My Childhood My Country: 20 Years in Afghanistan is the latest documentary by award-winning filmmakers Phil Grabsky and Shoaib Sharifi. Grabsky spoke with VOA’s Penelope Poulou about this 20-year film expose on life in Afghanistan through the eyes of an Afghan youth from his early childhood to today.
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BloLab is converting plastic jerricans into computers using recycled components.. Anne Nzouankeu visited the startup in Cotonou, Benin in this story narrated by Moki Edwin Kindzeka.
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Royal drama “The Crown” and feel good comedy “Ted Lasso” nabbed the top prizes at television’s Emmy awards on Sunday on a night dominated by streaming shows, British talent and rare wins by women.
Chess drama “The Queen’s Gambit” was named best limited series and tied with “The Crown” for the most wins overall at 11 apiece.
The best drama series win for “The Crown” gave Netflix its biggest prize so far, while Apple TV+ entered streaming’s big league with the best comedy series win for “Ted Lasso.” Neither Netflix nor Apple TV+ had previously won a best comedy or best drama series Emmy.
Jason Sudeikis, the star and co-creator of “Ted Lasso,” was named best comedy actor.
The show also brought statuettes for Britons Hannah Waddingham and Brett Goldstein for their supporting roles in the tale of a struggling English soccer team that won over TV fans with its folksy humor during the dark days of the coronavirus pandemic.
“This show is about family. This show’s about mentors and teachers and this show’s about teammates. And I wouldn’t be here without those three things in my life,” Sudeikis said on Sunday.
Despite a nominees list that boasted the strongest showing in years for people of color, only a handful emerged as winners.
They included Britain’s Michaela Coel, who won for writing the harrowing sexual assault drama “I May Destroy You” in which she also starred and directed; RuPaul, host of the competition show “RuPaul’s Drag Race;” and the cast of hip-hop Broadway musical “Hamilton,” which won the Emmy for variety special after it was filmed for television.
Dancer, singer and actor Debbie Allen was given an honorary award celebrating 50 years in show business. “It’s taken a lot of courage to be the only woman in the room most of the time,” Allen said.
It was a good night for women, and for Britons. “Write the tale that scares you, that makes you feel uncertain, that isn’t comfortable,” said Coel, who dedicated her Emmy to sexual assault survivors.
Lucia Aniello got a rare directing win for a woman for the comedy series “Hacks” about a fading female comedian. She also was one of the winning co-writers. Britain’s Jessica Hobbs took home a directing Emmy for “The Crown.”
“Not a lot of women have won this award so I feel like I am standing on the shoulders of some really extraordinary people,” Hobbs said.
Seven of the 12 acting awards went to Britons, including Olivia Colman and Josh O’Connor for playing Queen Elizabeth and heir to the throne Prince Charles in a fourth season of “The Crown” that focused on the unhappy marriage of Charles and Princess Diana.
“We’re all thrilled. I am very proud. I’m very grateful. We’re going to party,” said Peter Morgan, creator of “The Crown,” at a gathering in London for the cast and crew.
An exuberant Kate Winslet won for her role as a downtrodden detective in limited series “Mare of Easttown,” while Ewan McGregor was a surprise winner for playing fashion designer “Halston.”
Concerns over the Delta variant of the coronavirus forced Sunday’s ceremony to move to an outdoor tent in downtown Los Angeles, with a reduced guest list and mandatory vaccinations and testing but a red carpet that harked back to pre-pandemic times.
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Halima Aden, the first supermodel to wear a hijab and pose in a burkini, has ripped up her lucrative contracts in an industry she feels lacks “basic human respect” and entered the world of modest fashion design instead.
For the Somali-American who was born in a refugee camp in Kenya, it was a matter of preserving her self-worth and well-being in a fast and loose sector that increasingly clashed with her Muslim values.
“Since I was a little girl, this quote — ‘don’t change yourself, change the game’ — has gotten me through so much in life,” she told AFP in an interview in Istanbul.
“When I took the decision to quit, that is exactly what I did,” she said. “So I am very, very proud.”
Aden’s departure last November delivered a shock to fashionistas and Muslim influencers who have admired her trailblazing career.
Aden, who turns 24 on Sunday, broke ground in Minnesota, where she became the first contestant to wear a hijab and a burkini — a full-body swimsuit whose appearance has stirred controversy on some European beaches — in a U.S. state beauty pageant in 2016.
She posed in them again for Sports Illustrated’s annual swimsuit issue when her fame was spreading in 2019.
But personally, Aden felt increasingly boxed in — sometimes literally.
“I was always given a box, a private place to change in, but many times I was the only one given the privacy,” she said.
“I got to see my fellow young women having to undress and change in public, in front of media personalities, cooks and staff, designers and assistants,” she recalled.
“To me, it was very jarring,” she said. “I couldn’t be in an industry where there is no basic human respect.”
‘Poison!’
Aden sounded liberated when she announced her decision to abandon photo shoots and catwalks last year. She is becoming a designer instead.
“Wow this is actually the most RELIEF I felt since I started in 2016. Keeping that in was literal POISON!” she said on Instagram.
She felt her traditions, starkly different from those of most other supermodels, were caricatured and turned into a gimmick by some brands.
One, American Eagle, replaced a headscarf with a pair of jeans on her head in a 2017 campaign.
“But… this isn’t even my style??” she protested on Instagram at the time.
“I got to a place where I couldn’t recognize my hijab the way I would traditionally wear it,” Aden told AFP.
Aden looked far more at ease in Istanbul, surrounded by Middle Eastern fashionistas while attending an event organized by Modanisa, her new home.
