The World Health Organization estimates more than 800,000 people around the world die every year because of unsafe drinking water. But researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology may have figured out a simple and inexpensive way to clean the world’s dirtiest water. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Readying for his first television interview, Alex Wang gazes at his reflection in the back window of his yellow cab. Wiping his windswept mane behind the ear, he adjusts his red Shanghai Tang jacket and takes a swig of steaming tea.
“Ahh,” he pauses emphatically, “warms your whole body.”
Wang opens the front door and reaches deep inside, revealing a glossy 2018 calendar. On the cover is a shirtless male model, sprawled on his belly atop a yellow taxicab trunk, licking a spiral rainbow-colored lollipop the size of his face.
“It’s me!” he laughs, self-deprecatingly, pointing to his photo. “So ugly, you are!”
The 68-year-old Wang, an 18-year taxicab veteran, self-proclaimed “karaoke king” and “bit of a comedian” from China, flips through the months, each featuring a New York taxi driver. Most are foreign-born, representing seven different countries, and many are middle-aged, reflecting the key demographics of the city’s yellow cab fleet: 96 percent immigrant, median age 46.
WATCH: Is It Hot in Here, or Is It New York’s 2018 Taxicab Models?
The NYC Taxi Drivers Calendar’s co-creators, Philip and Shannon Kirkman, came up with the idea five years ago as a tongue-in-cheek alternative to the famous chisel-chested firefighter pin-up — a steamy parody with the dual-function of celebrating the city’s diversity, while also giving back.
To date, the couple has donated more than $60,000 worth of proceeds to University Settlement, a nonprofit that serves immigrant and low-income families with education, housing, and health services.
Turning taxi drivers into models
Shannon, the calendar’s photographer, describes the end product’s humor as uniting.
“Particularly when the news is tough, it’s something that you can kind of take a step back, and relax and celebrate with,” Shannon said. “We laugh a lot during the shoots.”
Philip, the calendar’s creative director, explains that the process of turning a taxi driver into a model, during a two-hour shoot, can prove challenging.
“I always think about how courageous it is for these drivers, because it is an open set,” Philip said. “We literally park the cab in front of a fire hydrant in most cases, and there’s people walking by and looking and taking pictures.”
Among the fearless models are pucker-lipped Dan — who sports a bow-tie, cuffs, and not much else before a vintage late 60s-era checker taxicab — and Hassan, who seductively watches you as he eats a messy slice of birthday cake decorated with his own smiling portrait.
Of the year’s 12 participants, only one is a woman, indicative of a male-dominated industry in which 99 percent of New York City yellow cab drivers are men.
Bangladeshi-native Nipa, featured in both the inside cover and October, is the third woman ever to be included in the calendar. Her depiction as a strongwoman was intentional.
“It’s been a tough year for women,” Shannon said. “We felt like we really wanted to put Nipa in a position of power, in a position of strength.”
‘A little’ fame
Come winter, cover model Wang can be seen enthusiastically squirting a bottle of baby oil across the hood of his vehicle, in his official December photo.
Wang, who started his life in the U.S. as a restaurant deliveryman 37 years ago, says being a taxi driver has been the most rewarding job and career for him.
“Every [time a] passenger comes in … I practice my English,” Wang says. “I see lots of beautiful places, lots of landmarks of New York.”
Everywhere he drives, Wang proudly displays his roots, but there is no place he would rather call home. And now that he has found “a little” fame, he plans to make sure everyone knows about it.
“I will show all the passengers,” he says. “I was in a taxi calendar, and [I was] the cover man. Alex Wang!”
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The New York City Taxi Drivers Calendar began as a tongue-in-cheek alternative to the famous chisel-chested firefighter pin-up, while benefiting a nonprofit that serves immigrant and low-income families. Now in its fifth year, the creators of the parody calendar are out with their 2018 edition, and it may be their sauciest one yet. Ramon Taylor reports.
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Ex-Beatles drummer Ringo Starr has been knighted in Queen Elizabeth’s New Year’s honors list, along with Bee Gees singer Barry Gibb and author Michael Morpurgo, while ballet dancer Darcey Bussell becomes a dame.
Ringo, 77, real name Richard Starkey, joined the Beatles as a replacement drummer for Pete Best in 1962 and occasionally sang lead vocals, notably in “Yellow Submarine” and “With a Little Help from my Friends.”
He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a Beatle in 1988 and again in 2015 for his solo career after the group split up.
