Month: February 2018

One of 2018’s most hotly anticipated new films premiered for African audiences this week in the Kenyan hometown of one of the film’s stars, actress Lupita Nyong’o. Based on a Marvel superhero comic, Black Panther is set in a fictional, futuristic African nation. As Mohammed Yusuf reports for VOA from the Kisumu premiere, audience members praised the film for its fresh take on the continent.
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Shaun White dismissed the sexual misconduct allegations made against him in a 2016 lawsuit as “gossip” and hurried away from reporters trying to ask him more about the allegations Wednesday, just hours after winning his third gold medal in the men’s halfpipe.

White has been the world’s dominant snowboarder for more than a decade, winning gold medals in 2006, 2010 and again this year, completing a comeback after finishing fourth in 2014.

As White was competing, many on social media resurfaced the details from the lawsuit by a former drummer in White’s rock band, Bad Things. Lena Zawaideh said White sexually harassed and refused to pay her wages after he fired her. The lawsuit was settled in May for an undisclosed amount.

White was asked if the allegations might tarnish his reputation.

“I’m here to talk about the Olympics, not gossip and stuff,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

Reporters attempted to follow up about the lawsuit, but US Snowboarding and Freeskiing Event Director Nick Alexakos shut them down.

White immediately left the stage following the conference while reporters continued to question him.

“I have to get to the medal ceremony,” he said while being ushered away by Alexakos.

Phone calls and an email to Zawaideh’s attorney from the lawsuit were not immediately returned.

In the lawsuit , Zawaideh said White repeatedly sexually harassed her, forced her to watch pornography and told her how to get her hair cut.

The lawsuit included screengrabs of text messages allegedly sent by White asking about the haircut and suggesting she wear a provocative outfit.

The lawsuit also said White grabbed Zawaideh’s buttocks shortly after leaving a band practice and that he once shoved a bottle of vodka into her mouth and forced her to drink from it. It also said that “White stuck his hands down his pants, approached Zawaideh, and stuck his hands in her face trying to make her smell them.” The lawsuit also says White tried to kiss Zawaideh at a Halloween party.

Bad Things signed with Warner Bros. Records in 2013. The rock group released a self-titled album in January of 2014 and toured briefly.

Praise for White’s performance in Pyeongchang caught backfire on social media at a time when #MeToo and other movements are calling for more accountability about harassment and abuse.
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The love stories of the following couples run the gamut from storybook high school romances to the more unconventional, such as finding love after an acid attack.

Hayes and Om have been married for 42 years and have 12 children. Their love started at a vegetable market and now they dedicate their time to their 50-year-old vegetable shop business which they worked to expand.

“Our families don’t know about Valentine’s Day but we built a big family as it was our dream. With my wife, every day is like a festival, not just one day,” Hayes said.

Alejandra and Razhy met in Mexico City in 1998, after Razhy was kidnapped and quit his job as a director of a weekly magazine in Oaxaca, a state south of the country.

Months later, Alejandra traveled to Europe to study. “I went to study in France, I returned to the country and all went cold, my family did not accept our relationship. Finally, four years later, we were both without partners and decided to meet again. We got married in the neighborhood of Coyoacan, the neighborhood where we walked together and we met again after all those years,” said Alejandra.

During the earthquake on September 19, the apartment of the couple suffered considerable damage. “Our house was damaged by the earthquake, now we live in another apartment and are waiting for the legal liability to repair the damages and be able to return,” said Razhy. The couple have a nine-year-old son.

Pramodini and Saroj met at a nursing home in Cuttack, India, where Pramodini was undergoing treatment for acid burns. Saroj met her for the first time on April 8, 2014, when he visited his friend, who treated Pramodini, at the nursing home.

“On September 14, 2017, after an eye surgery, I was flying with Saroj and suddenly started seeing things clearly. That was the first time I saw Saroj’s face. I had never imagined that I would be able to see Saroj in my lifetime,” said Pramodini. The couple is scheduled to hold a ring ceremony on Valentine’s Day in Lucknow.

“We met the first day of college in the middle of the heartland, Kansas. My friends and I thought it noble to help the arriving freshman girl students move into the dorms. There was Jenny, unpacking boxes with her family and in classic, comedy double-take action I walked by her room, stopped, and walked right back to it. Through three states, long-distance dating, high times, low moments and 19 years later, we now share a home, a little girl and a life,” said Chad.

