Archive Month: March 2022

«Договори, що існують, залишаються в силі… Оплата в рублях неприпустима, оскільки вони укладені в євро та доларах»
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«Усі заявки будуть ретельно опрацьовані, аби після нашої перемоги відбудова була системною»
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Щодо Росії, то серйозні економічні санкції, накладені на неї Заходом, означатимуть, що зростання буде нульовим, додали в ЄБРР
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The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences on Wednesday said that Will Smith was asked to leave Sunday’s Oscar ceremony after hitting Chris Rock but refused to do so. 

The academy’s board of governors met Wednesday to initiate disciplinary proceedings against Smith for violations against the group’s standards of conduct. The academy said disciplinary action for Smith could include suspension, expulsion or other sanctions. 

Many have focused on why Smith was allowed to remain seated in the front row at the Dolby Theatre after the incident. On Wednesday, the academy suggested that it attempted to remove the actor from the audience. 

“Things unfolded in a way we could not have anticipated,” the academy said. “While we would like to clarify that Mr. Smith was asked to leave the ceremony and refused, we also recognize we could have handled the situation differently.” 

A representative for the academy declined to give specifics on how it tried to remove Smith. After Smith struck Rock in response to a joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, several stars including Denzel Washington, Bradley Cooper and Tyler Perry spoke with Smith, 53. 

Stronger language

The academy said Smith has the opportunity to defend himself in a written response before the board meets again on April 18. The film academy earlier condemned Smith’s onstage assault of Rock, but it used stronger language Wednesday. 

“Mr. Smith’s actions at the 94th Oscars were a deeply shocking, traumatic event to witness in person and on television,” the academy said. “Mr. Rock, we apologize to you for what you experienced on our stage and thank you for your resilience in that moment. We also apologize to our nominees, guests and viewers for what transpired during what should have been a celebratory event.” 

On Monday, Smith issued an apology to Rock, the academy and to viewers, saying “I was out of line and I was wrong.” 

Rock, who had yet to respond publicly to the incident, performed stand-up Wednesday night in Boston. He was greeted by a thunderous standing ovation. 

“How was your weekend?” began Rock, who then cautioned the crowd that he didn’t have a lot to say yet about the Oscars, according to audio posted by the Hollywood trade outlet Variety. “I’m still kind of processing what happened.” 

A representative for Smith didn’t immediately respond to messages Wednesday regarding the academy’s latest moves. 

Few expulsions

Only a very small number of academy members have ever been expelled, including Harvey Weinstein, Roman Polanski, Bill Cosby and the actor Carmine Caridi, who was kicked out for sharing awards screeners. 

Whoopi Goldberg, a member of the academy’s board of governors, said Monday on The View, “We’re not going to take that Oscar from him.” (Even Oscars won by expelled members haven’t previously been ordered to be returned.) Goldberg added that “nobody is OK with what happened.” 

Others from Sunday’s telecast also began speaking out. Co-host Wanda Sykes told Ellen DeGeneres in an interview to air April 7 that she felt physically ill after Smith slapped Rock. When he returned to his seat, Smith twice shouted at Rock to “keep my wife’s name out your [expletive] mouth.” 

“I’m still a little traumatized by it,” said Sykes in a clip released Wednesday. 

Within an hour, Smith was back on stage accepting the award for best actor for his performance in King Richard. Many in the Dolby Theatre gave him a standing ovation. 

“I was like, how gross is this? This is the wrong message. You assault somebody and you get escorted out the building and that’s it. But for them to let him continue, I thought it was gross,” Sykes said. “I wanted to be able to run out [on stage] after he won and say, ‘Uh, unfortunately, Will couldn’t be here tonight.’ ”
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Сторони обговорили, зокрема, підтримку Вашингтона, в тому числі військову
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China has connected a high-speed, multimillion-dollar, 15,000-kilometer undersea cable to Kenya, as Beijing advances what’s been dubbed its “digital silk road,” and Africa seeks the infrastructure it badly needs for better internet connectivity.  

Chinese giant Huawei is a shareholder in the $425-million PEACE cable, which stands for “Pakistan and East Africa Connecting Europe.” It stretches from Asia to Africa and then into France, where it terminates. 

It reached the coastal city of Mombasa on Tuesday, with the CEO of local partner company Telekom Kenya, Mugo Kibati, saying the cable would help meet the sharp rise in demand for internet services on a continent where internet adoption has trailed the rest of the world, but which is home to a growing, young and increasingly digital population.   

“This ultra-high-capacity cable will assist Kenya and the region in meeting its current and future broadband capacity requirements, bolster redundancy, minimize transit time of our country’s connectivity to Asia and Europe, as well as assist carriers in providing affordable services to Kenyans,” said Kibati.  

Business development

For his part, the PEACE Cable’s COO, Sun Xiaohua, said in a statement that the new infrastructure would “bring more business development to this region.” From Kenya, the cable will later be extended further down the continent’s east coast to South Africa. 

It’s estimated that 95% of international data flows via submarine cables, and in terms of Africa, China dominates, with the most projects aimed at connecting the continent. Aside from the PEACE cable, China’s proposed 2Africa cable will become one of the biggest undersea projects in the world when it goes live in 2024. 

But China’s massive digital infrastructure investments in Africa and elsewhere have not been without controversy, and Washington has expressed deep concerns that Beijing is attempting to monopolize networks and possibly use them for espionage.  

Safety concerns

Some analysts are concerned the technology could be misused by authoritarian leaders on the continent, but Cobus van Staden, a senior China-Africa researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs, said most Africans simply want better internet. 

“I think this PEACE Cable generally plays very positively in Africa. Obviously, the United States has raised … concerns around this, particularly in relation to security, but I think for lot of African countries, the security issue is actually balanced by the wider issue of a lack of connectivity,” van Staden told VOA.  