Gibb, 71, is the British musician who co-founded the Bee Gees with his brothers Robin and Maurice, and went on to record a string of pop classics including “Stayin’ Alive” and “Night Fever” from the film Saturday Night Fever.
English author Morpurgo, 74, is best known for children’s novels like War Horse and was Children’s Laureate from 2003 to 2005.
Bussell, 48, is a former principal dancer with the Royal Ballet and currently one of the four judges in the long-running BBC TV ballroom contest Strictly Come Dancing.
The New Year’s honors have been awarded since Queen Victoria’s reign in the 19th century and aim to recognize not just well-known figures but those who have contributed to national life through often selfless and unsung contributions over many years.
In that category, Margaret Jamieson, of the Blue Door charity shop on the Scottish island of Orkney, is recognized, along with Geoffrey Evans, a local councilor in Falmouth, Cornwall, for over 40 years.
Actor Hugh Laurie receives the CBE medal, as does author Jilly Cooper and the former editor of British Vogue magazine Alexandra Shulman.
England women’s cricket captain Heather Knight is made an OBE while hip hop artist Richard Cowie, aka Wiley, is made an MBE, along with Paralympian athlete Stefanie Reid.
The biannual honors list is released on the Queen’s official birthday in June and at the end of each year.
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Some made us dance and filled our hearts with music, others made us dream with movies. While they are no longer with us, their work has touched many. From American and French music icons Chuck Berry and Johnny Hallyday to beloved American TV star Mary Tyler Moore to Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiabao, VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports on some of the famous faces we lost in the U.S. and elsewhere in 2017.
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January is almost here, and the world is bracing for the unofficial opening of this year’s race for the hearts, minds and pockets of tech enthusiasts. The international Consumer Electronics Show, CES for short, is the venue where technology manufacturers, from giants to startups, show their products, hoping they will become among the next must-haves worldwide. VOA’s George Putic looks at what may be expected.
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It’s called the Crossroads of the World. New York City’s Times Square is the location for one of the biggest parties of the year, marked by the dramatic descent of a crystal ball on a huge pole, from high above a crowd of about a million people celebrating New Year’s in New York. Bob Leverone narrates this report by VOA’s Evgeny Maslov.
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Mystery writer Sue Grafton has died in Santa Barbara, California. She was 77.
Her daughter, Jamie Clark, posted news of her mother’s death on Grafton’s web page Friday.
She says her mother passed away Thursday night after a two-year battle with cancer and was surrounded by family, including Grafton’s husband, Steve.
Grafton was the author of the Kinsey Millhone Alphabet Series, in which each book title begins with a letter from the alphabet. The last was Y Is for Yesterday.
Her daughter concluded her posting by saying, “The alphabet now ends at Y.”
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The launch of Angelina’s Jolie’s Khmer language feature “First They Killed My Father” promised to deliver a much needed shot of exposure and enthusiasm into the arm of Cambodia’s emergent film industry.
Instead of using the spotlight to springboard their productions though, leading Cambodian filmmakers are fearing a proposed tax enforcement drive could kill the industry entirely.
Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture called filmmakers to a meeting in October to discuss the planned imposition of taxes on filmmakers.
The clampdown echoes a broader push by the country’s General Department of Taxation to transition from an opaque and dysfunctional system of negotiated tax to a more sustainable government revenue base.
But the idea an industry struggling to stay afloat can shoulder the implementation of full tax compliance is unrealistic, said Motion Picture Association of Cambodia president Chhay Bora.
“If the taxes are to be implemented [now],risk in the film industry will occur,” he said. “I think not less than 80 percent of production houses will close down because it is a heavy burden to them.
“All the artists will lose their job,” he added. ‘The technical team will no longer be in the film industry. Perhaps it will be the same as what happened in the 2000s.”
Cambodia’s film industry experienced a brief resurgence in the early 2000s fuelled by surging nationalist tensions with Thailand but with little support or direction interest soon fell away.
About seven years into a second boom, filmmakers have now been informed of just under a dozen taxes they are obligated to pay from pre-production to screening that cover monthly production incomes, cast and crew salaries.
They are also in the firing line for taxes on equipment rental, studio rental, full time staff, revenue from screening, annual VAT and withholding tax.
Bora, the director of feature films 3.50, which delved into the deplorable world of the virginity trade, and Lost Loves, the story of a mother fighting for her family’s survival under the Khmer Rouge, believes good cinema has a critical role to play in Cambodian society .
