Author: Ohart

The French Open has been delayed by one week because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the governing body of the tennis tournament said Thursday.The French Tennis Federation said first-round matches will now begin on May 30 instead of May 23 because of sharp spikes in coronavirus infections in France. The postponement marks the second year in a row the French Open has been disrupted by the pandemic.The federation postponed last year’s tournament to September and limited daily attendance to 1,000 people.This year’s delay came as hospitals in France struggle to handle the surge in coronavirus cases. The government recently imposed new lockdown restrictions to contain the spikes, including a month-long domestic travel ban and a three-week school closure.The federation said the decision to delay was aimed at ensuring that “as many spectators as possible” would be able to safely attend the event.Federation president Gilles Moreton said public authorities, the governing bodies of global tennis events, broadcasters and other partners were first consulted before announcing the delay.The federation was roundly criticized for postponing last year’s French Open without first consulting with the top men’s and women’s events. 
…

George Bradley used to love watching the Academy Awards. The 28-year-old Brit now living in San Diego would stay up late back home just to tune in.
Though he’s now in the right time zone, he’s just not interested, and that’s due primarily to the pandemic.
“The rising dominance of the streaming services has taken the gloss off the Oscars for me,” he said. “You just don’t get the same warm fuzzy feeling from when you recognize a movie from the silver screen.”
Whether you watch out of love, because you love to hate or have given up like Bradley, awards shows have suffered since the coronavirus shuttered theaters and shut down live performances. But the ratings slide for awards nights began well before Covid-19 took over.
For much of this century, the Oscars drew 35 million to 45 million viewers, often just behind the Super Bowl. Last year, just before the pandemic was declared, the hostless telecast on ABC was seen by its smallest audience ever, 23.6 million viewers, down 20 percent from the year before.  
The pandemic-era Golden Globes a little more than a year later plummeted to 6.9 million viewers, down 64% from last year and barely besting 2008, the year a writer’s strike forced NBC to air a news conference announcing winners. Last year, pre-lockdown, the show had 18.4 million viewers, according to the Nielsen company.
In March, Grammy producers avoided the Zoom awkwardness of other awards shows and staged performances by some of the industry’s biggest stars — to no avail. The CBS telecast reached 9.2 million viewers, both television and streaming, the lowest number on record and a 51% drop from 2020, Nielsen said.
John Bennardo, 52, in Boca Raton, Florida, is a film buff, film school graduate and screenwriter, and runs a videography business for mostly corporate clients. This year is a no-go for the Oscars.
“I love the movies and aspire to be on that very Oscars stage receiving my own award some day,” he said. “I watch each year and take it in, enter contests where I try to pick winners and try to see all the films. But something has changed for this year.”
For starters, he hasn’t seen a single film nominated in any category.  
“Maybe I’ll watch Zach Snyder's Justice League' instead. It might be shorter," Bennardo joked about the Oscars show.
Like other awards shows, the Oscars telecast was pushed back due to pandemic restrictions and safety concerns. The show had been postponed three times before in history, but never so far in advance. Organizers last June scheduled it for April 25, as opposed to its usual slot in February or early March.  
Count that among other driving forces behind Oscars fatigue. Another, according to former fans of the show, is having to watch nominated movies on small screens and keeping up with when and where they are available on streaming and on-demand services. It's been one big blur to some.
Priscilla Visintine, 62, in St. Louis, Missouri, used to live for watching the Academy Awards. She attended watch parties every year, usually dressed all the way up for the occasion.
"Definitely the shuttering of the theaters created my lack of interest this year," she said. "I didn't get any sense of Oscar buzz."
Not all diehards have given up their favorite awards show.
In Knoxville, Tennessee, 50-year-old Jennifer Rice and her 22-year-old son, Jordan, have for years raced to watch as many nominated films as possible. In years past, it was their "February Madness," she said, and they kept charts to document their predictions. She even got to attend the Oscars in 2019 through her work for a beauty company at the time.
"My other two children, ages 25 and 19, have no interest in the Oscars. It's just something special for Jordan and I," Rice said. "The Oscars actually push us to watch movies that we may have never picked. I'm not as excited this year, but we're still trying to watch everything before the awards ceremony."
As real-life hardship has intensified for many viewers, from food insecurity and job disruption to the isolation of lockdowns and parenting struggles, awards shows offer less escapism and razzle-dazzle than in the past, often relying on pre-taped performances and Zoom boxes for nominees. In addition, data shows little interest among younger generations for appointment television in general.  
Lifelong lover of movies and a filmmaker himself, 22-year-old Pierre Subeh of Orlando, Florida, stopped watching the Oscars in 2019.
"We can barely stay put for a 15-second TikTok. How are we expected to sit through a dragged out, four-hour awards ceremony filled with ads and outdated offensive jokes? We're living in the time of content curation. We need algorithms to figure out what we want to watch and to show us the best of the best," he said.
As a Muslim, Middle Eastern immigrant, Subeh also sees little inclusion of his culture in mainstream film, let alone on the Oscars stage.
"We're only mentioned when Aladdin is brought up. I don't feel motivated to gather up my family on a Sunday to sit through a four-hour award ceremony that never has any sort of mention about our culture and religion. Yet as Muslims, we make up roughly 25% of the world population," he said.
Jon Niccum, 55, in Lawrence, Kansas, teaches screenwriting at Kansas State University. He's a filmmaker, went to film school and has worked as a film critic. He and his wife host an annual Oscar party, with 30 guests at its heyday, including a betting pool on winners for money and prizes. It will be family-only this year due to the pandemic, but the betting is on.  
And watching all the top films at home? For the most part, he said, "It was less satisfying." Less satisfying enough to dump the Oscars telecast?
"I haven't missed an Oscars since 45 years ago. I'll watch every single minute of it," Niccum said.
In Medford, New Jersey, 65-year-old Deb Madison will also be watching, as she has since she was a kid and her mom first took her to the movies.  
In 2018, while on an RV road trip with her husband, she made him bike into town with her in Carlsbad, New Mexico, to find a spot to watch. The ride back was in pitch darkness. Another year, when she was working reception at a huge party in Philadelphia on Oscars night, the coordinators laid cable and provided her with a tiny TV hidden under the welcome desk so she could tune in.
This year, trying to keep up with nominees from home has stifled her excitement, Madison said.
"I'm a sucker for the red carpet and the gowns and,Oh my god, I can’t believe she wore that.’ Another thing is, I don’t particularly need to see these actors in their home environments,” she said with a laugh. “This year, if I missed it, it wouldn’t be tragic. Nobody would need to lay cable this year. But I still love the movies.”
…