She will be designing collections exclusively for the Turkish online brand, which is one of the biggest names in the modest fashion industry, valued at $277 billion in 2019.
It already makes up more than a tenth of the $2.2 trillion global fashion industry, with plenty of room to grow, according to DinarStandard, an advisory firm specializing in emerging Muslim markets.
‘Taste of the world’
World capitals as diverse as Moscow, Riyadh and London have staged modest fashion shows in the past few years.
The trend is particularly strong in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, where Aden rejoices at the melee of cultures on the streets.
“What I love the most about Turkey, especially Istanbul, is that it is very diverse, you see women who don’t wear the hijab right alongside women who wear the hijab,” she said.
“You get a taste of the world in Istanbul.”
The industry has taken off in the past decade, thanks in part to the modelling careers of women such as Aden.
Soft-spoken but smiley, Aden sounds confident in modest fashion’s ability to withstand crises like the coronavirus pandemic and changing fads.
“It is the oldest fashion staple, it’s been around for hundreds of years, it will continue to be around for hundreds of years,” she said.
Islam and fashion “are 100% compatible because there’s nothing in our religion that says you can’t be fashionable,” she said.
Luxury brands such as DKNY and Dolce & Gabbana have already picked up on the trend, creating collections catered to modest women.
But Aden hit out at “a lot of tokenism, especially in the fashion industry, where they want our money but they don’t want to support us in the issues that we are faced with.”
“I think fashion needs to do a greater job,” she said. “You are representing your clients who are Muslims, it is important to speak up when they are faced with injustices.”
The miniature statutes given at the Emmy Awards on Sunday can be an outsized boon to egos, careers and guessing games.
Will The Mandalorian bow to The Crown as best drama series? Can the feel-good comedy Ted Lasso charm its way into freshman glory? Will Jean Smart be honored as best comedy actress for Hacks? (She will.)
But there’s oh-so-much more at stake when the TV industry — or a pandemic-constrained slice of it — gathers to honor itself at the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards.
The ceremony (8 p.m. EDT, CBS) is a snapshot of a business morphing into its 21st-century form; who we see or don’t see on the small screen, and the rapid splintering of TV and its viewers.
The obvious winners and losers are those to be revealed in 27 categories during the s how hosted by Cedric the Entertainer. But there’s more at stake than personal victories, and yardsticks of success or failure beyond trophies.
Here’s some of the outcomes and trends to watch for, both up close and wide-angle.
Streamers set to conquer
Streaming services are poised for a triumphant night that will cast further shade on the status of broadcast networks, including the big three ABC, CBS and NBC, and once-dominant cable channels such as HBO and Showtime.
“This is the year that the streamers will officially conquer Hollywood,” likely winning best drama and comedy series honors for the first time, said Tom O’Neil, editor of the Gold Derby predictions website and author of The Emmys.
Premium cable’s encroachment on turf once owned by broadcasting was gradual: HBO launched in 1972 and waited two decades for its first best series Emmy nod, earned by Garry Shandling’s comedy The Larry Sanders Show. It wasn’t until the 2000s arrived that Sex and the City and The Sopranos earned best series prizes.
In contrast, streaming is racing ahead with Ferrari-like speed, especially as the services multiply and shell out big bucks for shows aimed at winning over paying customers.
In 2017, Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale became the first streamed series to win the best drama Emmy. The next year, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel scored a matching victory on the comedy side for Amazon, which won again in 2019 for Fleabag.
Victory is possible for either Netflix’s The Crown or the Disney+ series The Mandalorian, which topped the nods with 24 each. For Netflix, which launched its on-demand service in 2007 and fielded the first drama series nominee, House of Cards in 2014, patience would finally be rewarded.
For Disney+, the victory would be swift and sweet: it launched in November 2019. Apple TV+, which arrived the same year, could win its first top series award with Ted Lasso. If that happens, streaming’s prominence would be solidified with the one-two punch in the comedy and drama categories.
Room at the table
The push for diversity has moved at a grindingly slower pace than the digital revolution, but this year’s slate of nominees was unimaginable just a few years ago.
Of the 96 acting nods for drama, comedy and miniseries, nearly 44% — a total of 42 nominations — went to people of color. According to 2020 Census figures, white Americans make up just under 58% of the population.
Among this year’s groundbreakers: Mj Rodriguez of Pose, the first trans performer to be nominated in a lead acting category, and Bowen Yang of Saturday Night Live, the first Asian American to compete for best supporting comedy actor.
The top drama acting categories are particularly inclusive, and strikingly so in comparison to a decade ago when all of the 12 nominees for best actor and actress were white, with Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Lights) and Julianna Margulies (The Good Wife) the winners.
That was 2011, this is now. Black men make up a majority of the lead drama actor nominees, four of six, including past winners Sterling K. Brown for This Is Us and Pose star Billy Porter — the first openly gay man to win the category, in 2019.
Half of the six best-actress contenders are women of color. Jurnee Smollett (Lovecraft Country) and Uzo Aduba (In Treatment) are Black, and Rodriguez is Afro Latina.
If the final test of inclusivity is who wins, the story could be different. The Crown stars Josh O’Connor and Emma Corrin are considered frontrunners for their portrayals of ill-fated royal mates Charles and Diana.
Pandemic, Part 2
Constraints can breed inventiveness.
Last year’s all-virtual ceremony included a defining lockdown moment: Hazmat-suited trophy couriers who loitered outside nominees’ homes until their categories were called, either handing over the award or taking it disappointingly away.
“Somebody mentioned (the idea) in a meeting as kind of as a joke, and then it was constantly needling away at us and we decided that it could be a great way to do it,” recalled Guy Carrington, a producer for the 2020 Emmys.
