Kenya took its first step into space with the launch Friday of a nano-satellite made at the University of Nairobi. Engineers involved in creating the cube-shaped space capsule described it as Kenya’s joining the space club, although much remains to be done to get the Kenya space program off the ground. VOA’s Daniel Schearf reports from Nairobi.
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A 1917 painting by Amedeo Modigliani of a reclining nude woman that was once considered obscene in Paris sold for over $157 million at an auction in Manhattan on Monday.
“Nu couche (sur le cote gauche)” was the highlight of Sotheby’s “Impressionist & Modern Art” sale featuring Pablo Picasso works spanning seven decades, and paintings by Claude Monet, Edvard Munch and Georgia O’Keeffe.
Modigliani shocked Europe at the turn of the 19th century with his series of 22 nudes reclining in every possible position. When the Italian-born, Jewish artist’s nudes were unveiled at a Paris gallery, police demanded that it be shut down, offended by the unflinching strokes of his oil brush that thrust art’s nude figure into the modern era.
In the past half-dozen years, prices for Modigliani’s works have soared, from $26 million the current owner paid for “Nu couche (sur le cote gauche)” in 2003 to as much as $170 million.
Picasso’s “Le Repos,” an image of his lover and “golden muse,” Marie-Therese Walter, sold for $40 million. It was one of 11 Picasso works that were offered Monday evening.
Claude Monet’s “Matinee sur la Seine” (Morning on the Seine), part of a lineup of river landscapes he painted while on a boat, capturing the changing light from sunrise to a lightning storm, brought in $20.6 million.
Both Munch’s “Summer Night” and O’Keeffe “Lake George with White Birch” each fetched over $11 million.
Modigliani’s painting, which had the highest pre-auction estimate at $150 million, was still well short of the record for the most expensive painting ever sold.
Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” sold last year at Christie’s for $450 million.
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According to the University of California, in 1950 the world produced about two million tons of plastic products. By 2015 the production increased to 380 million tons. If it continues at this pace by 2050 the weight of plastic waste in the world’s oceans may equal that of all fish. Researchers in the Netherlands say they have found an efficient and environmentally safe way for stopping plastic trash floating in rivers from entering our oceans: Bubbles. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Tesla’s chief executive officer told employees on Monday the company is undergoing a “thorough reorganization,” as it contends with questions over its production schedule and two crashes last week involving its electric, self-driving cars.
CEO Elon Musk said in an email that as part of the reorganization it was “flattening the management structure to improve communication, combining functions where sensible and trimming activities that are not vital to the success of our mission” in an email that was confirmed by Tesla after being disclosed earlier by the Wall Street Journal.
Senior Tesla executives have departed or cut back work
Waymo, Alphabet Inc’s self-driving unit, said on Sunday that Matthew Schwall had joined the company from Tesla, where he was the electric carmaker’s main technical contact with U.S. safety investigators. Last week, Tesla said Doug Field, senior vice president of engineering, was taking time off to recharge.
Tesla is at a critical juncture as it tries to fix production problems that have slowed the rollout of its Model 3 sedan, a mid-market car seen as key to the company’s success, and as it expands on other fronts.
The company has registered a new car firm in Shanghai, China, in a likely step toward production in China.
Musk said on a May 2 earnings call that the company was “going to conduct sort of a reorganization restructuring of the company … this month and make sure we’re well set up to achieve that goal.”
He added that “the number of sort of third-party contracting companies that we’re using has really gotten out of control, so we’re going to scrub the barnacles on that front. It’s pretty crazy. You’ve got barnacles on barnacles. So there’s going to be a lot of barnacle removal.”
Tesla will still rapidly hire critical positions “to support the Model 3 production ramp and future product development,” Musk said in the email.
Tesla faces a variety of issues
Investors gave a rare rebuke to Musk after he cut off analysts on the earnings call asking about profit potential, sending shares down 5 percent despite promises that production of the troubled Model 3 was on track.