“Four years ago I was here, at the homestead for the first time – we arrived with other birdwatchers to build artificial nests for owls. And I met Dmitry, the owner of homestead, for the first time, here. Later we met again, when I arrived to be a volunteer in a project related to capercaillie. After that we made more projects together and one day I understood I fell in love with him. It was mutual,” said Anastasia.

Aviva Ephrati and Israel Ephrati have been married for 64 years. “In 1950 I met Israel by accident, who was a soldier then, when I was trying to push away another young man who wanted to date me which I didn’t want during an evening out in Jerusalem. After that young man left the scene, Israel asked me to date him and I refused, I was willing to be a friend of him but I didn’t want anything romantic,” said Aviva.

“In the next four years, I almost got married to another guy who disappeared two weeks before the wedding after his father gave him an ultimatum after finding out that my father was not originally Jewish,” she said.

“During these years Israel kept on sending me letters for New Year and checking on me. It took four years, until I showed a friend these letters, which I still keep, who told me that I am stupid not to get on with him. We are married for 64 years now, we have three children and few months ago we got our first great granddaughter,” said Aviva.

Noor Djait and Ismail Benmiled of Tunisia lived on the same road and went to the same schools growing up, but never became close until they met in a nightclub when she was 17.

“That night was the first time we really made eye contact with each other, the first time I talked to him. I remember I took off my shoes to dance on the table. At the end I only found one, Ismail found the other. He brought it to me two days later, like Cinderella.”

They began a relationship but, with Ismail five years her senior, she was concerned about their age difference and they broke up. But Ismail persisted, staying in contact with her, until he came to Rome years later, where she was finishing her architecture studies, proposing marriage shortly after.

“We have been married for six years, we have two children and our love has not changed an iota. We are as in love as we were in the beginning,” Djait said.

Huang and Zheng originally come from Wenzhou in Zhejiang province. Huang has been taking care of her husband around the clock since he was admitted to the hospital for cancer treatment. The couple had an arranged marriage in 1972.

Kazuhiko said “I met her in 1963, 55 years ago. She was a classmate of my younger sister. One day she came over to my house and I took a shine to her because she was so charming. Since that day on, I called her every day. In the beginning, she did not seem to be interested in me, but I conveyed my passion to her.”

“On our first date, I waited at a meeting place for an hour. It turned out she had been advised by her mother and older sister to be late for an hour to see whether I was serious about her. My feelings got through to her, and we married on October 15, 1964, five days after the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics. Fifty-four years have passed since then. We see each other most of the time, both at home and at this shop, which has been in business for about 50 years, but I still find her charming every day!” he said.

Amornrat and Pitchaya’s ceremony is not legally-binding since Pitchaya in under 17, the legal age for marriage in Thailand. The couple plan to officially wed after her birthday.

“I’ve had relationships with men before, but it was not that good and I was heartbroken many times. I met Pitchaya on Facebook and I first sent her a message to introduce myself. We fell in love with each other. After living together for more than a year, we agreed to have a baby. So now we have five-month-old daughter and today we got married as our parents wanted. This is the happiest day of my life,” said Amornrat.

Yohanna was working at a bar for an event called InkFest. She was piercing. Meanwhile, Kathriel was being tattooed in front of a stand where she was working. “I didn’t give him much attention, because, at the time, I was with another person,” said Yohanna.

“When I saw him, he impressed me because he has very big eyes and the color was very impressive but nothing else. I left early.”

One day he texted and asked her what she was doing and if he could go and visit. “He bought me a bottle of anise liquor, but I told him, ‘honey, I don’t drink, you can buy me a chocolate if you want.’

One day she arrived home and “on my bed there was a gift bag in the shape of candy, with a lot of makeup, a necklace and a little book that said, ‘Do you want to be my girlfriend?’ and that’s where it started…”

They have been together for over five months now. “One day he grabbed me in a queue, and asked me if I really wanted something serious with him, I said yes, I was willing to be with him forever. Then he knelt, gave me a ring and proposed to me. I started laughing a lot because I got very nervous.” Now they are engaged.

“We have not been together for long time, but we really feel that we know each other all our lives, it was such a brutal chemistry at the beginning that it has been impressive,” said Yohanna.

“We met 12 years ago on the Internet. Photography brought us together and we fell in love. Then we started a studio to help others fall in love with the magic of photos,” Rute said.
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An IMAX movie premiering this week aims to show America’s musical heritage to the world.