“Cambodia Burning,” a documentary by filmmaker Sean Gallagher, throws light on the effect Cambodia’s unfettered logging has had on the country’s forest ecosystem. VOA’s Penelope Poulou spoke to the award-winning filmmaker
…

The political dispute over a new election law in the southern state of Georgia has broadened into a debate over whether the United States should participate in a boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China. On Tuesday, State Department spokesperson Ned Price acknowledged the U.S. will discuss with allies whether to jointly boycott the games to protest Beijing’s repression of minorities and major human rights abuses. “A coordinated approach will be not only in our interest but also in the interest of our allies and partners,” he told reporters at a daily briefing. But he stressed that no final decision has been reached. The administration signaled a willingness to consider such a move shortly after conservative Republicans demanded that President Joe Biden justify U.S. participation in the games. The Republican lawmakers were annoyed with Biden’s support for a protest against the Georgia law, including Major League Baseball’s decision to move the All-Star Game out of Atlanta, and claimed the administration was being hypocritical by not boycotting the Olympics. Staff members sit near a board with signs of the 2022 Olympic Winter Games, at the National Aquatics Center, known colloquially as the “Ice Cube”, in Beijing, China, April 1, 2021.Activists around the world have been demanding that countries boycott the Beijing Games to protest the country’s domestic policies, including what the U.S. State Department has called the “genocide” of Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang province and its crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. While there has been some discussion of the possibility of the U.S. boycotting the Winter Olympics or limiting participation, the issue hasn’t had much salience until now. There appears to be a growing effort to change that after Biden said in an interview last week with the sports television channel ESPN that he would back Major League Baseball’s decision to move its annual All-Star Game out of Georgia in response to the state’s new election statute. Voter suppression claims In the wake of surprising Democratic victories in the general election and in two Senate runoff elections — the latter of which gave Democrats complete control of Congress — Georgia’s heavily Republican legislature passed a raft of measures changing the state’s voting laws. While there is debate about how restrictive the rules are, the general consensus is that some elements of the law will make it more difficult to vote in the state’s urban areas, which are racially diverse and skew Democratic, and will widen access in rural and predominantly white areas that favor Republicans. Widespread anger at the law’s impact on minority voters was led in part by highly visible professional athletes. So last week, when Biden sat down for the ESPN interview, he was asked his opinion on what was then only the possibility that Major League Baseball would move the All-Star Game. “I think today’s professional athletes are acting incredibly responsibly,” Biden said. “I would strongly support them doing that.” FILE – Ground crews work at Sun Trust Park, now known as Truist Park, in Atlanta, Oct. 7, 2018. Truist Park lost the 2021 All-Star Game on April 2, when Major League Baseball moved the game over the objections to Georgia’s new election law.Two days later, when the league announced it would shift the All-Star Game out of Atlanta to Denver, Colorado, the condemnation on the political right was swift. Amid the complaints about “cancel culture” and “wokeness,” a number of conservative commentators and elected officials coalesced around the demand that Biden justify U.S. participation in the Olympics, given the Chinese government’s treatment of its own people. “When Joe Biden decides to boycott the Olympics in China, where the Communist Chinese regime is committing genocide, then he can weigh in on Georgia,” Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee wrote on Twitter. “We can’t wait to see what the U.S. President is going to say about China’s voting rules,” The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote. “There are no lines at polling places in the Middle Kingdom, because there are no polling places, no absentee ballot controversies because there are no ballots. … Perhaps Mr. Biden can compare the voting rules in Georgia to those in the re-education camps in Xinjiang province.” The Journal’s editors say they do not support a boycott, even as they demand Biden explain why he isn’t calling for one. Backing for boycottHowever, there has also been a chorus of opposition to full U.S. participation in the Beijing Games among conservative lawmakers for several years. Recommended actions have included everything from a full-blown boycott to a more limited “diplomatic boycott” that would see a junior member of the Biden administration heading the U.S. delegation to the games, rather than the president or vice president. Last month, Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, who was president and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games, called for a combined economic and diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter games. In a New York Times op-ed, he wrote, “Let us demonstrate our repudiation of China’s abuses in a way that will hurt the Chinese Communist Party rather than our American athletes: reduce China’s revenues, shut down their propaganda, and expose their abuses.” Athletes take part in a curling competition held as a test event for the 2022 Olympic Winter Games, at the National Aquatics Center, in Beijing, China, April 1, 2021.Jules Boykoff, a professor of political science at Pacific University and author of four books about the politics of the Olympics, said, “A lot of the arguments for boycotting the games, or moving them, have actually emerged out of Republican circles. (Florida Senator) Marco Rubio, for example, has been on top of it for a long time, as has (Congressman) Christopher Smith in New Jersey.” Boykoff said there has been some Democratic support as well. “Here in the United States, China has become sort of an all-purpose, bipartisan political punching bag. And so, Democrats also have been speaking out a lot about China in general, and then more recently about this idea of the possibility of boycotting the Olympics. So, there’s bipartisan support for considering the possibility.” Full boycott unlikely Some experts, however, believe there is little likelihood of anything more than the limited diplomatic boycott taking place. Victor A. Matheson, a professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Boston who studies the economics of sports, said that historically, Olympic boycotts have been very unpopular within the country doing the boycotting because “athletes lose the opportunity to compete, and in many sports, this is your only opportunity to monetize your perhaps decades of work.” He added, “I would be very surprised if we boycotted. It would be, I think, very politically difficult for Biden, mainly because so many Americans, their hearts really do go out to the athletes themselves, who would miss this opportunity.” But the fact that the discussion is taking place might be a sign that in the future, human rights abuses could become a major consideration when international organizations are considering bids to host major events. Boykoff said Major League Baseball’s actions in Georgia and the calls to boycott the Beijing Games might be part of a larger trend. While the complexities of derailing the Winter Olympics are orders of magnitude greater than those of moving a single baseball game, he said, he sees them as part of a “larger zeitgeist.” 
 