In the latest of two reported crashes last week that have drawn attention, a Tesla Model S sedan was traveling at 60 miles per hour (97 km per hour) when it smashed into a fire truck stopped at a red light in South Jordan, Utah, about 20 miles south of Salt Lake City on Friday night, police said on Monday.
National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Keith Holloway said on Monday “at this point it doesn’t appear that NTSB is investigating” the Utah crash.
The Tesla driver suffered a broken ankle and was taken to a hospital while the firefighter was not injured, the police said.
Witnesses said the Tesla sedan did not brake prior to impact, police said in a statement, adding it was unknown if the Autopilot feature in the Model S was engaged at the time.
“Tesla has not yet received any data from the car and thus does not know the facts of what occurred, including whether Autopilot was engaged,” the company said in a statement on Monday.
The NTSB said last week it was investigating a Tesla accident in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on May 8 that killed two teenagers and injured another — the agency’s fourth active probe into crashes of the company’s electric vehicles.
Autopilot, a form of advanced cruise control, handles some driving tasks and warns those behind the wheel they are always responsible for the vehicle’s safe operation, Tesla has said.
A U.S. traffic safety regulator on May 2 contradicted Tesla’s claim that the agency had found that its Autopilot technology significantly reduced crashes.
Tesla shares dipped 0.5 percent to $299.45 on Monday.
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As the sun sets Tuesday, Muslims will begin observing the fasting month of Ramadan, the holiest on the Islamic calendar. They abstain from food and water from dawn to dusk, pray, and recite Quran.
But, there is also a fun, festive side of the observance. That’s the social gatherings for family and friends when they break their fast each evening, known as “Iftar.” There are also special treats for kids who haven’t yet reached the age when they are required to fast. And many Muslim families put up Ramadan decorations.
Though it’s not a religious requirement, decorating the house for Ramadan is a lovely, must-do tradition for Inas El Ayouby, who lives in Vienna, Virginia, with her family.
“It gives my house such a nice, warm feeling and it makes it an extra special time,” she explains. “And it’s amazing how the decorations have the ability to create such a great delightful atmosphere and joyful mood throughout the month.”
Decorations, she adds, are especially important for children, teaching them about the month and making them love and anticipate it every year.
To El Ayouby, who loves decorating her house for various occasions, from birthdays and Thanksgiving to Easter and the Fourth of July, says decorations are part of any celebration. Growing up in Egypt, El Ayouby recalls how her mother used to be creative, designing and making Ramadan decorations herself, as they were not sold in stores.
That’s what she did when her two kids were young, growing in America, when Ramadan was not a well-known event to non-Muslims.
“I used to get most of my Ramadan decorations from Egypt where it’s become a huge business and lucrative market. I also used to go to nearby craft stores. I also used to go on line and get beautiful post cards with different scenes of Ramadan, really beautiful. I print them out and put them in colorful frames, like red, blue and yellow to add to the decorations.”
Party City makes it easier
This year, when the U.S. retail chain Party City introduced its Ramadan decorations line, El Ayouby was excited.
“Everybody just went crazy. I can see all my friends on Facebook saying, go to Party City, go buy Ramadan stuff, you’re going to find lovely things.”
“I was able to get the hanging decorations, the balloons, the napkins and plates, which is great because in the past, I used to get solid red-color paper plates and use colorful napkins to go with it to add some coloring. Now, we have the whole theme from Party City. That’s really great.”
Ryan Vero, Party City’s president of retail, says the company created its Ramadan line based on requests from customers. “We always look to support our customers in all of their party needs, for every type of celebration or event,” he says. “We listened to our customers and recognized an opportunity to fill this underserved category of party good items.”
And, he notes, it’s a lucrative market, with about five million Muslims living in North America, according to a 2014 study by the American Muslim Consumer Consortium.