“It has influence in promoting culture, literature, and sending other educational messages,” he said, adding the art-form also brings national prestige.
In recent years Cambodian films have garnered some notable attention on the world stage with features such as Davy Chou’s Diamond Island and Rithy Panh’s The Missing Picture gracing Cannes and the Oscars.
Their success has helped inspire a new generation of filmmakers and slowly the quality of productions is lifting.
International distribution remains extremely rare though, confining most Cambodian filmmakers to a handful of theaters across the country that screen films on average just 26 times — or for about two weeks.
Filmmakers and distributors have told VOA cinemas commonly take a cut of 55 percent from these limited ticket sales.
Rampant copyright violation has made web based sales effectively pointless with most filmmakers outright refusing to do it or exhausting every other possible alternative first before risking illegal downloads.
As a result the production of serious feature films is far from a lucrative enterprise with local Cambodian attempts rarely managing to break even. Instead the filmmakers work largely for exposure.
Salaries are low and work scarce forcing freelance crew members to rely on a few jobs a year while supplementing their incomes through menial jobs, such as driving Tuk Tuks.
Huy Yaleng, 38, rode the wave of the first cinema resurgence in the early nineties at the start of his career and felt the pain of having to turn to TV execs as cinemas shut their doors, reopening as pubs and restaurants.
“The industry has just recovered in the past few years, as we all can see that we are not strong enough to make profit yet,” he said.
Huy said his latest thriller “Psychotic” had once again failed to turn a profit and vowed to throw in the towel if his upcoming feature “The Witch” brought no return again.
“I am worried. I have put my love into film for my entire life, and now it has problems,” Huy said. “I haven’t made any profit yet, but in my mind I told myself to continue because I love it and vow to serve this industry till the end. We will try until the end.”
The proposal to apply 10 percent salary tax to crew members along with taxes on other subcontractors such as those providing transportation or catering is particularly onerous, Chhay said, because their inability to pay left the burden with the production house.
Worse, such taxes would be backdated to the time each production house registered itself — leaving filmmakers struggling to break even with huge retrospective tax bills.
So he is leading the push for a 10-year tax holiday for the entire industry.
Pok Bora, Acting Director of the Film and Cultural Diffusion Department, said that request had been forwarded to higher authorities in the government but no decision had been made.
“The immediate solution by the Ministry of Economy [and Finance], is to offer a tax break until the end of 2018 for the Withholding Tax on cinema screening,” he said.
The government had also created a National Arts Support and Development Fund in June 2016 — only available to registered productions that fulfilled tax obligations.
“Therefore, there is a need to emphasize on tax reforms to make sure that the funds go to the right production,” he said.
Chea Sopheap, executive director of the Bophana Audio Visual Resource Center, said solutions to the industry’s financial woes hinged on research and clear understanding.
“So the best way is to have a good discussion, good study in order to find a balance between cinemas, film productions and the government,” he said.
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Social media giants Facebook and Twitter could face sanctions in Britain if they fail to be more forthcoming in providing details about Russian disinformation campaigns that used their platforms in the run-up to last year’s Brexit referendum, the chairman of a British parliamentary inquiry committee warned.
The companies have been given until January 18 to hand over information.
Damian Collins, chairman of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport committee in the British parliament, which is looking into Russian fake news’ efforts, criticized both companies earlier this month, accusing them of stonewalling the parliamentary investigation. But he has now warned they risk being punished and he says his committee is exploring what sanctions could be imposed on Facebook and Twitter.
“What there has to be then is some mechanism of saying: if you fail to do that, if you ignore requests to act, if you fail to police the site effectively and deal with highly problematic content, then there has to be some sort of sanction against you,” he told Britain’s Guardian newspaper.
He dubbed the lack of cooperation by the social media firms as “extraordinary.”
“They don’t believe that they have any obligation at all to initiate their own investigation into what may or may not have been happening, he said. “They’ve not done any of that work at all.”
Parliamentary committees do not have the power in their own right to impose sanctions on erring companies. But British officials have expressed interest in punishing social media companies for failing to take action to stop their platforms from being exploited by agitators, whether they are working for foreign powers or non-state actors such as the Islamic State terror group.
In September in New York at the annual general assembly meeting of the United Nations, British Prime Minister Theresa May expressed frustration with social media companies, saying they must go “further and faster” in removing extremist content and should aim to do so within two hours of it appearing on their sites.