…

From a distance, it looks like college kids in sweat clothes tossing a football around on a campus green space. Draw closer, and it’s apparent this is no sandlot game.  A coach is explaining routes he wants receivers to run on a play he calls “Bingo.” Then he tells his quarterbacks to make quicker decisions. Next, he demonstrates how a receiver in motion sets up as a blocker next to the center and the running back takes a handoff and heads for a hole that should open on the left side. The women Jaison Jones is coaching listen intently and ask lots of questions. More than half showed up at Midland University from faraway places to continue playing the growing sport of flag football at the 1,600-student school in a town of 26,000 nestled in the farmland of eastern Nebraska. Ottawa University women’s flag football team cheers before an NAIA flag football game against Midland University in Ottawa, Kan., March 26, 2021.Allison Maulfair and Spencer Mauk were teammates at their high school in Bradenton, Florida, a state where a nation-high 7,700 girls at 278 schools play varsity flag football. Jones recruited them at summer showcase, and after Maulfair and Mauk made the 1,500-mile drive to Fremont for a visit, they decided it was where they wanted to be. “I’m just really passionate about this sport,” Maulfair said. “I fell in love with it my freshman year of high school and haven’t stopped loving it. It doesn’t matter where I’m at. It just matters playing the game with great people, really.” E’leseana Patterson figured she was done with flag football after she quarterbacked her Las Vegas high school team to a state championship in 2019. Her plan was to stay home, help her mom and take classes at UNLV. On a lark, she went to a showcase in Vegas and ended up impressing Jones. She took a virtual campus tour and knew she wanted to be part of what was happening at Midland, as did four other players she competed against in high school. “Once my mom saw someone wanted me to play the sport I love, she was like, ‘Go,’ ” Patterson said. “I took the chance and came out here. I’d never heard of Midland University. I heard of Nebraska, I heard of Omaha. Not Fremont.”  Ottawa quarterback Madysen Carrera passes to a teammate while pressured by a Midland defender during an NAIA flag football game in Ottawa, Kan., March 26, 2021.Women’s flag football is in its first year of competition in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. The NAIA entered a partnership with the NFL and Reigning Champs Experiences, which operates flag football programs across the country. It’s classified as an emerging sport, meaning there’s no NAIA-sponsored championship. Championship status is achieved once there are 40 programs, a threshold flag football could reach in two or three years. The National Junior College Athletic Association recently announced a similar partnership with the NFL and Reigning Champs and intend to start games in spring 2022. The sport is played seven on seven on a field 80 yards long and 40 yards wide. There are four 12-minute quarters. It’s 20 yards instead of 10 for a first down. All players are eligible receivers. Players are “tackled” when a defender pulls one of the three flags attached to the ball carrier’s belt. Midland and 12 other small schools received $15,000 in seed money from the NFL. That’s about half of what it costs per year to operate a program, according to the NAIA, but doesn’t include cost of scholarships. Midland offers 33 sports and more than 70% of its students are athletes. The Warriors have 14 flag football players, and all pay more in tuition than they receive in scholarship aid. Athletic director Dave Gillespie said he expects a strong return on investment. “You’re talking about kids who love playing the sport and probably didn’t think they would have the opportunity to combine it with getting a college degree,” Gillespie said. “I think that’s a strong pull.” The 40-year-old Jones, the Midland coach, played small-college football in Kansas and is defensive coordinator for an Omaha women’s semipro tackle football team in the summer. His day job is general manager for a pest control company. Ottawa quarterback Madysen Carrera (21) is tackled by Midland defender Casey Thompson, left, during an NAIA flag football game in Ottawa, Kan., March 26, 2021.”The sport is going to flourish more than what people think,” Jones said. “I was in Tampa for a showcase about a month ago and there were about 1,500 girls there. You come back to the Midwest and people question you, like, ‘Girls play flag football in college? Is that a thing?’ ” In addition to Florida and Nevada, Jones recruited two players from Alaska. Four Nebraskans also are on the team. “There’s still work to be done, a lot of work getting girls to come in,” Jones said. “It’s a continuous grind to get the program where I want it to be and to have a winning program.” Florida has by far the most girls playing flag football, followed by Nevada (1,900) and California (660), according to the most recent participation numbers provided to the National Federation of State High School Associations. From 2013-18, high school participation increased 27%, to more than 11,000. Midland is 4-7 after a 34-13 home loss to Ottawa University of Kansas last Friday, a better showing than the 39-0 loss to the Braves a week earlier. Ottawa is 7-1 and among the best of the new programs. Only one of the Braves’ 21 players is from Kansas, and their coaches are former San Francisco 49ers assistant Katy Sowers and her sister, head coach Liz Sowers. The competitiveness of games varies. Ottawa beat Milligan (Tennessee) 84-0 but lost 26-25 to Keiser (Florida). Midland has won 88-0 and lost 52-0. Midland receiver-linebacker Casey Thompson, who grew up 30 miles away in Omaha, played basketball two years at Midland before she decided to try football for the first time this spring. “You have some players who are high-level players,” she said, “and then there’s the other ones who aren’t quite up there.” Thompson said she couldn’t imagine doing what many of her teammates did — move across the country to attend a small college, sight unseen in most cases, and play flag football. Maulfair, the receiver and cornerback from Florida, said the pull of the sport was too strong. Her parents and siblings weren’t going to hold her back. “They didn’t know where I was going to go,” Maulfair said, “but once they found out I was going to commit, they were stoked.” 
 