The new line includes tableware, banners, decals, gift bags and balloons in purple, blue, green and gold, embellished with mosques, stars and crescent drawings. Beside Ramadan decorations, the company also offers similar items commemorating Eid, the end of month celebration.
“At this time, our decorations are predominantly sold out, both online, and in our stores,” Vero says. “We were extremely pleased with the response and are working to get them back in stores.”
Ramadan decorations in the classroom
El Ayouby also bought Ramadan decorations for her grandson, Jad, who is in second grade.
“Over the past few years, his mother has been doing in-class Ramadan presentations. She takes the decorations like the balloons, the plates and stuff in addition to food, juice and paper activity to his classroom. She takes a basket full of dates, and she tells all about Ramadan.”
With major public attention paid to the Christmas and Hanukkah holidays, she says this recognition gives Muslim children a sense of inclusion.
“With the decorations and other stuff, they feel they are integral part of the community and that their religious occasions are explained and celebrated.”
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Drake is going on tour.
The 31-year-old announced the “Aubrey and The Three Amigos Tour” on Monday. Drake will be joined by “Walk It Talk It” collaborators Migos and special guests on the North American leg through the summer and fall.
The 41-date tour starts July 26 in Salt Lake City.
Drake has released the singles “God’s Plan” and “Nice For What” ahead of his anticipated fifth studio album “Scorpion.”
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Viewers hoping Wim Wenders’ documentary about Pope Francis will be a critical portrait of the head of the Catholic Church will be disappointed. The German director makes no excuses for the fact this is a work of love for a man he respects.
Wenders, who won the Palme d’Or for “Paris, Texas” in 1984, has made several successful documentaries, including “Buena Vista Social Club” about the Cuban music scene, and “Pina” on dance choreographer Pina Bausch – subjects that, like the pope, are things he has great affection for.
“I didn’t want to make a critical film about him, other people do that really well, television does it all the time,” Wenders told Reuters in Cannes where “Pope Francis – a Man of His Word” had its premiere.
“My documentaries are expressions of love and affection for something that I want to share with the world … Right now I think there is nobody who has more important things to say to us [than] the pope, so I wanted to share that.”
“We are living in an utterly immoral time and our political leaders, powerful leaders, are emotional dwarfs. So I wanted to have this emotional giant talk to us.”
Jorge Mario Bergoglio, born in Argentina in 1936, became pope in 2013 after the unexpected resignation of Pope Benedict.
He chose his papal name after Francis of Assisi, a figure Wenders calls “a revolutionary” for his work with the poor and nature.
“Today Saint Francis would be the first ecologist of the world. Pope Francis took on a heavy duty prog by choosing that name,” Wenders said.
He filmed four two-hour interviews with Francis in which the pope talked directly into camera.
He said a kind of “teleprompter in reverse” allowed him to get that intimate look, by imposing Wenders’ face on a transparent screen with a camera behind it “so by looking into my eyes he sees everybody’s eyes”.
“This man communicates in such an honest direct and spontaneous way … even with the greatest actors you find that very rarely,” Wenders said.
With no prerequisites from the Vatican, Wenders insists his film is more than a promotional video.
“It is not propaganda,” he said.
“It’s not a commission. I was free to do what I wanted to do and this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to give a platform for his work, period.”
The Cannes Film Festival runs to May 19.
Margot Kidder, the Canadian actress who starred as a salty and cynical Lois Lane opposite Christopher Reeve in the “Superman” film franchise of the 1970s and 1980s, has died. She was 69.
Kidder’s manager Camilla Fluxman Pines said she died peacefully in her sleep on Sunday. Police in Livingston, Montana, said in a statement that officers were called to Kidder’s home, where they found her dead. An autopsy will be performed to determine the cause, but no foul play is suspected.
“Superman,” directed by Richard Donner and released in 1978, was a superhero blockbuster two decades before comic book movies became the norm at the top of the box office. Makers of today’s Marvel and D.C. films cite “Superman” as an essential inspiration.