“America’s Musical Journey” is narrated by Morgan Freeman and stars singer-songwriter Aloe Blacc as he explores cities like New Orleans, Memphis, Detroit and Miami.

Along the way, Blacc learns about music history and different genres, from gospel to country to Latin.

The movie is a project of Brand USA, the agency that promotes U.S. tourism.

Fewer international travelers are vacationing in the United States, and Brand USA hopes the film will inspire trips to the U.S. to experience authentic destinations featured in the movie.

At a screening in New York on Tuesday, Blacc noted that music is one of America’s “biggest exports” and “something that makes us unique.”
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A look at the stories of various couples from around the globe
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The director of an award-nominated film about a traumatized boy stuck in the Calais “Jungle” camp has urged Britain to take in more lone child refugees stranded across Europe to prevent them from falling prey to traffickers.

Vika Evdokimenko’s film “Aamir” is loosely based on the story of a boy her husband met two years ago when the couple volunteered in the French camp, which has since been bulldozed.

“It was just one of the most miserable places I’ve been to,” Evdokimenko said ahead of Sunday’s British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards – Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars – where “Aamir” is in the running for best short film.

“Kids [were] in purgatory in that place,” she added.

The camp, a sprawling shanty town near the northern port of Calais, was once home for 10,000 refugees and migrants who hoped to reach Britain by stowing away on trucks, cars or trains.

Evdokimenko said life was hardest for the hundreds of lone children, many of whom had been trafficked after fleeing violence or poverty in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

In 2016, Britain pledged to take 480 of the most vulnerable young asylum seekers in Europe. Around half have arrived so far.

Refugee groups had originally hoped Britain would take 3,000.

“I think Britain can afford to be more generous … it’s a first-world country,” said Evdokimenko, who moved to the United Kingdom from Russia as a child.

Evdokimenko’s 16-minute-long film focuses on a boy driven to an act of violence when he cannot find a door for his shelter.

“He was absolutely desperate for a door. He felt very exposed, very unsafe,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“These kids get angry … There’s a lot of trauma, there’s a lot of issues and I wanted to show an imperfect portrait of a child refugee, but one that was relatable,” Evdokimenko added.

Locked in trunks

The director said the children she met told “horrific” stories about their experiences at the hands of smugglers.

Some described beatings. Others were locked in car trunks, sometimes for days, with just a tube to breathe through.

The film highlights the children’s vulnerability – Aamir is robbed after being drugged by men who appear to befriend him.

It also conveys the physical misery as relentless rains pour through flimsy shelters, turning the ground into a mud bath.

Evdokimenko, who worked at the camp in 2016 packing food rations, described a bleak dune-like landscape engulfed in the stench of a nearby chemical factory and littered with rubbish.

The production team had originally hoped to cast one of the boys in the camp as Aamir, but decided it would be wrong to ask the children to relive their experiences for the camera.

They were also disturbed to find that whenever they returned to the camp, the boys they met on the last visit had vanished.

Evdokimenko said she was sure many had been trafficked.

Despite the Jungle’s demolition, Evdokimenko said her film was still relevant given the tens of thousands of unaccompanied refugee and migrant children scattered throughout Europe.

There are signs the Calais camp is being rebuilt, she said.

“My main anxiety about these kids is how they can ever recover from these things they’ve been through,” she added.

“The longer we leave them in these places, which are just so unsuitable for kids … the more we lose our opportunity to allow them to become amazing members of our communities.”

 
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Marvel Studios transported New York fashionistas to the mythical African nation of Wakanda where its highly anticipated superhero movie “Black Panther” takes place.

Under a blue sky and surrounded by greenery, designers who were inspired by the film’s characters and themes showcased their work as part of “Welcome to Wakanda,” an event meant to celebrate the film’s fierce African flair.

While Wakanda may be fictional, the film’s costume designer Ruth E. Carter drew from real people and places, traveling across Africa to study the patterns, bead work and silhouettes of various tribes and peoples.

“We took elements of Africa and we were inspired by it and we designed it in a futuristic way,” Carter said. “When it all came down, it was all about Wakanda and a futuristic world — a better world.”

The New York Fashion Week presentation is the first of its kind for Walt Disney Co., which owns Marvel. It has been involved in high-end collaborations before, but it’s the first time it has put on a fashion event of this scale ahead of a Marvel movie.