…

A famed chess café in New York City called Chess Forum has survived the pandemic. Elena Wolf reports in this story narrated by Anna Rice.Camera: Max Avloshenko  
…

North Korea says it will not participate in the upcoming Tokyo Olympics due to concerns about the coronavirus pandemic.  The country’s sports ministry said the decision was made “in order to protect players from the world public health crisis caused by COVID-19,” in a statement dated Monday. If North Korea follows through with the decision, it would be the first time it has skipped an Olympics since 1988, when the games were in Seoul. It is the first country to pull out of this year’s Tokyo games.  The Tokyo games have been delayed a year due to the coronavirus but are set to begin July 23 with strict virus-prevention measures in place. North Korea, which is particularly vulnerable to disease outbreaks, has imposed perhaps the world’s most stringent coronavirus prevention measures.  For more than a year, the country has attempted to almost completely seal its borders and has implemented even stricter than usual domestic travel restrictions.  North Korea insists its border restrictions have succeeded in keeping the virus out of the country — a claim largely dismissed by experts.  Some Korea watchers express concern Pyongyang will use the pandemic to extend its draconian restrictions indefinitely to impose greater control on the population. North Korea has one of the world’s poorest countries, observers say, and does not have adequate health infrastructure. The coronavirus lockdown made things worse, with reports emerging of food and medicine shortages.  Cherry blossom flowers bloom outside the Japan National Stadium, where opening and closing ceremonies and other events for Tokyo 2020 Olympics will be held, as a guard stands along the fence Tuesday, April 6, 2021, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)Impact on diplomacy The North’s decision to skip the Tokyo Olympics suggests the lockdown will not end anytime soon. But experts say Pyongyang could reverse its decision.  “This seems as much a political decision designed to snub/pressure Tokyo & Seoul as much as it is a public health concern,” tweeted Jean Lee, Director of the Korea Program at The Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.Has any other country announced it would skip #Tokyo2020 Olympics? This seems as much a political decision designed to snub/pressure Tokyo & Seoul as much as it is a public health concern.https://t.co/rzvlS1ZL60— Jean H. Lee (@newsjean) April 6, 2021South Korea had proposed using the summer games as a catalyst for renewed sports diplomacy between the two Koreas.   Such a strategy has worked in the past. In 2018, Seoul successfully converted inter-Korean sports cooperation at the Winter Olympics into a series of North-South meetings, which eventually led to talks between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump.  Those talks have now been stalled for more than a year. North Korea said last month it considers any talks a “waste of time” unless the United States changes its approach.  South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in, leader of the country’s Democratic Party, has less than a year in office and is willing to resume talks with North Korea.North Korea Tops Agenda for US-Japan-South Korea MeetingDiscussions about Pyongyang follow recent provocative missile tests it conducted  Some in South Korea are pushing for South and North Korea to jointly host the 2032 Olympic games, though it is far from clear whether Pyongyang would accept.  
…

North Korea says its athletes will not take part in the Tokyo Summer Olympics this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The decision was announced Tuesday on the state-operated website Sports in DPRK, using the acronym for the country’s official name, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The website said the decision was made after a meeting on March 25 of the North’s Olympic Committee, citing the need to “protect athletes from the global health crisis” caused by the coronavirus. This is the first time North Korea will miss an Olympics since boycotting the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul. The North’s absence is a further blow on South Korea’s hopes to salvage the diplomatic breakthrough between the bitter rivals achieved at the 2018 Winter Olympics, when a large delegation led by Kim Yo Jong, the sister of leader Kim Jong Un, traveled across the border to attend the event hosted in the South Korean city of Pyeongchang. The newly-created detente eventually led to historic talks between Kim Jong Un and then-U.S. President Donald Trump. But those overtures have since faded over the continued stalemate between Pyongyang and Washington over the North’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. North Korea’s withdrawal from the Tokyo Games could also dampen plans for the two Koreas joint bid to host the 2032 Summer Olympics. South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, issued a statement expressing regret over Pyongyang’s decision, which it said would have provided an opportunity to improve cross-border relations. 
…

Ever since the pandemic lockdown began in the U.S. in March 2020, the pet adoption business has been booming.  But trend hasn’t just been good for the animals. Lesia Bakalets has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.Camera: Andrey Degtyarev     
…