Kidder, as ace reporter Lane, was a salty, sexually savvy adult who played off of the boyish, farm-raised charm of Reeve’s Clark Kent, though her dogged journalism constantly got her into dangerous scrapes that required old-fashioned rescues.
Kidder had many of the movies’ most memorable lines, including “You’ve got me?! Who’s got you?!” when she first encountered the costumed hero as she and a helicopter plunged from the top of a Metropolis building.
Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige called the moment “the best cinematic superhero save in the history of film” at an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences event honoring Donner last year.
Kidder and Reeve were relative unknowns when they got their leading parts in the first of the films in 1978, which also included big names Gene Hackman and Marlon Brando.
Kidder and Reeve went on to star in three more “Superman” movies, the fourth and last in 1987.
She said she and Reeve, who died in 2004, were like brother and sister, both in their affection and animosity for each other.
“We quarreled all the time,” Kidder said May 9 in an interview on radio station WWJ in Detroit, where she had been scheduled to appear at Motor City Comic Con later this month. “The crew would be embarrassed. They would look away. Then we’d play chess or something because we were also really good friends.”
Both would remain known almost entirely for their “Superman” roles and struggled to find other major parts.
Kidder also had a small part in 1975’s “The Great Waldo Pepper” with Robert Redford, and starred as conjoined twins in Brian De Palma’s 1973 “Sisters,” and as the mother of a terrorized family opposite James Brolin in 1979’s “The Amityville Horror.”
Mark Hamill was among those tweeting tributes to Kidder on Monday.
“On-screen she was magic,” the “Star Wars” actor said. “Off-screen she was one of the kindest, sweetest, most caring woman I’ve ever known.”
B-movie buffs say 1974’s “Black Christmas,” with Kidder as a sorority sister, is a must-watch.
“It introduced some elements that are now genre tropes and she’s fantastic in it,” comedian and actor Kumail Nanjiani said on Twitter Monday.
Kidder had a debilitating car accident in 1990 that left her badly in debt, confined her to a wheelchair for most of two years and worsened the mental illness she had struggled with for much of her life.
That struggle became public in 1996 when she was found dazed and filthy in a yard not far from the studio where she once filmed parts of “Superman.”
She fought through her illness and continued working, however, appearing in small films and television shows and amassing credits until 2017, most notably “R.L. Stine’s the Haunting Hour,” which earned her a Daytime Emmy Award as outstanding performer in a kids’ series in 2015.
“I don’t act much anymore unless I’m broke, and then I’ll take a job,” she told the Detroit radio station with a laugh.
She spent the last decades of her life living in Montana and engaging in political activism, including protesting the U.S. military action in Iraq.
Kidder was born in Yellowknife, Canada, and graduated from a Toronto boarding school before pursuing acting.
She dated then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in the 1980s, calling him the “love of my life, my true love” in her radio interview last week.
Kidder was married and divorced three times, including a brief marriage to actor John Heard, and is survived by a daughter, Maggie McGuane.
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Fans of the high school musical Grease are in for a treat if they can make it to the French Riviera this week.
The movie will be screened on the beach Wednesday to celebrate its 40th anniversary. And fans might get a glimpse of its star, John Travolta, who is back in Cannes promoting his new film, Gotti, about a New York gangster.
In 1978, Travolta, already a global sensation thanks to Saturday Night Fever, came to the Cannes Film Festival to promote Grease, a huge hit that also made him a music star with songs from the soundtrack dominating the charts.
“The mid-point was Pulp Fiction, so it was 40 year, 20 year and now today,” Travolta reminisced.
“My mother always told me when I was younger: ‘Don’t rush things, it’s going to go very fast’, and boom, here I am,” he told Reuters.
“I’ve lived a long life, but it has really gone fast.”
Cult crime flick Pulp Fiction won Cannes’ Palme d’Or top prize in 1994, giving a second wind to Travolta’s career.