“This is a major step in reclaiming the internet from those who would use it to do us harm,” she said.
The prime minister has repeatedly called for an end to “safe spaces” on social media for terrorists. And British ministers have called for limits to end-to-end encryption, which prevents messages from being read by third parties if they are intercepted.
British lawmakers and ministers aren’t the only ones considering ways to sanction social media firms that fail to police their sites to avoid them from being used to spread fake news or being exploited by militants. This month, Germany’s competition authority accused Facebook of violating European data protection regulations by merging information collected through WhatsApp and Instagram with Facebook user accounts.
Collins has written twice to the social media firms requesting information about suspected Russian fake news campaigns in the weeks and months before Britons voted in June 2016 on whether to retain membership in the European Union, Britain’s largest trading partner.
In a letter to Twitter, he wrote: “The information you have now shared with us is completely inadequate. … It seems odd that so far we have received more information about activities that have taken place on your platform from journalists and academics than from you.”
In response to parliamentary requests for information about Russian interference in the EU referendum, including details of accounts operated by Russian misinformation actors, the social media firms passed on copies of the details they provided to Britain’s Electoral Commission, which is probing advertising originating from Russian actors during the lead up to the Brexit vote.
Facebook said only $0.97 had been spent on Brexit-related ads seen by British viewers. Twitter claimed the only Russian spending it received was $1,000 from the Russian state-owned broadcaster RT.
Russia has been accused of meddling in recent elections in America, France and elsewhere and of running disinformation campaigns aimed at poisoning political discourse in the West and sowing discord with fake news.
In November, Prime Minister May accused Vladimir Putin’s government of trying to “undermine free societies” and “planting fake stories” to “sow discord in the West. “Russia has denied the allegations.
Three days before Christmas, Britain’s foreign minister, Boris Johnson, sparred with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, over the issue of alleged Russian meddling in the Brexit referendum.
During his trip to Moscow, the first visit by a British foreign secretary to the Russian capital for five years, Lavrov denied at a joint press conference that the Kremlin had sought to meddle, saying Johnson himself had previously said there was “no evidence of Russian interference in the Brexit referendum.” Johnson corrected Lavrov, saying: “Not successfully, is what I said.”
So far the evidence of a major Russian social media effort during the Brexit referendum remains thin, and at least not on the alleged scale seen, according to investigators, during the 2016 U.S. presidential race.
An investigation by the New York Times found that “Russian agents … disseminated inflammatory posts that reached 126 million users on Facebook, published more than 131,000 messages on Twitter and uploaded over 1,000 videos to Google’s YouTube service” ahead of the U.S. presidential vote.
In January 2017, the Office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence concluded: “Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election.”
In October 2017, researchers at the City University of London found a “13,500-strong [Russian] Twitter bot army,” was present on the social media site around the time of the referendum.
Bot accounts post content automatically. Those accounts in the month prior to the Brexit vote posted a total of 65,000 tweets about the referendum with a slant towards the leave campaign, according to City University researchers.
But a subsequent study by the University of California, Berkeley, and Swansea University in Wales unearthed more pro-Brexit Russian bot accounts, tracking over 150,000 of them.
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Autism is on the rise in many developed countries, and the reasons why are still unclear. But more autistic children mean that, one day, more autistic adults will be entering the workforce. A new robot is trying to help these workers navigate the emotional elements on the job. VOA’s Bronwyn Benito narrates this report by Kevin Enochs.
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Maame Biney, a 17-year-old from Ghana, will be the first African-American woman to represent the U.S. on the speedskating short track team at the 2018 Winter Olympics Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in February. VOA’s Salem Solomon visited her where she first started skating in a local ice rink in Reston, Virginia, and has this story.
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A new book just hit the bookstores in Europe and the U.S. that tries to show life in Africa beyond the stereotypes and misconceptions infused in Western media. Africa 54’s Zoe Leoudaki has the details
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The drawings and paintings on the walls and sculptures on display are not the only art to see at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Floral arrangements are designed to complement the exhibits and time of season. VOA Russian Service reporter Elena Wolf takes us behind the scenes at the Met to meet a third generation florist whose creates masterpieces every week. VOA’s Bob Leverone narrates the report.
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Actress and comedienne Rose Marie, who grew up from a child superstar to become a television comedy legend, died Thursday in Hollywood at 94.