This year, about 500 nominees and guests will gather under a glammed-up tent in downtown L.A., with COVID-19 precautions including a vaccine requirement and testing. There are big names among the presenters, including Angela Bassett, Michael Douglas, Dolly Parton and Awkwafina, but at least one star, Jennifer Aniston, was candid about staying away because of virus concerns.
Reginald Hudlin and Ian Stewart, executive producers for the telecast, said they approached the reduced attendance as an opportunity.
Instead of being confined in a theater seat, guests will be at tables and part of what sounds like an oversized dinner party — with drinks and snacks allowed — and encouraged to mingle.
“To have the industry come out and sit together and see each other, it is a celebration,” said Stewart.
Hello, is anyone out there?
Ratings for awards show, from Oscars to the Grammys, have been steadily declining in recent years and hit new depths during the pandemic. Despite honoring the TV shows that kept us company through COVID’s darkness, the Emmys weren’t exempt.
After hitting a record-low viewership of just under 7 million in 2019, last year’s telecast tumbled further to 6.1 million viewers, according to Nielsen.
Part of it is simply awards overload, with upstart, dime-a-dozen ceremonies taking the luster off the major ones, including the 94-year-old, grande dame Oscars and the Emmys, which turn 73 on Sunday.
Then there’s the shows’ sheer length. A leisurely, three-hour telecast, commercials included, was expected and tolerated in the old TV world. In the new one, viewers are more inclined to check out an event’s highlights online and at will.
But as Hudlin sees it, social media can give as well as take.
“If you deliver a show that works, if people say, ‘Oh, are you watching the Emmys thing? It’s kind of cool,’ all of a sudden people start tuning in because you’re talking about it like, ‘Yo, this is crazy,'” Hudlin said. “So we like to keep it crazy.”
Details were under wraps, but there will be music: Reggie Watts, band leader for The Late Late Show with James Corden, is the night’s DJ.
The event’s producers also recognize that niche shows on cable and streaming may be unfamiliar to many viewers, especially those who favor network shows such as ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy or CBS’ The Neighborhood — the latter starring Emmy host Cedric the Entertainer.
“We have gone to a lot of those mainstream, well-known actors, actresses and people in the industry to be presenters so that we do reflect popular television,” Stewart said.
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Leaders of the United States, Japan, India and Australia will agree to take steps to build secure semiconductor supply chains when they meet in Washington next week, the Nikkei business daily said Saturday, citing a draft of the joint statement.
U.S. President Joe Biden will host a first in-person summit of leaders of the “Quad” countries, which have sought to boost co-operation to push back against China’s growing assertiveness. The draft says that in order to create robust supply chains, the four countries will ascertain their semiconductor supply capacities and identify vulnerability, the Nikkei said, without unveiling how it had obtained the document.
The statement also says the use of advanced technologies should be based on the rule of respecting human rights, the newspaper said on its web site.
The draft does not name China, but the move is aimed at preventing China’s way of utilizing technologies for maintaining an authoritarian regime from spreading to the rest of the world, the Nikkei said.
The United States and China are at odds over issues across the board, including trade and technology, while Biden said in April his country and Japan, a U.S. ally, will invest together in areas such as 5G and semiconductor supply chains.
No officials were immediately available for comment at the Japanese foreign ministry.
While orbiting Earth, four space tourists called U.S. actor Tom Cruise to talk about life aboard the spacecraft.
Representatives for SpaceX’s first privately chartered flight said the crew members spoke Friday with Cruise, who is hoping to take part in a movie made in space.
The Twitter account for the flight mission said, “Maverick, you can be our wingman anytime,” referencing the call sign for Cruise’s character in the movie Top Gun.
No further details were released about the conversation.
Last year, NASA said it was in talks with Cruise about filming a movie at the International Space Station.
In the first space flight without any trained astronauts, the space tourists are orbiting Earth at an altitude of 585 kilometers.
The crew is led by billionaire Jared Isaacman, 38, and includes two contest winners and a hospital worker.
Crew members spoke with mission control Friday in a 10-minute live webcast.
Hayley Arceneaux, a 29-year-old physician assistant at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, showed off her ability to do flips in zero gravity.
Arceneaux, a childhood cancer survivor, had spoken earlier with child cancer patients at St. Jude.
Chris Sembroski a 42-year-old U.S. Air Force veteran, played his ukulele while Sian Proctor, a 51-year-old community college teacher, showed a picture she drew of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule.
The flight, named Inspiration4, took off Wednesday and is due to splash down Saturday in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida.
SpaceX was founded by billionaire Elon Musk, who tweeted Thursday, “Missions like Inspiration4 help advance spaceflight to enable ultimately anyone to go to orbit & beyond.”
Kids across the U.S. are posting TikTok videos of themselves vandalizing school bathrooms and stealing soap dispensers and even turf from football fields, bedeviling school administrators seeking to contain the viral internet trend.
The “devious licks” challenge that swept social media this week is plaguing principals and school district administrators who already must navigate a bitter debate over requiring masks to keep COVID-19 in check. Some schools have had to more closely monitor or even shut down bathrooms, where much of the damage is occurring.
No section of the nation appears to have been untouched. In northeastern Kansas, Lawrence High School had to close several bathrooms after students pried soap dispensers off the walls. Then, students tried to steal the “closed” signs, so staff is guarding the bathrooms, even the closed ones, said 17-year-old student Cuyler Dunn, relaying Friday what he called “total destruction.”
“Some of them were to the point where they were borderline unusable,” said Dunn, who is also the co-editor-in-chief of Lawrence High’s student newspaper. “Locks on stalls had been taken off.”