In his new film, Travolta plays John Gotti, a gangster boss who died in 2002. Travolta’s wife, Kelly Preston, co-stars as Gotti’s wife and the mother of their son who refuses to follow his father into the mob.
“He is very different from what I am and who I am and how I think and my values,” Travolta said of playing the gangster.
“It’s a completely different person — that’s something fun to play.”
Getting the film made, he said, was far less fun: “The challenges kept on knocking us down — different directors, different casts, different scripts — one was too shoot-’em-up, one was too family,” he said.
“People like challenges and I was willing to stay with it ’til we saw it through.”
The Cannes Film Festival runs until May 19.
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Thousands of people are using their smartphones to experience the devastation of urban conflict through an augmented reality app which aims to raise awareness of the suffering faced by millions trapped by war, the app’s developer said on Monday.
Launched by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in March, “Enter the room” provides a visceral, first-person experience of war through the eyes of child from their bedroom.
While there are numerous apps being designed by aid groups, this is the first known use of augmented reality (AR) by the humanitarian sector to simulate civilian life at war. The app has been downloaded more than 50,000 times since its launch.
Entering through a portal on the screen of their device, users experience the impact of years of fighting in accelerated time as the virtual child’s bedroom room transforms from a place of light and laughter to one of darkness and suffering.
“It (AR) makes war real in a powerful and new way and pushes the audience to really think about this question: What if this happened to your childhood bedroom, or your son or daughter’s?” said the ICRC’s Digital Content Manager Ariel Rubin.
“We spend our lives on our smartphones, walking around with our eyes glued to them. There is something incredibly moving about mapping this virtual reality onto our actual reality “and within that creating a narrative that tells a real story.”
Around 65 million people are fleeing conflict in countries like Syria and Yemen today – 75 percent of whom live in cities, where battles are increasingly taking place, says the ICRC.
Yet many of urban conflicts are being waged using weaponry designed for open battlefields, say aid workers, resulting in greater destruction in these highly populated towns and cities.
As a result, vital infrastructure from medical facilities to basic services such as electricity and water are being hit.
In Yemen, for example, there has been a total collapse of the healthcare system, water and sewage network, the food chain, and the most basic building blocks for a healthy and functioning society – all because of the war, said Rubin.
“It is easy to get lost in the numbers and forget that each and every number represents a human being. Many of them are children who see their bedrooms, homes, their childhoods be totally destroyed by war,” he said.
“Our hope is that the AR app will help connect people to this reality that millions of people are facing every day in their cities.”
Augmented reality apps for gaming such as Pokémon GO have become increasingly popular in recent years, but they are also being developed as online shopping and education tools.
Preliminary reviews of ‘Enter the room’ have been largely positive.
“The chance to use augmented reality to generate empathy towards the victims of these ignored conflicts is an exciting application of this new technology,” said one user’s review on Apple’s App Store.
“Hopefully, it can lead to meaningful change in the world’s response to the continuing slaughter of innocents in places like Syria, Central African Republic, Sudan and Yemen.”
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Some of the biggest automakers in Europe are joining forces to build a highway network of fast-charging stations they hope will boost sales of electric vehicles.
The idea is to let drivers plug in, charge in minutes instead of hours, and speed off again — from Norway to southern Italy, and Portugal to Poland.
Much is at stake for the automakers, which include Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler and Ford. Their joint venture, Munich-based Ionity, is pushing to roll out its network in time to service the next generation of battery-only cars coming on the market starting next year from Volkswagen’s Porsche and Audi, BMW and Daimler.
They’re aiming to win back some of the market share for electric luxury car sales lost to Tesla, which has its own, proprietary fast-charging network.
Imagine storing digital data in DNA, wearing a device that makes you smarter or creating new materials by manipulating the genes of microbes.