Pop star The Weeknd has announced he will be donating $1 million to relief efforts in Ethiopia amid the country’s ongoing conflict in the Tigray region.A U.N. statement said his donation, the equivalent of 2 million meals, went to World Food Program USA, the U.S. affiliate of the United Nations World Food Program, and will be put towards providing lifesaving food for those affected.”My heart breaks for my people of Ethiopia as innocent civilians ranging from small children to the elderly are being senselessly murdered and entire villages are being displaced out of fear and destruction,” wrote the Super Bowl half-time singer on Instagram Sunday.The Weeknd, born Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, is the son of Ethiopian immigrants Makkonen and Samra Tesfaye.The conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region broke out in November when Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) fighters attacked army bases in the region, prompting Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to launch a military offensive to push the group out.Since then, thousands of civilians in the region have been killed and hundreds of thousands have been displaced from their homes.The Ethiopian government now estimates 4.5 million people are in need of emergency food assistance and have asked the U.N. World Food Program to help support 1.4 million. 
…

Tara VanDerveer hugged each of her Stanford players as they climbed the ladder to cut down the nets, capping a taxing whirlwind journey and ending an exhaustive women’s college basketball championship drought for the Cardinal. It took 29 years, that included 10 weeks on the road this season because of the coronavirus, for VanDerveer and the Cardinal to be crowned the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) women’s basketball champions again.  “We had some special karma going for us,” VanDerveer said. “Sometimes you have to be lucky. I’ll admit it, we were very fortunate to win.” Haley Jones scored 17 points and Stanford beat Arizona 54-53 Sunday night, giving the Cardinal and their Hall of Fame coach their first national championship since 1992. “Getting through all the things we got through, we’re excited to win the COVID championship,” VanDerveer said. “The other one was not quite as close, the last one. But we are really excited. No one knows the score, no one knows who scored, it’s a national championship.”Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer cuts down the net after the championship game against Arizona in the women’s Final Four NCAA college basketball tournament, Sunday, April 4, 2021, at the Alamodome in San Antonio. Stanford won 54-53.It was not a masterpiece by any stretch with both teams struggling to score and missing easy layups and shots, but Stanford did just enough to pull off the win — it is second straight by a point. Stanford (31-2) built a nine-point lead in the fourth quarter before Arizona (21-6) cut it to 51-50 on star guard Aari McDonald’s 3-pointer. After a timeout, Jones answered with a three-point play with 2:24 left. That would be Stanford’s last basket of the game. McDonald got the Wildcats within 54-53 with 36.6 seconds left converting three of four free throws. “I just owe it all to my teammates, they have confidence in me when I don’t have confidence in myself,” said Jones, who was honored as the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player. “I saw they needed me to come up big and I did.” The Cardinal, after another timeout could not even get a shot off, giving Arizona one last chance with 6.1 seconds left, but McDonald’s contested shot from the top of the key at the buzzer bounced off the rim. “I got denied hard. I tried to turn the corner, they sent three at me. I took a tough, contested shot and it didn’t fall,” said McDonald, who fell near midcourt, slumped in disbelief while the Cardinal celebrated. It has been quite a journey for VanDerveer and the Cardinal this season. The team was forced on the road for nearly 10 weeks because of the coronavirus, spending 86 days in hotels during this nomadic season. “It was a long, very difficult journey being on the road, sleeping in hotels, living out of your bag. It is just a lot. You’re on the bus, you’re on planes all the time and there’s just never really an end in sight so it’s difficult,” Jones said.  “But I think from that experience and losing on the road and dropping one at home I think it just really kind of grew this extra like chip on our shoulder almost.” The team did not complain and went about their business and now have another NCAA championship. Along the way the Hall of Fame coach earned her 1,099th career victory to pass Pat Summitt for the most all time in women’s basketball history. Now the 67-year-old coach has a third national title to go along with the ones she won in 1990 and 1992. That moved her into a tie with Baylor’s Kim Mulkey for third most all time behind Geno Auriemma and Summitt. VanDerveer had many great teams between titles, including the ones led by Candice Wiggins and the Ogwumike sisters — Nneka and Chiney, but the Cardinal just could not end their season with that elusive win in the title game until Sunday night. It was the first women’s basketball championship for the Pac-12 since VanDerveer and Stanford won the title in 1992. The last time a team from the conference was in the title game was 2010 when the Cardinal lost to UConn. That game was also played in the Alamodome — the site of every game in this tournament from the Sweet 16 through Sunday’s championship game. The entire NCAA Tournament was played in the San Antonio area because of the COVID-19 pandemic.  While Stanford had history on its side, Arizona has been building under coach Adia Barnes, who was the fourth Black woman to lead her team to the championship game, joining Carolyn Peck, Dawn Staley and C. Vivian Stringer. Peck and Staley won titles. Barnes starred for the Wildcats as a player in the late 90s and came back to her alma mater five years ago. She guided the team to the WNIT title in 2019 and led them to their first NCAA title game ever. This was the team’s first appearance in the NCAA Tournament since 2005 — although the Wildcats would have made the tournament last season had it not been canceled by the coronavirus.  McDonald, who followed her coach from Washington as a transfer, has been a huge reason for the team’s success. The 5-foot-6 guard struggled against the Cardinal, finishing with 22 points while going 5-for-20 from the field. The Wildcats were trying to be only the fourth team to trail by double digits and win a championship.  These teams met twice during the regular season and Stanford rolled past Arizona both times, winning by double digits in each game. This one came down to a final chance for the Wildcats, but they fell just one-point short. 
…

Green-Wood Cemetery in New York – one of the oldest and largest American cemeteries – now has its own artist-in-resident.  Anna Nelson tells us more in this report narrated by Anna Rice.Camera: Vladimir Badikov 
…

