ОГЛЯД

An exhibition of Ukrainian traditional clothing and unique art pieces opened in Los Angeles to support Ukrainian artists. The goals are twofold, help the artists but also help children in Ukraine. Khrystyna Shvchenko has the story.
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Mushers and their dogs in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race face plenty of variables in the Alaska wilderness. An unexpected one this year has been heat that is taking a toll in a sport better suited for temperatures well below zero. 

Jason Mackey said a thermometer hanging from the back of his sled hit 26.67 degrees Celsius at one point this week as he camped alongside the trail while mushers neared the halfway mark of the race. Other racers threw their game plans for the 1,609-kilometer race across Alaska out the window to deal with the heat and messy trail conditions. 

Although it’s warm, it wasn’t 26.67 degrees in interior Alaska, which would probably be a record high in July, said Brian Brettschneider, a climate scientist with the National Weather Service’s Alaska Region. Instead, when you leave a thermometer in the sun, it absorbs the solar energy, which is the reason official measurement thermometers are kept in the shade. 

But it’s still warm and sunny, and it’s having noticeable effects on people who are exposed to it, Brettschneider said. 

Last weekend, the same area was much cooler than normal, with what appeared to be ideal mushing conditions. The warmer conditions are being driven by an area of high pressure, he said.  

Many communities in the nation’s largest state hit record highs this week, from Kodiak off Alaska’s southern coast to Deadhorse, the supply town for oil companies operating on the state’s North Slope, about 2,012 kilometers away. 

Along the Iditarod race route, the community of McGrath didn’t set records but had a high Wednesday of 2.22 degree Celsius, -10 degree Celsius above normal. More telling was a low temperature of -2.78 degrees Celsius. 

“Normally it should be below zero (-17.78 degrees Celsius),” Brettschneider said. 

That warmth was evident all along the Iditarod trail Wednesday. “There’s almost no places that were below freezing along the route,” he said. 

That was not news to Mackey. “I wish the temperatures would cool down,” the musher told a television crew from the Iditarod Insider. 

It’s just not the heat that was bothersome. He said he looked down at his sled at one point and saw two mosquitoes. 

“Yeah, it’s spring,” Mackey said. 

The heat is taking its toll on Mackey’s dogs, which he called “big boys” at 36.29 kilograms. He said other teams were moving in the heat of the day, but he wasn’t willing to do that. “I mean, it zaps them,” he said of the dog team. 

Kelly Maixner, a pediatric dentist, said his dogs don’t like the heat, and he’d rather it be -28.89 degrees Celsius. 

During the race, mushers must take one 24-hour layover at a checkpoint to rest. Part of where to take that layover plays into the strategy of most every musher. 

Nic Petit took his mandatory rest early in the race, at the checkpoint in Nikolai, because the sun was out. “I like hot dogs, just not my dog as a hot dog,” said Petit, who was born in France and raised in New Mexico. 

The melting was causing issues and concerns for some mushers, especially as they made for the race’s halfway point, the ghost village of Iditarod. 

“It could be soft and punchy out there, and who knows how the hills are going into Iditarod,” Richie Diehl told the TV crew. “It could be big tussocks just like a couple of years ago, and it could be a brutal run, you know, with the rolling hills and possibly barren tundra.” Tussocks are clumps of grass. 

Rookie musher Bailey Vitello of New Hampshire was near last place Thursday, running his dogs in the rain during the day and having to deal with ice at night. 

He would rather not be behind and dealing with ripped-up trails. “The back-of-the-pack is the worst part of the trail,” he told the TV crew. 

Riley Dyche of Fairbanks took his 24-hour break before reaching Iditarod because he didn’t want to run his dogs in the heat of the day. That likely cost him either $3,000 in gold nuggets or a new smart phone, the prize given to the first musher at the halfway point. 

“I don’t think the little incentive prize — it would have been cool — but I don’t think it would have been a benefit to these guys for getting to the finish line,” he said, speaking of his dogs. 

Instead, that prize went to race leader Wade Marrs, who is originally from Alaska but now living in Wisconsin. He arrived in Iditarod about 1 a.m. Thursday. 

The good news for mushers is that as they continue west, temperatures will be more Alaska-like, highs around -12 degrees Celsius and lows below -17.78 degrees, Brettschneider said. 

The race started Sunday in Willow, just north of Anchorage. Mushers will take their dog teams over two mountain ranges, the frozen Yukon River and the Bering Sea ice to the finish line in Nome. The winner is expected sometime early next week. 

 
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Robert Blake, the Emmy award-winning performer who went from acclaim for his acting to notoriety when he was tried and acquitted in the killing of his wife, died Thursday at age 89.

A statement released on behalf of his niece, Noreen Austin, said Blake died from heart disease, surrounded by family at home in Los Angeles.

Blake, the star of the 1970s TV show “Baretta,” had once hoped for a comeback, but he never recovered from the ordeal that began with the shooting death of his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, outside a Studio City restaurant on May 4, 2001. The story of their strange marriage, the child it produced, and its violent end was a Hollywood tragedy played out in court.

Once hailed as among the finest actors of his generation, Blake became better known as the center of a real-life murder trial, a story more bizarre than any in which he acted. Many remembered him not as the rugged, dark-haired star of “Baretta,” but as a spectral, white-haired murder defendant.

In a 2002 interview with The Associated Press, he was adamant that he had not killed his wife. A jury ultimately acquitted him, but a civil jury would find Blake liable for her death and order him to pay Bakley’s family $30 million, a judgment that sent him into bankruptcy. The daughter he and Bakley had together, Rose Lenore, was raised by other relatives and went for years without seeing Blake until they spoke in 2019. She would tell People magazine that she called him “Robert,” not “Dad.”

It was an ignominious finale for a life lived in the spotlight from childhood. As a youngster, he starred in the “Our Gang” comedies and acted in a movie classic, “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” As an adult, he was praised for his portrayal of real-life murderer Perry Smith in the movie of Truman Capote’s true crime best seller “In Cold Blood.”

Blake’s career peaked with the 1975-78 TV cop series, “Baretta.” He starred as a detective who carried a pet cockatoo on his shoulder and was fond of disguises. It was typical of his specialty, portraying tough guys with soft hearts, and its signature line, “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time,” was often quoted.

Blake won a 1975 Emmy for his portrayal of Tony Baretta, although behind the scenes the show was wracked by disputes involving the temperamental star. He gained a reputation as one of Hollywood’s finest actors, but one of the most difficult to work with. He later admitted to struggles with alcohol and drug addiction in his early life.

In 1993, Blake won another Emmy as the title character in “Judgment Day: The John List Story,” portraying a soft-spoken, churchgoing man who murdered his wife and three children.

Blake’s career had slowed down well before the trial. He made only a handful of screen appearances after the mid-1980s; his last project was in David Lynch’s “Lost Highway,” released in 1997. According to his niece, Blake had spent his recent years “enjoying jazz music, playing his guitar, reading poetry and watching many Hollywood classic films.”

Once a wealthy man, he wound up living on Social Security and a Screen Actor’s Guild pension.
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The security crisis in Burkina Faso has impacted every aspect of society, including its film industry. The 28th edition of the Pan-African Film & TV Festival of Ouagadougou, or FESPACO, which ended earlier this month [March 4], reflected this difficult situation both on and off screen. Reporters Yacouba Ouedraogo and Thierry Kaore have this story, narrated by Salem Solomon
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California’s desert is drawing artists from Bangladesh and from Mexico to the Coachella Valley for an unusual exhibition called Desert X. For VOA, Genia Dulot went to see.
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