These ideas may sound like science fiction, but scientists are working on technologies that combine what they know about biology and altering it with the help of artificial intelligence. Their work was presented at the 2018 Milken Institute Global Conference during a panel called “Things That Will Blow Your Mind.”
“The machine finds stuff in biology that a human would never find,” Joshua Hoffman, co-founder and chief executive officer of Zymergen, said.
The company is conducting experiments that would never have been possible just a few years ago, Hoffman said.
Manipulating microbial genes
Zymergen uses computers to design experiments that manipulate the genes of microbes so the chemicals they produce can make stronger or better materials.
“We use automation and machine learning to engineer microbes, little single-cell creatures to turn them into the chemical factories of the future,” Hoffman said. “What we’re doing is we’re searching the genome for the things that might work. What machine learning does is it looks for patterns that a human wouldn’t find in ways that are more likely than not to have the genetic changes in the genome that are going to have the impact, the trait that we want.”
He said what takes humans years to discover, computers can do in just months. The bulk of Zymergen’s work is with the chemicals and materials industry as well as with agricultural companies.
“We can work to increase the effectiveness of crop protection agents so herbicides, fungicides, those sorts of things. We can reduce the toxicity of agents that seem to work but actually cause other kinds of problems,” Hoffman added.
Enhancing the human brain
Instead of enhancing microbes, theoretical neuroscientist Vivienne Ming spoke extensively about improving the human brain.
“What I’m interested in is cognitive prosthetics. Can I literally jam something in your brain and make you smarter?” asked Ming, who founded the think tank Socos Labs.
“How much you can think about, pay attention to, mentally operate on at any given moment – we’ve actually found that we can increase that by about 15 percent,” she said.
Laboratories around the world are already conducting research on different types of external noninvasive brain stimulation for autism, to treat depression and to improve the brain’s cognitive abilities.
Ming said one application for improving cognition is to level the playing field for underprivileged children.
“For that hour that they may be spending in a remedial class, we might actually be able to use that technology that brings them right back up with the rest of the kids,” she added.
In a world with artificial intelligence, enhancing cognition is one way for humans to compete with machines, Ming said.
“In a world of increasing technology, this is one possibly to keep us ever relevant is to find the best of who we are and combine it with the best of what we can build in a very deep and fundamental way,” she said.
DNA data storage
Inspired by biology, Hyunjun Park and his company, Catalog, make synthetic DNA used to store digital data.
“We as a society are generating so much data with 5G wireless networks, Internet of Things, high-definition video and just social media so by the year 2025, we’re going to generate a lot more data and a lot more useful data than we’ll have the capacity to store, and so we are in need of a new medium that can be much more efficient than the current solutions,” Park said.
Storage data in the cloud takes up “acres of land, cities worth of power and it costs billions of dollars to build and maintain,” he explained.
In contrast to current forms of data storage, Park said DNA can store much more information that can last thousands of years, and his company has figured out how to do it cheaper than other labs.
“It’s a liquid solution that you move around to assemble different pieces of DNA and then for storage, we will dry that down so that it’s a powder in any tube that you are storing it in,” Park said.
He said an industrial scale proof of concept for DNA storage can be ready as early as 2019.
As scientists from various subfields of biology take advantage of artificial intelligence, investors are paying attention.
“These traditional investors in the Silicon Valley area that’s been invested in tech companies, they are now looking at biotech and seeing this as really the future of innovation,” Park said.
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People in her hometown of Los Angeles remember actress Meghan Markle as a charitable young girl who sparkled on stage. Next week the entire world will be watching Markle as she officially ties the knot to England’s most eligible bachelor. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo takes a look at Markle’s fairy tale life and the prince that some say is the lucky one.
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There’s a push to level the playing field for women in India, where women account for 42 percent of university graduates but only 24 percent are hired as entry level professionals. Of these, 19 percent are likely to reach senior level management. To make matters worse, the number of women who leave the work force is also higher than men. As Ritul Joshi reports, a specially designed management course for women in New Delhi is teaching them to make their way in a male dominated work force.
