Category: Новини

LONDON — A new exhibition looking at the evolution of Barbie opens in London this week as the famed Mattel doll celebrates her 65th birthday this year. 

“Barbie: The Exhibition,” running at the Design Museum from July 5 to February 23, features more than 250 items from the Barbie universe, including an array of dolls showing her changing appearance, design sketches and dream houses. 

On display is a first edition of the first Barbie released in 1959 with blonde hair, angled eyes, dressed in a black-and-white swimsuit, along with later models representing different races, hair textures and shapes. 

Other “firsts” include a Black Barbie and one in a wheelchair. One section dedicated to careers includes a police officer, scientist, doctor, presidents and a voter, while another focuses on Barbie’s long-term companion Ken, who was introduced in 1961. 

“I hope that whatever your reason for coming to this show …, whether you’re a Barbie fanatic or whether you’re a Barbie skeptic, you come away with an appreciation of detailed research and the rigorous design thinking that goes into the making of Barbie,” curator Danielle Thom said in an interview. 

“I do hope that people come away having learned something about … how this brand has come into being and managed to dominate the toy market for such a long period of time.” 

The exhibition coincides with Barbie’s 65th birthday this year and follows the huge success of last year’s “Barbie” movie starring Margot Robbie, which grossed $1.4 billion at the global box office. 

“Barbie’s resonance and culture has never been larger, more prominent,” Kim Culmone, senior vice president of design for Mattel, said. 
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Lausanne, Switzerland — In the battle against drug use at the Paris Olympics, the International Testing Agency plans to deploy a more streamlined, high-tech approach to identify and target potential cheats.

In an interview with Agence France-Presse, Benjamin Cohen, director general of the ITA, said potential tools at its disposal included biological and performance passports as well as a mountain of other data.

Upgraded software, possibly using artificial intelligence, could also help; an investigative unit aided by whistleblowers was making inroads; and increased cooperation with sports bodies and police was bearing fruit.

The ITA, which was founded in 2018, runs the anti-doping program for the Olympics, the Tour de France and “more than 65 international organizations,” said Cohen.

The challenge was to refine the “risk analysis” and identify athletes to monitor using as little time and resources as possible, said Cohen, a Swiss lawyer who has headed the agency since its creation.

The problem is accentuated in the run-up to the Paris Games.

“We still have 30,000 potentially qualifying athletes and we cannot wait to have the final list to focus on the 11,000 participants,” Cohen said.

“Certain doping practices enable athletes to achieve results very quickly,” he said. “Traditionally the pre-Olympic period is high-risk time … the last moment to make a difference. Athletes know that they will be very closely monitored at the Olympics, so I would hope that very few, if any, will be tempted to take drugs in the Olympic Village in Paris.”

At the Games, only medalists are automatically tested, but the ITA wants to find ways to target potential dopers before the finish.

Cohen said the ITA tries to identify patterns. It looks at the demands of each discipline and the substances it might tempt athletes to use. Then the ITA looks at delegations and “the history of doping in that country.” Finally, it scrutinizes each individual athlete and “the development of his or her performances, any suspicious biological passport profiles, suspicious anti-doping tests and so on.”

“That’s hundreds of thousands of pieces of data.”

“Risk analysis”

“Today we have our own software, and the next stage” will involve “programming computers to extract this data, because we still do a lot of this work manually.”

After that, the ITA hopes to “seize all the opportunities offered by artificial intelligence,” provided “we use these new tools ethically.”

“If it’s done properly,” he said, “AI will enable us to go much further in risk analysis and prediction.”

The ITA is developing a “performance passport” as a counterpart to the long-established biological passport.

The objective is to “predict results on the basis of what an athlete has done over the last four years,” said Cohen.

“Artificial intelligence will enable us to say: ‘This is really an unusual result, which could suggest doping,'” he said. “It could help us flag them.”

The performance passport project was initially tested in swimming and weightlifting, two indoor sports in which athletes compete in identical environments each time.

Weightlifting also is one of the sports that have returned a vast number of positive tests at Summer Olympics.

In 2021, the ITA carried out “a major investigation into weightlifting,” and that enabled them to set up a specialized unit in cooperation with the sport.

Focus on cycling

It now has more than 10 such units. “Cycling is a particular focus,” but “other sports are beginning to understand the benefits of gathering intelligence, having anonymous sources and promoting whistleblowers.”

“It’s a new method that complements traditional testing.”

Cohen said the ITA has been working to build links with law enforcement and exploit “synergies.”

“They are bearing fruit,” he said, referring to the case of 23-year-old Italian cyclist Andrea Piccolo, arrested on June 21 by the Italian Carabinieri who caught him returning to the country with growth hormones.

“ITA asked the Italian authorities to open his luggage, which would not have been possible six years ago,” Cohen said.

“We carry out the controls, we monitor the performances of these athletes, we know the networks, the doctors involved and the drugs they are taking. And they can seize and open suitcases and enter hotel rooms.”
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July 20 marks the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon. An interactive exhibit at Manhattan’s Intrepid Museum reminds viewers of the enormity of that undertaking and what went into the first moon landing. Evgeny Maslov has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Videographer: Vladimir Badikov.
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Phnom Penh — Buddhist monks in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh chanted blessings and threw flowers on Thursday to welcome 14 trafficked artifacts repatriated from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The Angkorian artworks, which included a 10th century goddess sandstone statute and a large Buddha head from the 7th century, were stolen by antiquities trafficker Douglas Latchford before ending up in New York.  

“I am so glad and so happy to see our ancestors back home,” Cambodian Culture Minister Phoeurng Sackona said at the repatriation ceremony.  

“We have many more treasures at the Met which we also hope will be returned to Cambodia,” she added.

Sackona said more than 50 stolen artifacts would return to Cambodia from the United States in the near future.

The minister also called on private collectors and museums around the world to follow the Met and return looted artifacts.

“This return of our national treasures, held by the Met, is of utmost importance not only for Cambodia, but for all of humankind,” she said.  

Latchford, who died aged 88 at his home in Bangkok, was widely regarded as a scholar of Cambodian antiquities, winning praise for his books on Khmer Empire art.

He was charged in 2019 by prosecutors in New York with smuggling looted Cambodian relics and helping to sell them on the international art market.

The Met said in December that it would return 14 antiquities to Cambodia and two to Thailand after they were linked to Latchford.

A 900-year-old statue of the Hindu god Shiva and a bronze sculpture of a female figure were returned to Thailand by the museum in May. 

Thousands of statues and sculptures are believed to have been trafficked from Cambodia from the mid-1960s to the 1990s, while sites in neighboring Thailand were also hit by smugglers.

The return of the items comes as a growing number of museums worldwide discuss steps to repatriate looted artworks, particularly those taken during the colonial era.
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As Ukraine’s war against Russia’s invasion drags on, Ukrainians are fighting to preserve their history. They say Russia is deliberately attacking cultural monuments in a bid to erase the country’s history and identity as a separate nation. For VOA, Anna Chernikova reports from Kyiv. VOA footage by Eugene Shynkar, Vladyslav Smilianets.
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