Winston Duke, who plays villain M’Baku in the Ryan Coogler-directed movie, spoke about the importance of seeing black fashion and culture portrayed in film.

“It connects you to your family, it connects you to your roots,” Duke said. “And knowing that your sense of fashion and the culture it’s connected to is valid really makes it a stronger thing for you.”

Designers presented their one-of-a-kind ensembles meant to pay homage to the film, which features a predominantly black cast including Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o and Angela Bassett.

Following the event, the looks will be auctioned off in support of Save the Children, an international humanitarian organization.

New York-based designer LaQuan Smith was one of the designers chosen to present an ensemble for the collection. The look featured trendy Matrix-style sunglasses and a black sequined jumpsuit finished off with a floor-length trench coat.

“I wanted to focus on strength and a level of sensuality and sex appeal,” said the New York-born designer, who has dressed Beyonce and other celebrities. “And knowing that women can be confident, sexy and strong all in the same realm.”

“Black Panther,” which opens this week worldwide, is expected to rake in about $150 million at the North American box office on its opening weekend.
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Even the most prestigious pooches in the 142nd annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, where top dog will be crowned “Best of Show” on Tuesday, are still cuddly canines at heart.

“Biggie is a goof,” said Esteban Farias, handler of a pug named Biggie, who won the toy group contest on Monday and will be among the seven group champions vying for the ultimate prize.

“He’s funny. … When my kids are playing, he grabs the toys and runs all over the house.”

This year’s Best in Show winner, picked from a pack of nearly 3,000 competitors, gets a trophy, a media tour and bragging rights that boost breeding fees. It is the reward for patiently withstanding the blasts of blow dryers and tugs of combs and brushes.

Dogs compete in seven groups — hound, toy, nonsporting, herding, working, sporting and terrier — with the winners then competing for Best in Show, in the competition at Madison Square Garden in midtown Manhattan.

Four chosen on Monday included Biggie, a borzoi named Lucy from the hound group, a bichon frise named Flynn from the nonsporting group and a border collie named Slick from the herding group. The remaining three challengers will be from the working, sporting and terrier groups, whose winners were set to be picked on Tuesday.

More than 2,880 dogs from 201 breeds and varieties competed in the two-day event, according to organizers of the United States’ second-oldest sporting event after the Kentucky Derby. They came from all 50 U.S. states and 16 other countries, including Canada, Mexico, Japan, Russia, Australia and China, the Westminster Kennel Club said in a statement.

Rumor, a female German shepherd, was named Best in Show at last year’s competition.
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Wang Zhuyin studies 10 hours a day preparing for a series of tests to obtain a U.S. physician’s license. But like millions of young Chinese adults, the 26-year-old has found a new way to cope with the pressure: an online game about a frog.

 

A frog that’s perpetually on vacation.

 

Wang’s diversion, the Japanese mobile game “Travel Frog,” has attracted a massive following in China by speaking to a desire for a more passive existence among harried young people that some have termed “Buddhist style” for its desired goal of Zen-like serenity.

 

The game has only two scenes, a loft home and a courtyard where users can collect clover leaves to buy food and other travel supplies for their frog. There isn’t much else a user can do, either. The virtual frog randomly spends time reading a book at home, eating or going on vacation around Japan. Since users have no control over their frog’s behavior, waiting takes up most of the playing time.

“When your frog goes sightseeing, there is nothing you can do but go with the flow,” said Wang, a native of the high-tech center of Hangzhou outside Shanghai. “This is similar to the situation young people are facing. Suffocated by stress, we learn to pretend we don’t care.”

 

The game’s popularity underscores the degree of pressure Chinese millennials face in a highly competitive society where stability and opportunity have become ever more elusive.

Developed by Nagoya-based Japanese company Hit-Point, Travel Frog — also known as Tabi Kaeru — has become the most downloaded free game app in China, despite never having been translated into Chinese.

 

The game’s simplicity has users enthralled. Wang and others describe a sense of healing when gallivanting frogs send photos from their trips, or just relax at home.

 

The frog “doesn’t interact with you or talk to you. You just watch the frog living its own life,” said Jia Weiwei, 37, who works with autistic children in Beijing. “There isn’t a lot of information, which gives you plenty of space for imagination.”

 

Jia has studied an online translation guide and checks her phone regularly to see whether her frog will surprise her by sending a photo or bringing home souvenirs.