She spent her entire life as a star, and was one of the last surviving entertainers whose career spanned all media — vaudeville, records, movies, Broadway, radio and television.
Born Rose Marie Mazetta in New York, she began singing on the vaudeville stage when she was 3 years old, billed as Baby Rose Marie.
With her naturally husky voice, many in the audience insisted she was not a child but a small adult dressed up in children’s clothes.
She soon became one of the country’s best-known child entertainers with her own radio show, touring in vaudeville, and singing in early sound films.
She dropped the “Baby” from her billing as she grew into a teenager, and continued to perform in nightclubs and make records.
Rose Marie became a household name again in 1961 when she began playing comedy writer Sally Rogers on television’s Dick Van Dyke Show — a hugely popular situation comedy that ran five years.
Her character was a wise-cracking single woman constantly on the lookout for a husband, using jokes to hide her loneliness.
She kept her persona of a man-hungry single woman as a panelist on game shows, including her long run as a regular on Hollywood Squares.
Rose Marie never retired. In the months before she died, she appeared in person during the screening of her autobiographical documentary film Wait for Your Laugh.
Throughout her career, Rose Marie was nominated for three Emmys and received a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame in 2001.
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Facing lawsuits and consumer outrage after it said it slowed older iPhones with flagging batteries, Apple Inc is slashing prices for battery replacements and will change its software to show users whether their phone battery is good.
In a posting on its website Thursday, Apple apologized over its handling of the battery issue and said it would make a number of changes for customers “to recognize their loyalty and to regain the trust of anyone who may have doubted Apple’s intentions.”
Apple made the move to address concerns about the quality and durability of its products at a time when it is charging $999 for its newest flagship model, the iPhone X.
Battery prices lowered
The company said it would cut the price of an out-of-warranty battery replacement from $79 to $29 for an iPhone 6 or later, starting next month.
The company also will update its iOS operating system to let users see whether their battery is in poor health and is affecting the phone’s performance.
“We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down,” Apple said in its posting. “We apologize.”
On Dec. 20, Apple acknowledged that iPhone software has the effect of slowing down some phones with battery problems. Apple said the problem was that aging lithium batteries delivered power unevenly, which could cause iPhones to shutdown unexpectedly to protect the delicate circuits inside.
Lawsuits filed
That disclosure played on a common belief among consumers that Apple purposely slows down older phones to encourage customers to buy newer iPhone models.
While no credible evidence has ever emerged that Apple engaged in such conduct, the battery disclosure struck a nerve on social media and elsewhere. Apple on Thursday denied that it has ever done anything to intentionally shorten the life of a product.
At least eight lawsuits have been filed in California, New York and Illinois alleging that the company defrauded users by slowing devices down without warning them. The company also faces a legal complaint in France, where so called “planned obsolesce” is against the law.
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The Justice Department on Thursday unsealed details of its case against two Romanians who allegedly hacked computers tied to Washington, D.C., police surveillance cameras.
Police in Bucharest arrested Mihai Alexandru Isvanca and Eveline Cismaru on December 15. U.S. attorneys have charged them with conspiracy to commit computer and wire fraud.
They allegedly hacked into more than 120 computers tied to Washington police surveillance cameras last January. It was part of an alleged scheme to infect personal computers with ransomware.
Ransomware restricts users from accessing their own computers and demands a payment to the ramsomware operator to unlock it.
The Justice Department said the investigation was of the highest priority because the alleged hacking of the surveillance camera computers came just weeks before the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump.
However, it says there is no evidence anyone’s personal security was threatened or harmed.
If tried in the U.S. and convicted, the Romanian defendants could face up to 20 years in prison.
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In years past, demand for Apple Inc.’s latest flagship phone was critical to the company’s results over the holiday shopping quarter. That dynamic might be changing, however, as Apple’s widening lineup of devices and services more than makes up for any tepidness in demand this quarter for its lead product, the $999 iPhone X.
On Tuesday, Apple’s stock fell 2.5 percent to $170.57 after Taiwan’s Economic Daily and several analysts suggested iPhone X sales in the fiscal first quarter would be 30 million units, 20 million fewer than initially planned by the company.
The cut in the forecast was not confirmed, and the stock regained ground Thursday, hitting $171.82 by midday. The mean revenue estimate for the holiday quarter among 30 analysts remains at $86.2 billion, near the high end of Apple’s forecast of $84 billion to $87 billion.
Apple declined to comment.
Part of the support for Apple may reflect a change in its business strategy.
