known as Elastigirl, said Monday.

Hunter was speaking after the British premiere of Incredibles 2 at London’s British Film Institute on Sunday, where she was joined on the red carpet by co-star Samuel L. Jackson, who plays the character Frozone.

The film features a family of superheroes who also have an ordinary family life.

“People really want the fantastic and they recognize the [ordinary]. They recognize the fights and the stresses and the tensions and the bickering and the fussing and the challenges and the competition that we see with this family,” Hunter told Reuters Monday.

Elastigirl becomes a poster girl for superheroes who are outlawed. She juggles family life with a full-time job as well as fighting the evil ‘Screenslaver.’

Hunter said “having it all” was a difficult concept to live up to as a career woman and mother. This is recognized in writer-director Brad Bird’s film.

“Most women have some conflict with leaving family and a lot of men feel some insecurity about being the primary caretaker,” she said. “She will leave it all in one second to run back home if she thinks that Mr. Incredible can’t do it.”

Hunter believes the changes in equality and diversity in Hollywood is “not a trend” but a “renaissance,” though more is needed to be done.

Incredibles 2 is out in U.K. cinemas on July 13.
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Around 500 Australians shivered in the nude for American photographer Spencer Tunick on Monday, braving the winter chill on a Melbourne supermarket rooftop for his latest mass nude shots.

The participants, chosen from 12,000 eager applicants, posed standing and lying down on concrete, covered only in transparent red fabric, with the temperature hovering around 7 degrees Celsius (45 degrees Fahrenheit) in the wind.

“I saw it come up online and I was like, ‘Yes! Like I have to get involved.’ Spencer Tunick I feel is legendary for subversive art, nude subversive art. I feel like Melbourne could definitely do with a dose of that,” Jane Louise, one of the participants, told reporters.

Participants didn’t have their gear off for too long.

“I worked quickly in order to keep them not from freezing and I think I got some beautiful artworks,” Tunick told reporters.

Another participant, Belle Harvey, said: “Yeah, he was good fun. Every now and again we would laugh, and he would be like, ‘You need to be quiet. No smiling. Hands up.’”

Woolworths, the owner of the suburban supermarket where the shots were taken, had at first refused to allow Tunick access to its car park, fearing it would inconvenience shoppers during busy weekend hours.

The retail giant relented when the artist agreed to take the shots on a quiet Monday morning instead.

Tunick was invited as part of a Melbourne arts festival.
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Some students in Virginia who play the guitar are also learning how to build them. It’s part of an after-school program where middle and high school students learn about science and music through the design and function of an electric guitar. The workshops, sponsored by the nonprofit Music for Life, are free for those who cannot afford to participate. VOA’s Deborah Block takes us to a high school in Manassas, Virginia, where the students are learning the challenges of making an electric guitar.
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For decades, Jim Henson’s Muppets have captured the imagination of children and adults worldwide. A traveling exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles not only showcases some of the most beloved Muppets but also the work that took place behind the scenes to entertain as well as educate. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has more.
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