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NASA is planning to send a tiny autonomous helicopter to Mars on its next rover mission to the red planet.
The space agency announced Friday that the helicopter will be carried aboard the Mars 2020 rover as a technology demonstration to test its ability to serve as a scout and to reach locations not accessible by ground.
The helicopter is being developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
The craft weighs less than 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms), has a fuselage about the size of a softball and twin, counter-rotating blades that will spin at almost 3,000 rpm — a necessity in the thin Martian atmosphere. Solar cells will charge its lithium-ion batteries.
Flights will be programmed because the distance to Mars precludes real-time commands from Earth.
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The Eurovision song contest has concluded for 2018, with the top prize going to Israel’s Netta Barzilai and her quirky girl-power song Toy.
The Eurovision contest is an international tradition pitting performers from 43 nations against each other and decided by viewers all over the world. Along with European nations, Australia and Israel are allowed to compete.
Barzilai’s song, a fast-paced pop number, featured throaty singing and unconventional mouth noises, including squeaks, pops and clucks, as she protested to her listeners that she would not be used as a plaything. Meanwhile, her backup singers cavorted and preened in a manner that was, at times, reminiscent of chickens strutting and flapping their wings.
Some viewers responded negatively online to the performer’s antics, but in the end, her unorthodox performance and #MeToo-friendly message won the day.
The show, staged in Lisbon, Portugal, was not without other controversies: British singer SuRie was interrupted onstage when a protester grabbed her microphone. The protester was quickly subdued and SuRie finished her performance, with viewers online lauding her for her calm response and strong finish.
An Australian broadcaster narrating the event, however, accidentally uttered an expletive on the air, prompting a storm of chatter on Twitter.
A Chinese video service, Mango TV, was barred by the European Broadcast Union from airing the event, after it edited out of Tuesday’s semifinal a performance featuring a romantic dance sequence by two men. It also reportedly blurred out images of rainbow flags in the audience.
Some 200 million viewers were expected to view Saturday’s performances.
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A former Australian Rules Footballer of Nigerian descent is taking legal action against the sport for alleged racial, sexual and religious discrimination. Joel Wilkinson says the abuse he suffered was a “continuous breach of human rights” and insists that racism is rife in Australia’s most popular professional sport. It is thought to be the first case of its kind in Australia.
In 2014, Wilkinson appeared in an anti-discrimination advert sponsored by the Australian Football League, the AFL in which he spoke of the abuse he had suffered on the field.
“I actually felt like he was trying to make me feel like I was a little kid, a little black kid, a little piece of dirt.”
But the former Gold Coast Suns player now alleges that the League’s public stance on racism is very different from what he says is a “much darker reality.” He insists that his career ended abruptly in 2013 because he was so outspoken about the mistreatment he endured.
He is taking his case for compensation to Australia’s Human Rights Commission after talks with the AFL failed to reach an agreement.
“I have suffered extreme racism during my time in the AFL and post my career in the AFL until this very day,” said Wilkinson. “My career was taken from me. My rights were violated due to racism, religious vilification and racially-motivated sexual harassment that I experienced for many years.”
The AFL said in a statement that it was sorry the ex-player “had suffered experiences of racial abuse” during his time as a footballer, and that it was committed to resolving his complaint.
In 2013, a famous Aboriginal AFL player was taunted by a young spectator who called him an ape.’ The 13-year old girl later apologized for her behavior.
The competition is Australia’s most-watched professional sport. Matches in the city of Melbourne attract up to 100,000 fans. The Australian Football League has more than 80 Indigenous players, about 10 per cent of the total. It has also featured players with Jamaican, Lebanese and Sudanese heritage.
Rights groups have previously praised the League’s efforts to tackle racism in Australia.