Ice Bucket Challenge
While social media did spawn the Ice Bucket Challenge to raise money for research into the condition known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, it also led to a rash of poisonings several years ago when teenagers swallowed pods of laundry detergent for the “Tide Pods challenge.” The latest trend follows close upon a viral challenge to walk on stacks of milk crates.
Some school officials are reluctant to say much about “devious licks,” which is slang for theft. In Virginia, Fairfax County Public Schools spokesperson Kathleen Miller emailed that officials were aware of several incidents of property damage and that “disciplinary action has and will be taken.”
Outside of that statement, Miller noted that the school district was saying little to avoid “encouraging copy-cat behavior.”
A spokesperson said TikTok was removing “devious licks” content and redirecting hashtags and search results to its guidelines to discourage the behavior and that it doesn’t allow content that “promotes or enables criminal activities.”
While some school officials say they don’t know what caused the “devious licks” challenge to go viral, others chalk it up to a desire for peers’ attention or adolescents’ lack of impulse control. Some incidents have involved smashing things, like bathroom mirrors and sinks.
Tradition of senior pranks
Dunn said that his Kansas high school has a tradition of senior pranks that led someone to set chickens loose inside last year. But he said some students are starting to worry about the repercussions of “devious licks,” not only for kids who get caught but also for big events as the school tries to prevent thefts. His newspaper wrote about “devious licks” this week.
He said a detour sign taken from another school after a football game is in Lawrence High’s parking lot and that students even stole a small section of artificial turf off the school’s football field.
“The general vibe around the student body is that this is just another one of those funny things that high schoolers do,” he said. “But it has started to reach a point where it is starting to get in the way of things.”
Damage displayed on social media
Northeast of Sacramento, California, the Rocklin school district has seen students destroy soap dispensers, damage faucets, plug toilets with whole rolls of toilet paper and tear mirrors and railings off walls, then share videos and photos on social media.
Spokesperson Sundeep Dosanjh said that the damage can close bathrooms for extended periods, an issue potentially made worse by “national supply chain disruptions” that have arisen amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Police in the central Florida city of Bartow, located about 50 miles east of Tampa, said they arrested a 15-year-old student who vandalized a new building’s bathroom by tearing off soap dispensers and leaving one in a sink.
“He said he did it because of this TikTok challenge and he wanted to be cool,” police Chief Bryan Dorman said.
In the Cherry Creek school district serving an affluent Denver neighborhood and nearby trendy suburbs, the district sent parents of middle and high school students a letter warning that kids who are caught face being suspended, could be forced to make restitution and might have their cases forwarded to police.
Warnings sent to parents
Districts in Miami and Scottsdale, Arizona, sent similar warnings to parents.
Cherry Creek spokesperson Abbe Smith said its schools had seen “a handful” of incidents of damage to or theft of soap dispensers, toilet paper dispensers and fire extinguishers.
In southern Alabama, Robertsdale High School’s principal said a student there is facing criminal charges after he was caught on surveillance cameras swiping a fire extinguisher. He also was suspended from school.
Punishments aren’t effective
In Wichita, Kansas, the district has found that punishments like suspensions aren’t effective in stopping such behavior, and community service is the more likely response, said Terri Moses, its director of safety services. The district’s middle schools have lost soap dispensers, paper towels and toilet paper.
And, she said, the district warns students that what they post now could hurt their chances of getting jobs in their early 20s.
“What they’re putting out on social media is giong to be with them for a long time,” Moses said. “We’re trying very hard to relay that.”
Jailed Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny’s Smart Voting app disappeared from Apple and Google stores Friday as Russians began voting in a three-day parliamentary election marked by a historic crackdown on the opposition.
“Removing the Navalny app from stores is a shameful act of political censorship,” top Navalny ally Ivan Zhdanov said on Twitter.
The app promoted an initiative that outlines for Navalny supporters which candidate they should back to unseat Kremlin-aligned politicians.
Russia had accused Google and Apple of election interference, demanding this week that they remove the app from their stores.
Exiled Navalny ally Leonid Volkov said the companies had “caved in to the Kremlin’s blackmail.”
“We have the whole of the Russian state against us and even big tech companies,” Navalny’s team said on Telegram.
In a message from prison, Navalny had urged supporters to download the app, which aims to help Russians to vote out candidates from President Vladimir Putin’s ruling United Russia party in the upcoming polls.
On the eve of the vote his team urged Russian voters to back Communist Party candidates.
Navalny – who was detained in January – has this year seen his organizations declared “extremist” and banned, while all his top aides have fled.
Russia’s media regulator has since barred dozens of websites linked to Navalny including his main website navalny.com.
With China’s new restrictions on minors playing online games, the global gaming industry wonders what’s next. Michelle Quinn reports.
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Sir Clive Sinclair, the British inventor who pioneered the pocket calculator and affordable home computers, died Thursday at age 81.
He died at his home in London a decade after being diagnosed with cancer, U.K. media said, prompting tributes from many who fondly recalled their first experience of computing in the early 1980s.
He was still working on inventions last week “because that was what he loved doing,” his daughter Belinda Sinclair told the BBC. “He was inventive and imaginative, and for him, it was exciting and an adventure. It was his passion.”
Sinclair’s groundbreaking products included the first portable electronic calculator in 1972.
The Sinclair ZX80, which was launched in 1980 and sold for less than £100 at the time, brought home computing to the masses in Britain and beyond.
Other early home computers such as the Apple II cost far more, and Sinclair’s company was the first in the world to sell more than a million machines.
Follow-up models included the ZX Spectrum in 1982, which boasted superior power and a more user-friendly interface, turbocharging the revolution in gaming and programming at home.