A new documentary on Ernest Hemingway — powered by vast but little-known archives kept at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston — is shedding new light on the acclaimed novelist.”Hemingway,” by longtime collaborators Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, premiering on PBS on three consecutive nights starting April 5, takes a more nuanced look at the author and his longstanding reputation as an alcoholic, adventurer, outdoorsman and bullfight-loving misogynist who struggled with an internal turmoil that eventually led to his death by suicide at age 61.The truth about the man many consider America’s greatest 20th-century novelist — whose concise writing style made him an outsized celebrity who became a symbol of unrepentant American masculinity — is much more complex, Novick said.”We hope this film opens up opportunities to look at Hemingway in different ways,” said Novick, who has created several other documentaries with Burns including “The Vietnam War” and “Prohibition.” “There is a complexity beneath the surface.”That complexity would have been nearly impossible to detail without the largest-in-the-world Hemingway collection that ended up at the JFK Library, thanks to the widows of Hemingway and Kennedy.Although the two men never met, they admired each other and corresponded briefly. Hemingway was invited to Kennedy’s inauguration but couldn’t attend because of an illness, said Hilary Justice, the Hemingway scholar in residence at the library.When Hemingway’s fourth wife, Mary Hemingway, was deciding what to do with her late husband’s effects, she asked Jackie Kennedy if they could be housed at the JFK Library.The archives contain Hemingway’s manuscripts — including “The Sun Also Rises” and “For Whom the Bell Tolls” — personal correspondence and about 11,000 photographs.Much of the material used in the documentary has not been widely seen in public, if at all, Novick said.Burns had been to the JFK Library on multiple occasions for several functions but had no idea of the extent of the Hemingway archives until they started researching the film, which has been in the works for years.”The Hemingway collection was central to the process,” Burns said. “It helped us understand just what a disciplined writer he was.”Much of the documentary deals with Hemingway’s complicated relationship with the women in his life, from his mother and sisters to the nurse he fell in love with while recovering from wounds suffered in World War I to his four wives.”So much of what he did in life was about love: running to it, running from it and ruining it,” Burns said.While considered the archetype of American manhood, the truth about Hemingway’s masculinity was more complex, the filmmakers found.As a child, Hemingway’s mother treated him and one of his sisters as twins, often dressing them in identical outfits, sometimes as boys, sometimes as girls. He explored gender fluidity both in his books and in life, letting his hair grow as his wives cropped theirs short.”We wanted to push back against this idea that Hemingway didn’t like women,” Novick said.Novick’s favorite part of the collection were Hemingway’s manuscripts, many handwritten on store-bought notebooks. They show in great detail his thinking process as he wrote, rewrote, amended and edited his works through cross-outs, scribbles and notes in the margins.Hemingway, for example, wrote dozens of endings to “A Farewell to Arms” — as many as 47, according to one count.”You can trace how each work developed, from first draft to final manuscript,” she said.For Burns, the most striking thing about the collection are the pieces of shrapnel dug from Hemingway’s body after he was almost killed as a teenager while driving a Red Cross ambulance in World War I. Burns can’t help but think that such a profound near-death experience had a major impact on the rest of Hemingway’s life, and contributed to his death.”There’s a huge amount to be learned and new interpretations of his work and life in here,” she said. 
…

Nine-year-old Nadja Pivoff from Boston, Massachusetts, has been drawing since she could hold a pencil.  It’s been especially important to her during the COVID lockdown, as Genia Dulot reports from Boston.
Camera: Genia Dulot
…

A grand parade Saturday conveyed 22 ancient Egyptian royal mummies in special capsules across Cairo to a new museum home where they can be displayed in greater splendor.The convoy transported 18 kings and four queens, mostly from the New Kingdom, from the Egyptian Museum in central Cairo’s Tahrir Square to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Fustat, about 5 kilometers (3 miles) to the southeast.FILE – The entrance to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Cairo is pictured Oct. 1, 2019. The mummies of 18 ancient Egyptian kings and four queens were paraded through the streets of Cairo to the National Museum on April 3, 2021.Authorities shut down roads along the Nile for the elaborate ceremony, designed to drum up interest in Egypt’s rich collections of antiquities. Tourism has almost entirely stalled because of COVID-19 related restrictions.As the royal mummies arrived at the museum, which was officially inaugurated Saturday, cannons fired a 21-gun salute. President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi stood by as the mummies filed past on vehicles bedecked with golden pharaonic motifs.The heads of the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO and the World Tourism Organization were also present at the ceremony.Each mummy had been placed in a special capsule filled with nitrogen to ensure protection, Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass said. They were carried on vehicles designed to cradle them and provide stability.Workers prepare for the transfer of 22 mummies from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Fustat, in Cairo, Egypt, April 1, 2021.’Civilized’ display”We chose the Civilization Museum because we want, for the first time, to display the mummies in a civilized manner, an educated manner, and not for amusement as they were in the Egyptian Museum,” Hawass said.Archaeologists discovered the mummies in two batches at the complex of mortuary temples of Deir Al Bahari in Luxor and at the nearby Valley of the Kings beginning in 1871.The oldest is that of Seqenenre Tao, the last king of the 17th Dynasty, who reigned in the 16th century B.C. and is thought to have met a violent death.The parade also included the mummies of Ramses II, Seti I and Ahmose-Nefertari.Fustat, the home of the new museum, was the site of Egypt’s capital under the Umayyad dynasty after the Arab conquest.”By doing it like this, with great pomp and circumstance, the mummies are getting their due,” said Salima Ikram, an Egyptologist at the American University in Cairo. “These are the kings of Egypt, these are the pharaohs. And so, it is a way of showing respect.” 
…