 

Psychologist Hai Ming says the popularity of the game shows that human relations have declined in an increasingly data-driven digital society.

 

“Behind every frog-raising player is a lonely person,” Hai said. “How do you externalize your loneliness, your indecision? Through the frog.”

On Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media platform, the topic (hash)TravelFrog(hash) has received over 1.96 billion views. According to Travel Frog developer Mayuko Uemura, Travel Frog has racked up about 30 million downloads on Apple’s App Store and Google Play since its launch in November. Fully 95 percent of downloads of the game from the App Store were in China.

 

“We were hoping to some extent that people overseas would be able to enjoy this game as well, but I would never have imagined that it would become so popular with people in China,” Uemura said.

The company is now considering producing an international version that could be tailored to appeal to local audiences, she said.

 

Social media have played an important role in the game’s success, said Chenyu Cui, a game analyst with IHS Markit in Shanghai.

 

Gamers can show off on Chinese social media sites by comparing photos of their frogs’ “travels,” Cui said.

 

Some users refer to the frog as their child and will worry if it hasn’t been home for even two days.

 

“It connects with people’s common experience,” said Shao Yuanyu, 32, a Taiwanese doctor based in Beijing. “Now I know how my mom felt when she waited for me to come home.”

 

For young people living in China’s fast-paced modern society, the game provides a sense of connection, said Xu Ziwei, a counselor from the mental health center at Beijing’s Renmin University.

 

“To some extent, you feel that you have a stable relationship with the frog. If it leaves, it will always come back, it will send you a postcard,” Xu said.

 

Not all are as positive. The game and the social trends it embodies run counter to the ruling Communist Party’s frequent exhortations to the public to strive for economic advancement. In a speech last year, President Xi Jinping called on young people to “write a vivid chapter in your tireless endeavors to serve the interests of the people.”

 

The party’s official newspaper, People’s Daily, stated in a recent Weibo post that young people should spend their time enriching themselves “instead of just being a lonely frog-raising person.”

 

But others see the frog game and the popularity of “Buddhist style” thinking as examples of young Chinese expressing a newfound independence. People born in the 1990s are largely better off than earlier generations of Chinese and they’re searching for meaning beyond material wealth, said Jia, the frog raiser in Beijing.

 

“This is like the western lifestyle we always envy: to be able to really be ourselves and not care about how others judge us,” Jia said.

 

“The ‘Buddhist style’ doesn’t mean a lack of pursuits or simply giving up,” Jia said. “I think it’s a spiritual pursuit. It’s not harmful if it makes people more at peace.”
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Erin Entrada Kelly’s “Hello, Universe,” a nuanced account of a diverse group of middle school students and their unexpected encounters, has won the John Newbery Medal for the outstanding children’s book of 2017. The Randolph Caldecott Medal for best illustration went to Matthew Cordell and his near-wordless story of a girl and the wolf pup she saves, “Wolf in the Snow.”

The awards were announced Monday by the American Library Association, which has gathered in Denver for its annual mid-winter meeting. Both the Newbery and Caldecott medals are more than 80 years old, with previous winners including Jacqueline Woodson’s “Brown Girl Dreaming” and Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time.” 

On Monday, Woodson who received the Laura Ingalls Wilder award for lifetime achievement and Nina LaCour’s “We Are Okay” was given the Michael L. Printz Award for best young adult literature. Angie Thomas’ “The Hate U Give,” one of last year’s top-selling young adult novels, was cited twice. It won a William C. Morris Award for best debut book for teens and an Odyssey Award for best audiobook.

Renee Watson’s “Piecing Me Together” won the Coretta Scott King Award for outstanding book by an African-American. The King award for best illustrator went to Ekua Holmes for “Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets.” Eloise Greenfield, whose dozens of books include “Honey, I Love” and “In the Land of Words,” won the King award for lifetime achievement.

The Pura Belpre Award for best Latino book was given to “Lucky Broken Girl,” by Ruth Behar. The Pura Belpre illustrator prize went to Juana Martinez-Neal and “La Princesa and the Pea.”
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A Catholic nun waits eight hours each day at a folding table, ready for a call but praying nothing has happened to cause the phone to ring.

Her office, the “Gender Equality Support Center,” a tiny trailer tucked between a bathroom and a police post under the ski lift at the Phoenix Snow Park, is a nondescript acknowledgment of the revolution in women’s rights that, outside the Olympic gates, is thundering through the world.  