Releasing two new models and keeping older ones have made
Apple less dependent on its flagship product. Apple shareholder Ross Gerber, chief executive of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and
Investment Management in Santa Monica, California, said the higher price and better margins on the iPhone X would reduce fears of a sales decline.
Eye on combined sales
“We know that Apple’s strategy was different this quarter by releasing two phones, the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X, and I think combined sales will be in line with what people expect,” Gerber said.
Apple also has fattened its portfolio of accessories and other devices, from its AirPods wireless headphones to a new Apple Watch with cellular data features.
While none is a runaway hit, collectively they are an important contributor, with Apple’s “other products” segment growing 16 percent to $12.8 billion last year. Customers who buy those add-ons are also likely to buy services from the App Store and Apple Music, part of Apple’s services segment, which grew 23 percent to $29.9 billion last year.
“Ultimately, it will be this multidevice ownership” that will generate further revenue, said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with Creative Strategies.
IPhone X sales still matter. Each unit generates nearly twice the revenue of an iPhone 7 and contains technologies like facial recognition that burnish Apple’s brand.
Bob O’Donnell of TECHnalysis Research said “hit products” still represent “an enormous amount of the company’s overall value.”
“Will it take hold in the mainstream? That’s the question that still remains,” he said.
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The discovery in China of an underground army of nearly 8,000 life-size terracotta soldiers is considered one of the greatest archaeological finds of the 20th century.
More than four decades after they were first seen in modern times, by farmers in Shaanxi province, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has 10 of the majestic figures on display in an exhibit that explores the history of ancient China and the reign of its first emperor, Ying Zheng.
Although various assortments of the terracotta soldiers have been displayed previously in museums in New York, Philadelphia, Seattle and elsewhere, the exhibit in Richmond also includes 40 objects never seen in the U.S., including ancient jade ornaments, precious jewelry and ceramics.
“Terracotta Army: Legacy of the First Emperor of China” is only being shown in Richmond and at the Cincinnati Art Museum, where it goes after its run in Virginia ends March 11.
The exhibit explores the life of Ying Zheng – who declared himself Qin Shihuang, the first emperor – and how he influenced China during his reign from 221 to 210 BC. Historians believe he ordered the construction of the terracotta army, which was buried in pits and discovered 2,000 years later, about a mile east of the emperor’s burial site.
“We want visitors to learn who is the first emperor and what people’s lives looked then, what technology developed during that time and the architecture of that time,” said Li Jian, the co-curator.
“No matter rich or poor, royal emperors or commoners, people had a quest for immortality,” she said. “These excavated objects reflect the people’s lives at the time.”
The first two rooms of the exhibit showcase horse and chariot fittings, arms and armor, works of art in gold and silver, and other cultural relics.
A bucket-shaped mask with an open mouth and cut-out eyes is the oldest object, dating to 3500 BC, when an exorcist would have worn it while performing rituals to ward off evil spirits and misfortune. A necklace of red agate beads and white jade pendants was a type of jewelry favored by Qin nobility. A bronze household lamp would have contained vegetable oil or animal fat, capable of burning for long periods of time in an era before candles.
Visitors encounter an imposing sight as they enter the third room: The terracotta soldiers, 6 feet tall and weighing between 250 and 400 pounds each, are positioned in individual open cases, in various poses of war.
There’s the armored general, with detailed carving depicting a protective leather apron overlaid with plated armor. An infantryman stands at attention with both arms at his side. A standing archer and a kneeling archer depict the Qin military strategy, requiring one group of archers to stand and provide cover fire while another group knelt and loaded bolts into their crossbows.
Connie James, a retired kindergarten teacher from Richmond, appreciated the details as she spent a recent weekday afternoon exploring the exhibit with her husband.
“I was expecting them to look like a terracotta flower pot, but they’re very intricate,” she said. “For those of us who couldn’t get to China, this is something very special.”
Her husband, David James, liked seeing the ancient weapons used by the warriors.
“I wouldn’t have imagined they would have been used in a crossbow at that time, but they were,” he said.
Museum director Alex Nyerges said the exhibit attracted nearly 40,000 visitors during its first two weeks in Richmond, putting it on a path to become one of the museum’s most popular.
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While the attention of much of the world was occupied with earthly happenings, space scientists had some notable achievements during the past year, ranging from new projects to the spectacular end of at least one program. VOA’s George Putic reviews the highlights of the year in space.
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