A grand parade will convey 22 ancient Egyptian royal mummies in specially designed capsules across the capital Cairo on Saturday to a new museum home where they can be displayed in greater splendor.The convoy will transport 18 kings and four queens, mostly from the New Kingdom, from the Egyptian Museum in central Cairo’s Tahrir Square to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Fustat, about 5 kilometers to the southeast.Authorities are shutting down roads along the Nile for the elaborate ceremony, designed to drum up interest in Egypt’s rich collections of antiquities when tourism has almost entirely stalled because of COVID-19 related restrictions.Each mummy will be placed in a special capsule filled with nitrogen to ensure protection, and the capsules will be carried on carts designed to cradle them and provide stability, Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass said.“We chose the Civilization Museum because we want, for the first time, to display the mummies in a civilized manner, an educated manner, and not for amusement as they were in the Egyptian Museum,” he said.Workers prepare for the transfer of 22 mummies from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Fustat, in Cairo, Egypt, April 1, 2021.Archaeologists discovered the mummies in two batches at the complex of mortuary temples of Deir Al Bahari in Luxor and at the nearby Valley of the Kings from 1871.The oldest is that of Seqenenre Tao, the last king of the 17th Dynasty, who reigned in the 16th century BC and is thought to have met a violent death.The parade will also include the mummies of Ramses II, Seti I, and Ahmose-Nefertari.Fustat was the site of Egypt’s capital under the Umayyad dynasty after the Arab conquest.“By doing it like this, with great pomp and circumstance, the mummies are getting their due,” said Salima Ikram, an Egyptologist at the American University in Cairo.“These are the kings of Egypt; these are the pharaohs. And so, it is a way of showing respect.”
 
…

A grand parade will convey 22 ancient Egyptian royal mummies in specially designed capsules across the capital Cairo on Saturday to a new museum home where they can be displayed in greater splendor.The convoy will transport 18 kings and four queens, mostly from the New Kingdom, from the Egyptian Museum in central Cairo’s Tahrir Square to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Fustat, about 5 kilometers to the southeast.Authorities are shutting down roads along the Nile for the elaborate ceremony, designed to drum up interest in Egypt’s rich collections of antiquities when tourism has almost entirely stalled because of COVID-19 related restrictions.Each mummy will be placed in a special capsule filled with nitrogen to ensure protection, and the capsules will be carried on carts designed to cradle them and provide stability, Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass said.“We chose the Civilization Museum because we want, for the first time, to display the mummies in a civilized manner, an educated manner, and not for amusement as they were in the Egyptian Museum,” he said.Archaeologists discovered the mummies in two batches at the complex of mortuary temples of Deir Al Bahari in Luxor and at the nearby Valley of the Kings from 1871.The oldest is that of Seqenenre Tao, the last king of the 17th Dynasty, who reigned in the 16th century BC and is thought to have met a violent death.The parade will also include the mummies of Ramses II, Seti I, and Ahmose-Nefertari.Fustat was the site of Egypt’s capital under the Umayyad dynasty after the Arab conquest.“By doing it like this, with great pomp and circumstance, the mummies are getting their due,” said Salima Ikram, an Egyptologist at the American University in Cairo.“These are the kings of Egypt; these are the pharaohs. And so, it is a way of showing respect.”
 
…

Major League Baseball announced Friday it was moving this summer’s All-Star Game from Atlanta’s Truist Park, a response to Georgia enacting a new law last month restricting voting rights.MLB had awarded the game to Atlanta in May 2019 and the game was scheduled for July 13 as part of baseball’s midsummer break that includes the Futures Game on July 11 and Home Run Derby the following night.FILE – Cardboard cutouts of fans in the otherwise empty seats at Truist Park face the field during the sixth inning of a game between Atlanta and visiting Tampa Bay, July 30, 2020.Commissioner Rob Manfred made the decision to move the All-Star events and the amateur draft, which had been scheduled to be held in Atlanta for the first time. A new ballpark for this year’s events wasn’t immediately revealed.MLB’s announcement came eight days after Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a sweeping Republican-sponsored overhaul of state elections that includes new restrictions on voting by mail and greater legislative control over how elections are run.Manfred made the decision after discussions with the Major League Baseball Players Association, individual players and the Players Alliance, an organization of Black players formed after the death of George Floyd last year.”I have decided that the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport is by relocating this year’s All-Star Game and MLB draft,” Manfred said in a statement. “Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box.””Fair access to voting continues to have our game’s unwavering support,” Manfred said.Other sports have moved high-profile events because of social issues.In the early 1990s, the NFL shifted the Super Bowl out of Arizona after the state failed to make Martin Luther King Jr. Day an official holiday.The NBA moved the 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte, North Carolina, when the league took issue with a state law that cut anti-discrimination protection for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.The NCAA for years didn’t hold championships in states where the Confederate battle flag was officially recognized.This year’s All-Star Game will include honoring Hank Aaron, the the team’s Hall of Famer and former career home run champion who died on Jan. 22 at age 86.”We will continue with our plans to celebrate the memory of Hank Aaron during this season’s All-Star festivities,” Manfred said. “In addition, MLB’s planned investments to support local communities in Atlanta as part of our All-Star legacy projects will move forward. We are finalizing a new host city and details about these events will be announced shortly.”MLB canceled last year’s All-Star Game, which had been scheduled for Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, due to the late and shortened season caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic. The 2022 game will be played at Dodger Stadium.MLB has awarded the 2026 All-Star Game to Philadelphia as part of the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.The 1972 All-Star Game was played at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, and the 2000 All-Star Game was at Atlanta’s Turner Field.
…

“Boogie,” a recent film by Chinese American filmmaker Eddie Huang, addresses stereotypes Asian people face in the United States. Lead actor Taylor Takahashi spoke with VOA’s Penelope Poulou about his film character and Asian representation in the film.
Camera: Penelope Poulou      Producer: Penelope Poulou
…