British movie director Edgar Wright, whose latest film, Last Night in Soho, premiered in Venice this month, paid tribute to Sinclair on Twitter.
“For someone whose first glimpses of a brave new world were the terrifying graphics of 3D Monster Maze on the ZX81, I’d like to salute tech pioneer Sir Clive Sinclair,” he said. “He made 21st century dreams feel possible. Will bash away on the rubber keys of a Spectrum in your honour. RIP.”
Tom Watson, former deputy leader of Britain’s opposition Labor Party, tweeted: “This man changed the course of my life.
“And arguably, the digital age for us in the UK started with the Sinclair ZX80, when thousands of kids learnt to code using 1k of RAM. For us, the Spectrum was like a Rolls-Royce with 48k.”
However, not all of Sinclair’s inventions were a runaway success.
The Sinclair C5, a battery-powered tricycle touted as the future of eco-friendly transport, became an expensive flop after it was launched in 1985.
But in retrospect, it was ahead of its time, given today’s attention on climate change and the vogue for electric vehicles.
“You cannot exaggerate Sir Clive Sinclair’s influence on the world,” gaming journalist and presenter Dominik Diamond tweeted. “And if we’d all stopped laughing long enough to buy a C5, he’d probably have saved the environment.”
Born in 1940, Sinclair left school at 17, becoming a technical writer creating specialist manuals.
At 22, he formed his first company, making mail-order radio kits, including what was then the world’s smallest transistor radio.
Other ventures included digital watches and an early version of a flat-screen television.
He was knighted in 1983.
Ironically, in a 2013 interview with the BBC, Sinclair revealed that he did not use computers.
“I don’t like distraction,” he explained. “If I had a computer, I’d start thinking I could change this, I could change that, and I don’t want to. My wife very kindly looks after that for me.”
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Jane Powell, the bright-eyed, operatic-voiced star of Hollywood’s golden age musicals who sang with Howard Keel in “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” and danced with Fred Astaire in “Royal Wedding,” has died. She was 92.
Powell died Thursday at her Wilton, Connecticut, home, longtime friend Susan Granger said. Granger said Powell died of natural causes.
Powell performed virtually her whole life, starting about age 5 as a singing prodigy on radio in Portland, Oregon. She made her first movie at 16 and graduated from teenage roles to co-starring in the lavish musical productions that were a 20th-century Hollywood staple.
Her 1950 casting in “Royal Wedding” came by default. June Allyson was first announced as Astaire’s co-star but withdrew when she became pregnant. Judy Garland was cast but was withdrawn because of personal problems. Powell was next in line.
“They had to give it to me,” she quipped at the time. “Everybody else is pregnant.” Also among the expectant MGM stars: Lana Turner, Esther Williams, Cyd Charisse and Jean Hagen.
Powell had just turned 21 when she got the role. Astaire was 50. She was nervous because she lacked dancing experience, but she found him “very patient and understanding. We got along fine from the start.”
Surprise smash
“Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” proved to be a 1954 “sleeper” hit.
“The studio didn’t think it was going to do anything,” she recalled in 2000. “MGM thought that ‘Brigadoon’ was going to be the big moneymaker that year. It didn’t turn out that way. We were the ones that went to the Radio City Music Hall, which was always such a coup.”
The famed New York venue was a movie theater then.
Audiences were overwhelmed by the lusty singing of Keel and Powell, and especially by the gymnastic choreography of Michael Kidd. “Seven Brides” achieved classic status and resulted in a TV series and a Broadway musical.
“Blonde and small and pretty, Jane Powell had the required amount of grit and spunk that was needed to play the woman who could tame seven backwoodsmen,” John Kobal wrote in his book “Gotta Sing Gotta Dance: A Pictorial History of Film Musicals.”
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Three imprisoned Iranian dissidents will be honored next month at Pen America’s annual gala.
The literary and human rights organization announced Thursday that writer-filmmaker Baktash Abtin, novelist-journalist Keyvan Bajan and author-critic Reza Khandan Mahabadi are this year’s recipients of the 2021 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award. All three are members of the anti-censorship Iranian Writers Association and are serving a collective 15.5 years on charges including endangering national security and “spreading propaganda.”
“Baktash Abtin, Keyvan Bajan, and Reza Khandan Mahabadi are embodiments of the spirit that animates our work at PEN America.” They are writers who are called not only to offer prose and ideas on a page, but to live fearlessly — and sacrifice immensely in service of the liberties that underpin free thought, art, culture, and creativity,” PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel said in a statement.
“By taking up the mantle of leadership within Iran’s literary community, they have served as beacons for countless authors and thinkers whose ability to imagine, push boundaries, and challenge repression under the most dangerous conditions is fed by the knowledge that they do not stand alone.”
The PEN gala is scheduled for Oct. 5 at its longtime venue the American Museum of Natural History, with Awkwafina serving as host and others receiving awards including scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Walt Disney Chairman Robert Iger. Last year’s ceremony was held online because of the pandemic.
The Freedom to Write Award, given to artists and writers jailed for their work, has been awarded to Russian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov and the Chinese writer-activist Xu Zhiyong among others. According to PEN, 44 out of the previous 48 honorees have since been freed.
PEN has not yet determined who will accept the award on behalf of this year’s winners.
The United Nations says 117 million students worldwide are still out of school due to the coronavirus pandemic that began more than a year-and-a half ago.
In a statement Thursday, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization said the number of students who have yet to return to the classroom represents about 7.5% of the global student population.
“We know that the longer schools stay closed, the more dramatic and potentially irreversible the impact on children’s well-being and learning, especially for the most vulnerable and marginalized,” said Assistant UNESCO Director-General for Education, Stefania Giannini.