Sungsook Kim — who goes by her religious name, Sister Droste — speaks little English. But to describe her mission, she says the name of the American movement: “me too.” 

The Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang arrives amid the reckoning that has brought down celebrities, politicians and the entire board of U.S.A Gymnastics. NBC star Matt Lauer was fired for sexual misconduct, and his accuser said the harassment began at the last Winter Olympics, in Sochi. 

During the Summer Games in Rio, two athletes were accused of assaulting housekeepers. A horrified world recently watched dozens of women and girls, some of them Olympians, describe in detail how Larry Nassar, the gymnastics doctor, had sexually abused them for decades as layers of elite athletic organizations failed to stop it.

“The whole world just got a front row seat to a master class in trauma,” said Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a former Olympic swimmer and activist calling on Olympic committees to do much more to protect vulnerable athletes. 

“This is what trauma does. This is what it looks like,” she says. “It stops professional careers, it stops somebody’s education, it stops people from being close to other people, it invades their ability to feel safe.” 

A solution begins   

So this year, for the first time, there is an organized and advertised contingent of offices designed to help sexual assault victims dotted around the sprawling Olympics venues — from clinics that cater to world-class athletes to Sister Droste’s four trailers, organized by the local community for the army of 14,000 volunteers, most of them young, 70 percent of them female. 

“‘(hash)metoo’ allowed us all to see that it’s not the victim’s fault, being sexually harassed. It’s not because of their appearance. It gives courage to the victims,” Droste said through a translator. 

So far they have responded to four reports of harassment, Droste said, the details of which she could not describe because of confidentiality rules, but said they were not severe. 

“Having equal rights,” the sister said, “men and women, makes it possible for us to accomplish freedom.”

Olympic organizers have finally decided it’s time to get serious. On Sunday, Prince Feisal of Jordan, a board member on the International Olympic Committee, said the Olympic body should pursue the fight against sexual assault and harassment as seriously as it does doping. 

“The current scandal begs the question: Why aren’t we doing more?” he said.

 The United States Olympic Committee has come under withering criticism in the wake of the Nassar abuse scandal. Aly Raisman, a three-time Olympic gold medalist assaulted by the doctor, publicly rebuked the committee for failing to spot and stop the abuse, and for not reaching out to the victims once it was made known. 

This happened in a prosperous country with a powerful Olympic committee and the resources to protect athletes, Feisal said. “Imagine countries and federations who’ve got nothing.” 

The International Olympic Committee launched a program last year aimed at coaching athletic organizations around the world how to implement policies to protect vulnerable athletes. In 2016, they hastily put together a “safeguarding” program for the summer games in Rio, in which an officer was available to field allegations of abuse and route them to medical services or law enforcement. 

But the plan was approved in June and the Olympics began in July, and they did not have time to effectively spread the word about the program, said Susan Greinig, the safeguarding officer. 

As she watched the Nassar saga unfold on television, she remembers feeling a mix of regret and motivation. 

“I just thought, if only we could have put this help in place earlier to save these people. But they are an example of future potential victims that we will save, that we will give a voice to,” she said. “Out of every evil there can be some good that comes out of it.” 

This year, she has an office in the Olympic villages, and marches around with a pin on her jacket that reads: “Need to talk?” A sign is plastered to her office door says “I see, I hear, I speak.” The posted hotline number for athletes to report sexual abuse routes to her cell phone and she checks it every few seconds. 

Three days into the Games, no one had called it yet.

 “After these Games, if I didn’t have any calls, you could read two ways into that: You could believe people still didn’t dare, or there just weren’t any incidents that happened during the games,” she said. “Obviously, I prefer to believe the second.” 

‘They are listening now’

The odds are that among the women chasing medals on Pyeongchang’s slopes and slides, some have stories to tell. Scientific research shows that the more elite an athlete is, the more likely they are to be victims of assault, Greinig knows, because the higher an athlete climbs the more they have to lose. Abusers know that, and exploit it. The Olympics is a natural home to the kind of power dynamics that foster abuse: coaches to athletes, athletes to maids. 

Greinig does not expect the Olympics would be the venue most would choose to blow the whistle on longstanding abuse. Athletes are away from home, focused on winning, surrounded by strangers. 