“Boogie,” a recent film by Chinese American filmmaker Eddie Huang, addresses stereotypes Asian people face in the United States. Lead actor Taylor Takahashi spoke with VOA’s Penelope Poulou about his film character and Asian representation in the film.
Camera: Penelope Poulou      Producer: Penelope Poulou
…

“Boogie,” a recent film by Chinese American filmmaker Eddie Huang, addresses stereotypes Asian people face in the United States. Lead actor Taylor Takahashi spoke with VOA’s Penelope Poulou about his film character and Asian representation in the film.
Camera: Penelope Poulou      Producer: Penelope Poulou
…

Pope Francis celebrated a surprise Holy Thursday Mass with the cardinal he fired last year, extending an extraordinary gesture to Cardinal Angelo Becciu by celebrating the liturgy that commemorates Jesus’ Last Supper with his apostles before his crucifixion.News of the celebration in Becciu’s private chapel was confirmed by Becciu’s private secretary. In addition, a longtime friend who was in contact with Becciu after the papal visit said the cardinal was “very happy” with the meeting. A Vatican official said he couldn’t confirm Francis’ private initiative but added that “such a gesture of paternity doesn’t seem strange on a day like today, Holy Thursday.”The visit carried enormous symbolic weight and could suggest Francis may have come to realize he had erred in his handling of the Becciu dossier. Francis has long prized the Holy Thursday service as a ritual of repentance and service.Francis forced Becciu’s resignation on September 24, apparently acting on allegations, contained in a yet-to-be-published article in the Italian newsmagazine l’Espresso, that Becciu had sent 100,000 euros in Holy See funds to a diocesan charity controlled by his brother.Becciu admitted he sent the funds to the charity — not his brother — and told reporters he had done nothing wrong. The money never left the diocese’s bank account.Becciu at the time was the No. 2 in the Vatican secretariat of state and enjoyed full authority to manage the department’s substantial asset portfolio, including using it for charitable donations.Becciu has filed a 10 million euro defamation lawsuit against L’Espresso, claiming its report, and months of other damaging articles citing unnamed Vatican prosecutors, ruined his reputation and eliminated his chances of becoming pope.Francis was able to celebrate the service with Becciu after he canceled his participation in the Vatican’s official Holy Thursday Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, delegating it instead to the dean of the College of Cardinals.The Vatican never explained why Francis was skipping the official service. Francis has traditionally traveled to a prison or refugee center for the Holy Thursday service, which usually involves a foot-washing ritual to symbolize Jesus’ willingness to serve others.Since Becciu’s ouster, the conduct of the Vatican’s criminal prosecutors investigating a host of allegedly corrupt financial deals has come under increasing criticism. They have suffered a string of defeats in foreign court rulings that their searches were illegitimate, their arrest warrants unenforceable and their requests for asset seizures “appallingly” full of misrepresentations and omissions. 
…

Easter is one of the busier holidays for local florists in the United States, with families ordering spring blooms for their gatherings with loved ones. Esha Sarai speaks with a flower farmer and florist in Marshall, North Carolina about their best-selling products this time of year.Camera:  Esha Sarai Produced by:  Esha Sarai  
…

A group of female artists in Afghanistan’s central province of Bamyan has recently opened a small pyrography and engraving studio to promote fine arts in the region. VOA’s Zafar Bamiyani has more from Bamyan in this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.
Camera: Zafar Bamiyani      Producer: Zafar Bamiyani
…

A Kenyan music producer is taking his work to remote villages to record up-and-coming artists on location to offer something new and different for Kenya’s competitive music industry.Producer Presta George imagined how difficult it must be for village artists to get their songs on the radio, let alone become famous.And that’s where George found his calling – in the southwest town of Awendo.But the town of 16,000 people is not where he does most of his recordings.”I though it wise to bring these studios to the local people, so that at least they can compete, or they can sell their products,” George said.Every weekend George packs all the equipment he needs to record complete albums on location and in remote areas and hits the road.The country roads are inaccessible by car so, he travels by motorcycle – balancing instruments, a laptop, and recording equipment. From soloists to church choirs, this traveling producer’s goal is to find music that otherwise wouldn’t get distributed.In the remote village of Ko’molo Rume, George records the choir of the Obama Seventh-Day Adventist Church, named after the U.S. President Barack Obama, whose father was from Kenya.Choir leader Hockey Otieno says George helped them record four albums, which would not have been possible otherwise in their village of less than 1,000 people.  “This opportunity where we can get a studio where we are will make us air out the good talents that we have, which could not be heard at all,” Otieno said. Making his clients’ dreams a reality can come at a cost for George as many village artists cannot afford to pay for production.But George says it is worth the risk to discover up-and-coming talent that would otherwise get missed by Nairobi’s big production houses.Jackson Rakama, known by his stage name “Jegede,” is a Nairobi recording artist and music producer.”If you want to be successful in the music business, you have to move to Nairobi…unfortunately. So, the idea of moving studio is a very brilliant idea,” Rakama said. “You take the studio to the people so that they can get that quality. We should do more of that so that we can empower the local artists so that they can get access to the, you know, quality audios.”Kenya’s music industry insiders say success comes down to technology and the popularity of artists.George says he’s confident his travelling studio can get ahead of the competition.
…

The United States is becoming an increasingly diverse country. With whites expected to account for less than 50-percent of the population by 2045, there’s a push to make books for children as diverse as the nation itself. As VOA’s Dora Mekouar reports, experts say the success level of future American adults could be at stake.Camera:  Griffin Harrington
Producer: Marcus Harton
…