Giannini said it is “encouraging” that many governments are working to safely reopen schools but added, “Our utmost and urgent aim must be to reopen schools everywhere, for all students.”
UNESCO said schools have fully reopened in 117 countries, allowing 35% of the world’s students ranging from pre-primary to secondary levels to return to the classroom. In September 2020, 16% received in-class instruction when schools in only 94 of the world’s 195 countries had reopened.
The organization said prolonged and repeated closures have caused lost learning opportunities and a rise in drop-out rates, factors that have adversely affected “the most vulnerable students disproportionately.”
Remedial and hybrid learning, teacher support and bridging the digital divide are key components of building resilient education systems, UNESCO said.
The group also said it is collaborating with the United Nations Children’s Fund and the World Bank to help governments reopen schools and run programs aimed at helping students “catch up on lost learning.”
Some information in this report was provided by The Associated Press and Reuters.
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The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, is calling for a moratorium on the sale and use of artificial intelligence systems, which she says pose a serious risk to human rights. The High Commissioner’s report, which will be submitted to the U.N. human rights council, provides an analysis of how advances in digital technologies are affecting people’s human rights. The report argues that artificial intelligence, or AI, can be a force for good, but also can be overly intrusive and have negative, even catastrophic, effects on people’s right to privacy and other human rights. Peggy Hicks, director of thematic engagement at the U.N. Human Rights Office, says AI systems can be faulty and have embedded biases. These, she says, can lead to discrimination that might jeopardize job prospects or welfare and social security benefits. She says there are numerous cases of people being treated unjustly because of the faulty use of AI in law enforcement, national security, and criminal justice and border management areas. “We see AI being used for profiling and suspect identification,” she said. “Biometric technology, such as facial recognition and emotional recognition, are being used, including remotely in real time to identify people — with documented cases of erroneous identification and disproportionate impact on certain groups, often minorities.” The report notes biometric technologies increasingly are being used by governments, international organizations, and technology companies to identify people in real time and from a distance. This potentially allows unlimited tracking of individuals. Hicks says the High Commissioner specifically recommends a moratorium on the use of remote biometric recognition technology in public spaces given the serious threats to public freedoms associated with such surveillance. “Without immediate and far-reaching shifts and how we address AI deployment and development, the existing harms will multiply at scale and with speed,” she said. “And the worst part of it is, we will not even know the extent of the problem because there is so little transparency around artificial intelligence and its use.” U.N. rights chief Bachelet says there needs to be much greater transparency by companies and states in how they are developing and using AI. She says the power of AI to serve people is undeniable, but so is its ability to invade their privacy and violate human rights on an enormous scale and with virtually no visibility.
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Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney on Wednesday told U.S. lawmakers she feels betrayed by FBI agents, after they failed to seriously investigate former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, despite her telling them he had sexually abused her. Maroney is one of four athletes, along with Simone Biles, Aly Raisman and Maggie Nichols, who testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee as it probes the FBI’s mishandling of the investigation. Maroney recalled how in 2015 she spent three hours on the phone telling the FBI the details of her story that her own mother had not even heard, including accounts of sexual abuse she endured during the Olympic Games in London. It was not until July of this year, however, that she said the United States Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney testifies during a Senate Judiciary hearing about the Inspector General’s report on the Larry Nassar investigation on Capitol Hill, Sept. 15, 2021.”Not only did the FBI not report my abuse, but when they eventually documented my report 17 months later, they made entirely false claims about what I said,” Maroney said, with anger in her voice. Wednesday’s hearing comes after the Justice Department’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz in July issued a report which blasted the FBI for United States Olympic gymnast Simone Biles testifies during a Senate Judiciary hearing on Capitol Hill, Sept. 15, 2021.Olympian Biles blasted USA Gymnastics and the FBI in blunt, tearful testimony on Wednesday for standing by while Nassar abused her and hundreds of other athletes. “We have been failed and we deserve answers,” Biles told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “It really feels like the FBI turned a blind eye to us,” she said. Maroney, meanwhile, called on the Justice Department to explain its decision not to prosecute the FBI agents. Nassar, who had been the main doctor for Olympic gymnasts, was sentenced in federal court in 2017 to 60 years in prison on charges of possessing child sex abuse material. The following year, he was also sentenced up to 175 years and up to 125 years, respectively, in two separate Michigan courts for molesting female gymnasts under his care. Prosecutors have estimated he sexually assaulted hundreds of women.