But she hopes their efforts send a signal — to victims that they will be believed and protected, and to abusers that the sporting world is getting serious about the issue, even if it is overdue. She has worked for the IOC for 21 years, with a focus on preventing sexual abuse since 2004. 

“It used to be frustrating to make people listen,” she said. “But they are listening now.”  

She is compiling a list of committees and federations as they take steps to implement protections for athletes — a sort of shaming technique she hopes forces slow-moving organizations to get on board as the (hash)metoo movement spreads from the United States around the globe. 

Sister Droste, 50,  has watched women’s rights in her country slowly improve. Women are more educated now, more confident, yet remain “far behind” other countries. Outside the Olympics, she works in a hotline counseling center for victims of sexual violence, so she confronts the inequities every day. When she looks around, she still sees most positions of power in her country filled by men.

But she is encouraged by signs that the (hash)metoo movement landed last month in South Korea. 

Seo Ji-hyeon, a 45-year-old prosecutor, went on national television to say she was groped at a funeral by a high-ranking government official. When she reported it, instead of punishing him, her superiors demoted her by sending her away to work in a fishing village. Her story inspired others to come forward in recent days — a lawmaker, a university student, a news reporter.

She hopes any of the thousands of volunteers in her charge know they have a voice now, too. Meanwhile, she runs four centers during the Olympics that are staffed by 29 professional volunteer counselors working in conjunction with medical teams and law enforcement. 

“I am praying to God that nothing happens,” Droste says. “But we are here.” 
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Dallas Brown can still see the bullets coming for him 50 years later, smacking into the dirt at his feet as north Vietnamese soldiers fired on his platoon during an ambush deep in the jungle.

 

Minutes later, as the deadly firefight wound down, Brown and his fellow soldiers in the 101st Airborne would be immortalized.

 

In one of the most searing images of the Vietnam War, Brown grimaces as he lies on the ground with a back injury. Not far away, a platoon sergeant raises his arms to the heavens, seemingly seeking divine help.

 

Landing on the front page of The New York Times, the black and white image by Associated Press freelancer Art Greenspon gave Americans back home an unflinching look at the conditions soldiers endured in what would become the war’s deadliest year. Captured on April 1, 1968, it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and appeared prominently in Ken Burns’ recent Vietnam War documentary.

But for the young Americans who have decided to talk about it a half-century later, it was merely a moment in another sweltering day in a Southeast Asian jungle with well-hidden enemies all around. Some of them have spent years putting the experience in perspective.

 

“When I look at that picture now, I say, ‘If I can survive that, I can survive anything,'” said Tim Wintenburg, who in the photo helps carry a wounded soldier over brush hacked away to create a helicopter landing zone.

 

Sgt. Maj. Watson Baldwin has his arms raised to guide in a helicopter that would take away the wounded men, including one shot in the leg by the Vietnamese soldier who was firing at Brown. Baldwin died in 2005, according to Fort Campbell officials who recently tracked down soldiers in the photo.

 

Brown, who lives near Nashville, and Wintenburg, of Indianapolis, met with an Associated Press reporter at Fort Campbell in Kentucky to recount the events surrounding the photo — their first news media interviews ever on the war.

After he received his draft notice in 1965, Wintenburg visited a recruiting office and was told he looked “like Airborne material.”

 

By early 1968, he was 20 years old and on the front lines.

 

Brown, who was 18 when he landed in Vietnam, remembers being inspired by “The Ballad of the Green Berets.” He was encouraged to go through airborne training. Both men ended up at Fort Campbell, home of the 101st Airborne.

 

In the spring of 1968, Brown and Wintenburg’s squad was in the dangerous A Shau Valley on a weekslong “search and destroy” mission, meaning they never took prisoners. Firefights were commonplace.

 

Brown recalls their battalion commander, a lieutenant colonel, telling them before one mission: “You get a body count, you get a prize.”

 

“To my knowledge we might have taken a handful of prisoners the whole time we was in Vietnam,” Brown said.

 

The soldiers were hiking up a slippery mountain trail after a monsoon when they paused to eat lunch.

 

Brown, sitting on his rucksack with his M-16 rifle across his lap, thought he saw a sapling move down a ravine. He didn’t feel any wind. He switched his rifle to full-automatic as an enemy fighter stepped into view.

 

Known in the platoon as “hillbilly” for his Tennessee drawl and proficiency with a rifle, Brown fired on the first north Vietnamese soldier, killing him and then another behind him. He was reloading when a third enemy fighter fired back.