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The Everett House, which serves as the Turkish ambassador’s residence, is a Washington landmark. It is also famous as the one-time home of the Ertegun family, the brothers who would go on to found Atlantic records and change the sound of American jazz and pop music. But the Erteguns also played a role in Washington history by standing with African Americans in what was, at the time, a deeply segregated city. VOA’s Ozlem Tinaz reports.
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Electric-powered ground transport is slowly but steadily taking over from one based on fossil fuels. Electric cars, buses, bikes, scooters, even electric skateboards are growing more common on streets around the world. The next step is electric aviation, and airplane manufacturers are eyeing this potentially very lucrative market. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Peggy and David Rockefeller’s lavish artworks and other treasures set a new world record this week at a Christie’s auction, topping $800 million as the priciest single-owner collection.
That’s about twice the previous record of $484 million from a 2009 Paris sale of designer Yves Saint Laurent’s estate.
The three-day live sale of the late couple’s belongings ended Thursday with a $115 million star lot — a Picasso painting called “Fillette a la corbeille fleurie” of a naked girl holding a basket of flowers that once belonged to the writer Gertrude Stein, estimated to be worth $100 million. The runner-up, at $84 million, was a Monet canvas with his famed water lilies, “Nimpheas en fleur,” which surpassed its $50 million estimate and set a record for his art at auction against a previous high of $81 million.
Matisse’s “Odalisque Couchee aux Magnolias,” depicting a woman in a Turkish harem, sold for $80.8 million, topping the $70 million estimate and setting a new record for a Matisse, whose highest price at auction had been $48.8 million.
Rockefeller Mania
In what one art publication dubbed “Rockefeller Mania,” Christie’s said 100 percent of the 893 Rockefeller lots offered live had sold, for a total of $828 million, as well as all of the more than 600 lots sold online for $4.6 million.
Diego Rivera’s 1931 “The Rivals” went for the highest price ever paid for a Latin American artwork on the block, $9.8 million against a pre-auction estimate of $5 million to $7 million.
On Friday, the sale wasn’t over until the online-only bids were in. Anyone with a few hundred dollars could go for a piece of the opulence that surrounded the late Rockefeller couple, by bidding on, say, cufflinks or jewelry. A 14-carat gold money clip once filled with Rockefeller cash sold for $75,000 against an estimate of $800 to $1,200.
Eclectic tastes
The total 1,564 Rockefeller lots reflected the couple’s eclectic tastes in everything from fine furniture, porcelain and ceramics to duck decoys and blue-chip art that graced their various properties and David’s bank office. Paintings filled the walls of their Maine home, their Manhattan townhouse and a country mansion in the Pocantino Hills north of the city, complete with horses and cows.
For a whiff of that life, buyers were willing to pay prices way above the pre-auction estimates.
A rare Chinese blue and white “dragon” bowl from the Maine kitchen cabinet, valued at up to $150,000, went for $2.7 million. A bronze figure of the Buddhist deity Amitayus realized $2.5 million, against a $600,000 high estimate.
A 256-piece Sevres dessert service commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte sold for $1.8 million — more than six times its high estimate.
Six George III “Gothick” Windsor Armchairs sold for $336,500 against a top estimate of $80,000, and an English wicker picnic hamper soared to $212,500, against a high estimate of $10,000.
Proceeds go to charity
All prices include buyers’ premiums. Christie’s bolstered the auction by guaranteeing the whole Rockefeller collection, not disclosing the minimum price at which a work would have to sell or buyers’ names. Many came from abroad, drawn to the New York power name that dominated the city’s privileged, philanthropic society for a century.
Peggy died in 1996, and David in 2017, as the last surviving grandson of the oil baron John D. Rockefeller. The couple’s son, David Rockefeller Jr., said auction proceeds would go to charity.
The collection ended up, appropriately, in Rockefeller Center off Fifth Avenue where Christie’s is located. John D. Rockefeller Jr. had helped finance and build the grand complex in the 1930s.
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