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Comedian Norm Macdonald, a former “Saturday Night Live” writer and performer who was “Weekend Update” host when former U.S. President Bill Clinton and O.J. Simpson provided comic fodder during the 1990s, has died. Macdonald, who was 61, died Tuesday after having cancer for nine years but kept it private, according to Brillstein Entertainment Partners, his management firm in Los Angeles. He never reached the same television heights after being fired from “SNL” in 1998 but was an indefatigable stand-up comic and popular talk show guest whose death provoked an outpouring from fellow comedians. “Norm was in a comedy genre of his own,” tweeted Sarah Silverman. “No one like him on this planet. Please do yourself a favor and watch his stuff.” Macdonald, the son of two schoolteachers, was raised in Quebec City, Canada. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau offered his condolences, calling Macdonald “a comedic genius and a great Canadian.” FILE – Colin Quinn, from left, Chevy Chase and Norm Macdonald appear onstage at The 2012 Comedy Awards in New York, April 28, 2012.Macdonald was a stand-up comic and briefly a writer for the sitcom “Roseanne” when he was picked to join the cast of “SNL” in 1993. He became known for his esoteric impressions, including actor Burt Reynolds, who gave comedian Will Ferrell’s Alex Trebek character grief on “Celebrity Jeopardy.” He also impersonated former U.S. Senator Bob Dole, television and radio host Larry King, and comedian and talk show host David Letterman. His deadpan style and skills as a writer made him the choice to host “Weekend Update.” Simpson was a favorite target. Macdonald opened the fake newscast the week of the former football star’s acquittal on murder charges by saying, “Well, it’s finally official. Murder is legal in the state of California.” “SNL” executive producer Lorne Michaels, speaking for the show, called Macdonald “one of the most impactful comedic voices of his or any other generation.” “There are so many things that we’ll miss about Norm — from his unflinching integrity to his generosity to his consistent ability to surprise,” he said. “But most of all, he was just plain funny. No one was funny like Norm.” Macdonald was fired in the middle of the season in 1998 by NBC Entertainment executive Don Ohlmeyer, a friend of Simpson’s who reportedly didn’t appreciate Macdonald making Simpson the near-constant butt of jokes. “I was never bitter,” Macdonald said in the oral history “Live From New York,” released in 2002. “I always understood that Ohlmeyer could fire me because he was the guy who owned the cameras. So, that didn’t bother me. I was always happy that ‘SNL’ gave me a chance.” He said in the same book, “I just like doing jokes I like, and if the audience doesn’t like them, they’re wrong, not me.” Ohlmeyer said that was his problem. “When ‘Saturday Night Live’ is really good, they do care what the audience thinks,” he said. “And when ‘Saturday Night Live’ is not really good, they’re kind of doing it for themselves and their pals.” FILE – Host Norm Macdonald removes a pancake from a spoof “swag bag” at the 2016 Canadian Screen Awards in Toronto, Ontario, March 13, 2016.Macdonald announced his firing on Letterman’s show. During a commercial break, Letterman asked him, “This is like some Andy Kaufman thing with fake wrestling, right?” Macdonald recalled. But it wasn’t. Letterman was a fan who made Macdonald one of the guests in the CBS “Late Show” host’s final run of shows. In 2016, Letterman told The Washington Post that the show would have had Macdonald on every week “if we could.” “He is funny in a way that some people inhale and exhale,” Letterman told the Post. “With others, you can tell the comedy, the humor is considered. With Norm, he exudes it … There may be people as funny as Norm, but I don’t know anybody who is funnier.” The Post’s story was headlined, “Will Somebody Please Give Norm Macdonald Another Show?” As if to answer, Netflix two years later aired 10 episodes of an interview series, “Norm Macdonald Has a Show.” Guests included Letterman, Michaels, actress Jane Fonda and Judge Judy Sheindlin. He had limited success in other TV ventures. He created and starred in the ABC sitcom “The Norm Show,” later shortened to “Norm,” playing a former professional hockey player kicked out of the league for gambling and tax evasion and forced into community service as a social worker. A Comedy Central show, “Sports Show with Norm Macdonald,” lasted only a handful of episodes, but he kept busy in comedy clubs. “In my mind, I’m just a stand-up,” he told The New York Times in 2018. “But other people don’t think that. They think, ‘Oh, the guy from ‘SNL’ is doing stand-up now.'” In a 2011 comedy special, Macdonald said it was wrong to say you “lost your battle” with cancer when you died. “I’m not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure that if you die, the cancer also dies at exactly the same time,” he said. “That, to me, is not a loss. That’s a draw.” Comedian Jim Carrey tweeted that Macdonald was “an honest and courageous comedy genius.” Actor and comedian Seth Rogen said when he started acting, he essentially ripped off Macdonald’s delivery. “No one could make you break like Norm Macdonald,” comedian Jon Stewart said on Twitter. “Hilarious and unique.”
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U.S. warnings to Russian President Vladimir Putin over shielding cybercriminals holed up in Russia appear to have made little impact, according to top U.S. law enforcement and cyber officials. “There is no indication that the Russian government has taken action to crack down on ransomware actors that are operating in the permissive environment that they’ve created there,” Paul Abbate, deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said Tuesday at an intelligence summit just outside Washington. “We’ve asked for help and cooperation with those who we know are in Russia, who we have indictments against, and we’ve seen no action,” Abbate said. “So, I would say that nothing’s changed in that regard.” U.S. President Joe Biden has twice called on the Russian leader to take action against cybercriminals operating out of Russia — first at a summit in June in Geneva and again in a phone call a month later. FILE – President Joe Biden, right, and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet at the Villa la Grange, in Geneva, Switzerland, June 16, 2021.”I made it very clear to him that the United States expects when a ransomware operation is coming from his soil, even though it’s not sponsored by the state, we expect them to act if we give them enough information to act on who that is,” Biden told reporters following the July phone call.Biden, Putin Discuss Ransomware Attacks From Russia Biden warns of consequences if attacks continueSince the initial talks, senior White House officials have noted a decrease in ransomware attacks, though they have been hesitant to attribute the change to any action by Moscow. “The present absence of criminal activity should not be confused with solid policing,” U.S. National Cyber Director Chris Inglis told an audience later Tuesday. “There’s still a monetary incentive and possibly a geopolitical incentive to allow that to come back,” he said, pushing back against calls for the U.S. to go on the offensive. “There is a sense that we can perhaps fire some cyber bullets and kind of shoot our way out of this. That will be useful in certain circumstances if we have a clear shot at a cyber aggressor and it could take them offline,” Inglis said. “That’s not going to affect the leadership that allows this to happen.” “We have to figure out what is it that matters to Putin and the oligarchs and how do we change their decision calculus,” he added. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied any role in a series of ransomware and cyberattacks against U.S. companies and infrastructure. And following the Biden-Putin call in July, it issued a statement supporting collaboration on cybersecurity, calling for such efforts to “be permanent, professional and nonpoliticized and should be conducted via special communication channels … and with respect to international law.” New: Discussions w/#Russia on #cyber continue, per Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber Anne Neuberger@POTUS “looking for action” she says, adding US must also focus on “doing everything we can to lock our digital doors”— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) September 2, 2021The U.S. blames Russia or Russian-based cyber actors for a series of high-profile hacks and ransomware attacks, including the December 2020 hack of SolarWinds, a U.S.-based software management company, and for the May 7 ransomware attack against Colonial Pipeline, the largest fuel pipeline operator in the U.S. U.S. officials have blamed the GRU for targeting the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 elections and the pharmaceutical companies developing vaccines against the coronavirus. US, Britain Warn of Russian ‘Brute Force’ Cyber CampaignUS officials urge agencies and organizations to take basic precautions as a first step in fighting backAsked Tuesday whether the U.S. has reached the point where it is ready to take action against Russia, the commander of U.S. Cyber Command deferred to the White House. “That’s obviously for the president to decide,” CYBERCOM’s General Paul Nakasone said. “But those options certainly will be provided for his consideration.” VOA’s Masood Farivar contributed to this report.