 

“You know you see these movies where you see clods of dirt jumping up? I could see them, I mean they was coming right at me and that’s when I got off that rucksack,” Brown said. “I thought, this guy, he means to kill me as sure as the world.”

 

Brown lunged for cover, and a bullet struck the leg of a soldier who had been behind him. Once the ambush was put down, Brown carried the wounded man up the hill, injuring his back on the way.

 

Brown grimaced as the photo was snapped. Wintenburg, who had lost his helmet, helped the wounded soldier up to the landing spot. He glanced back toward Greenspon.

 

Greenspon now lives in Connecticut. He declined to be interviewed, saying the soldiers should always be the focus of any story about the photograph.

Brown and Wintenburg each spent about a year in Vietnam, and both men struggled with anxiety for years. But now, 50 years later, they relish opportunities to reunite with fellow 101st Airborne members.

 

Brown has a copy of the photo hanging in his home, and he has plenty of stories of how he convinced relatives and friends that he’s in it. A few years ago, Brown’s granddaughter and her boyfriend — now her husband — asked about it. Seeing it through their eyes reminded him of the growing pride he now takes in his piece of history.

 

Wintenburg shares that pride, though he is perhaps more sanguine about what led him to that moment.

 

“We didn’t really have a choice back then,” he said. “We did what we had to do.”
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Vic Damone, whose mellow baritone once earned praise from Frank Sinatra as “the best pipes in the business,” has died in Florida at the age of 89, his daughter said.

 

Victoria Damone told The Associated Press in a phone interview Monday that her father died Sunday at a Miami Beach hospital from complications of a respiratory illness.

 

Damone’s easy-listening romantic ballads brought him million-selling records and sustained a half-century career in recordings, movies and nightclub, concert and television appearances.

 

Damone’s career began climbing in the 1940s after he won a tie on the radio show “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Hunt.” His hit singles included “Again,” “You’re Breaking My Heart,” “My Heart Cries for You,” “On the Street Where You Live” and, in 1957, the title song of the Cary Grant film “An Affair to Remember.”

 

Damone’s style as a lounge singer remained constant through the years: straightforward, concentrated on melody and lyrics without resorting to vocal gimmicks. Like many young singers of his era, he idolized Sinatra.

 

“I tried to mimic him,” Damone said in a 1992 interview with Newsday. “I decided that if I could sound like Frank maybe I did have a chance. I was singing his words, breathing his breaths, (doing) his interpretation, with the high notes, the synergy.”

Sinatra and Damone, along with Tony Bennett, Perry Como, Dean Martin and others, formed a group of Italian Americans who dominated the postwar pop music field. And far from resenting the mimicry, Sinatra praised Damone’s singing ability.

 

Born Vito Farinola in Brooklyn, New York, on June 12, 1928 to immigrants from Bari, Italy, Damone dropped out of high school after his father, an electrician, was injured on the job.

 

Damone adopted his mother’s maiden name when he began his career, after catching an early break while working as an usher at the Paramount Theater in New York City, according to a family statement.

 

The 14-year-old bumped into Perry Como in an elevator at the theater, stopped it between floors, and started singing. Then he asked Como whether he should continue voice lessons, and Como said simply, “Keep singing!” and referred him to a local bandleader.

 

Damone still drew crowds in nightclubs and concerts into his 70s, before illness prompted his retirement to Palm Beach with his fifth wife, fashion designer Rena Rowan.

 

Damone appeared in several MGM musicals and he was originally cast in “The Godfather,” but the role of a budding singer seeking mob help in a Hollywood career eventually went to Al Martino.

 

He wrote in his memoir, “Singing Was the Easy Part,” that he never considered himself a showman like Milton Berle or Sammy Davis Jr.

 

“That wasn’t my particular gift,” he wrote. “My gift was singing.”

 

In 1954, Damone married the Italian actress Pier Angeli, after her mother refused to allow her to marry James Dean. The couple had a son and named him Perry before divorcing in 1959.

 

Marriages to actress Judy Rawlins, with whom he had three daughters, and Houston socialite Becky Ann Jones also ended in divorce. In 1987, Damone and actress-singer Diahann Carroll married after a long romance, and they paired for night club and concert tours. They divorced in 1996.

 

Rowan died in November 2016.

 

Damone is survived by two sisters, his three daughters and six grandchildren.
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