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Apple released a critical software patch to fix a security vulnerability that researchers said could allow hackers to directly infect iPhones and other Apple devices without any user action.
Researchers at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab said the security issue was exploited to plant spyware on a Saudi activist’s iPhone. They said they had high confidence that the world’s most infamous hacker-for-hire firm, Israel’s NSO Group, was behind that attack.
The previously unknown vulnerability affected all major Apple devices — iPhones, Macs and Apple Watches — the researchers said. NSO Group responded with a one-sentence statement saying it will continue providing tools for fighting “terror and crime.”
It was the first time a so-called “zero-click” exploit — one that doesn’t require users to click on suspect links or open infected files — has been caught and analyzed, the researchers said. They found the malicious code on September 7 and immediately alerted Apple. The targeted activist asked to remain anonymous, they said.
“We’re not necessarily attributing this attack to the Saudi government,” said researcher Bill Marczak.
Citizen Lab previously found evidence of zero-click exploits being used to hack into the phones of Al-Jazeera journalists and other targets but hasn’t previously seen the malicious code itself.
Although security experts say that average iPhone, iPad and Mac user generally need not worry — such attacks tend to be limited to specific targets — the discovery still alarmed security professionals.
Malicious image files were transmitted to the activist’s phone via the iMessage instant-messaging app before it was hacked with NSO’s Pegasus spyware, which opens a phone to eavesdropping and remote data theft, Marczak said. It was discovered during a second examination of the phone, which forensics showed had been infected in March. He said the malicious file causes devices to crash.
Citizen Lab says the case reveals, once again, that NSO Group is allowing its spyware to be used against ordinary civilians.
In a blog post, Apple said it was issuing a security update for iPhones and iPads because a “maliciously crafted” PDF file could lead to them being hacked. It said it was aware that the issue may have been exploited and cited Citizen Lab.
In a subsequent statement, Apple security chief Ivan Krstić commended Citizen Lab and said such exploits “are not a threat to the overwhelming majority of our users.” He noted, as he has in the past, that such exploits typically cost millions of dollars to develop and often have a short shelf life.
Apple didn’t respond to questions regarding whether this was the first time it had patched a zero-click vulnerability.
Users should get alerts on their iPhones prompting them to update the phone’s iOS software. Those who want to jump the gun can go into the phone settings, click “General” then “Software Update,” and trigger the patch update directly.
Citizen Lab called the iMessage exploit FORCEDENTRY and said it was effective against Apple iOS, MacOS and WatchOS devices. It urged people to immediately install security updates.
Researcher John Scott-Railton said the news highlights the importance of securing popular messaging apps against such attacks.
“Chat apps are increasingly becoming a major way that nation-states and mercenary hackers are gaining access to phones,” he said. “And, it’s why it’s so important that companies focus on making sure that they are as locked down as possible.”
The researchers said it also undermines NSO Group’s claims that it only sells its spyware to law enforcement officials for use against criminals and terrorists and audits its customers to ensure it’s not abused.
“If Pegasus was only being used against criminals and terrorists, we never would have found this stuff,” said Marczak.
Facebook’s WhatsApp also was allegedly targeted by an NSO zero-click exploit. In October 2019, Facebook sued NSO in U.S. federal court for allegedly targeting some 1,400 users of the encrypted messaging service with spyware.
In July, a global media consortium published a damning report on how clients of NSO Group have been spying for years on journalists, human rights activists, political dissidents, and people close to them, with the hacker-for-hire group directly involved in the targeting.
Amnesty International said it confirmed 37 successful Pegasus infections based on a leaked targeting list whose origin was not disclosed.One case involved the fiancee of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi just four days after he was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018. The CIA attributed the murder to the Saudi government.
The recent revelations also prompted calls for an investigation into whether Hungary’s right-wing government used Pegasus to secretly monitor critical journalists, lawyers and business figures. India’s parliament also erupted in protests as opposition lawmakers accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of using NSO Groups’ product to spy on political opponents and others.
France also is trying to get to the bottom of allegations that President Emmanuel Macron and members of his government may have been targeted in 2019 by an unidentified Moroccan security service using Pegasus.
Morocco, a key French ally, denied those reports and is taking legal action to counter allegations implicating the North African kingdom in the spyware scandal.
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A robot called Moxi is helping nurses and hospital staff focus more on patients by taking care of menial tasks. The VOA’s Deana Mitchell has the story.
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