Huawei was sanctioned by the U.S. under former president Donald Trump, but the company has built about 70% of Africa’s 4G networks, and van Staden said it seems China is winning the race for digital soft power on the continent. 

“I think there’s a space there for competition, but Western actors will have to step up,” he said.  
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Washington celebrates 110 years of cherry blossoms in a festival not only marking the beginning of spring but also commemorating the birth of an international tourist destination and marking the ties between the United States and Japan. 

Each year, the National Cherry Blossom Festival draws more than 1.5 million admirers of the fluffy pink trees. Tokyo Mayor Yukio Ozaki gifted about 3,000 of them to the nation’s capital in 1912. His act of kindness is still celebrated more than a century later. 

“This year, more than ever, you really understand why the festival is so important,” said festival President Diana Mayhew. “We recognize that it’s more than just a festival. It’s about spring and renewal and a sense of new beginnings.”

Tourists and photographers flock to the Tidal Basin, where the trees were first planted in 1912. Later in 1965, the Japanese government gifted 3,800 trees to first lady Lady Bird Johnson, and many of which were planted on the grounds of the Washington Monument. 

Awaiting the cherry blossoms is a long-held Japanese tradition. The delicate blooms symbolize the beginning of spring and last about one week, reflecting the Japanese belief that they embody the fleeting nature of life and a time of renewal.

Cherry blossom season is considered at its peak when 70% of the flowers around the Tidal Basin are open, according to the National Park Service. This year, the peak arrived about 10 days early, on March 21. 

The National Cherry Blossom Festival also marks Washington’s unofficial reemergence from two years of COVID-19 restrictions, which prevented large gatherings and crowds. 

During a recent event announcing this year’s plans, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said, “We want D.C. to be the face of spring for the nation. Let me say, without equivocation, that D.C. is open!”

The festival includes a parade, live music, art installations, kite flying, cultural events, fireworks, a Washington Wizards basketball game, pet- and family-friendly activities, food and liquor sampling, and river cruises.

The Japanese government often exchanges about 90 old trees for new ones every year and continues to be involved in the festival.  
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Інформаторам обіцяють значну фінансову нагороду
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48 підприємств уже відновили роботу на новому місці
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Від початку запуску послуги запит на отримання «єПідтримки» надіслали вже 4,4 мільйона українців
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The phenomenal box-office success of a new film set in 1990s Kashmir has sharpened political divisions in India and prompted a re-examination of a violent campaign against Hindus in the Muslim-majority region three decades ago.

“The Kashmir Files,” directed by Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri, depicts the flight of Kashmiri Hindus, known as “Pandits,” from the region in early 1990s. It is a fictional narrative about a college student who learns that his Kashmiri Hindu parents were killed by Islamist militants, not in an accident as he was told by his grandfather.

The film is being enthusiastically promoted by India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which pursues a Hindu nationalist agenda and has been accused of fomenting animus toward the nation’s 200 million Muslims as an electoral strategy.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally met with the director and producer of the film immediately after its release and expressed his appreciation.

Celebrities and political leaders also have urged people to see the film. The Union minister for Women and Child Development, Smriti Irani, tweeted, “Watch … so that this history soaked in the blood of innocents may never repeat itself #TheKashmirFiles.”

A goods and services tax that boosts the price of movie tickets has been waived in most BJP-ruled states including some of India’s most populous. In the central state of Madhya Pradesh, police have been offered a day off work to watch the film. In the national capital territory of Delhi, however, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal rejected a demand from BJP legislators to declare the film tax-free, saying, “Well, put it on YouTube, it will be free.”

Sushil Chaudhary, the founder and chairman of the digital movie theater chain Picture Time DigiPlex, told VOA he was pleased that the controversial subject had been addressed in a film.

“And the storytelling was very different compared to other Indian films. The way the director handled the film — it was quite amazing, at the same time very sensitive. This film has huge impact and reminded me of the much-celebrated ‘Schindler’s List,’” a 1993 film about a German businessman who rescued more than 1,000 Jews from the Nazi Holocaust.

On social media, commenters have described the movie as “the most hard-hitting film” about Kashmir made to date.

BJP’s support of ‘The Kashmir Files’

The film also has detractors, many of them in the conflict-torn region of Jammu and Kashmir itself. While expressing appreciation for the movie’s dramatic qualities, these critics say it oversimplifies the complex history of the conflict, and that it offers a clichéd representation of Kashmiri Muslims.

“Hindu supremacists in India have weaponized the Kashmiri Pandit exodus” wrote Nitasha Kaul, a Kashmiri Pandit and novelist based in London.

“The movie dwells on Kashmiri Pandit suffering alone and makes ample use of Islamophobic tropes – all Muslims in the movie are violent, barbaric or lecherous,” she wrote.

She argued that the movie “feeds into cycles of hate and revenge. It collapses Kashmir’s history and politics into an Islamophobic morality tale that is palatable and profitable to Hindutva India.”

Ashok Swain, the head of the department of peace and conflict research at Sweden’s Uppsala University, told VOA he believes the film was made purely for political purposes by a Hindu right-wing filmmaker with support from the ruling authorities.

The purpose of the movie is not to tell the history or support the cause of displaced Kashmir pundits, Swain maintained, “but to make economic gains for the filmmaker and political gains for the ruling regime by selling Muslim hate in the country.”

Regional take

The movie also has been met with criticism by Muslim leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party, a Kashmir-based regional political bloc. PDP leader and former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti has accused the BJP of doing nothing for the Kashmiri Pandits who remained in Jammu and Kashmir.

Earlier, she said the move is “ill-intentioned” and will not contribute to healing old wounds.

Mufti also argued that while the filmmakers were mainly interested in profits, Modi and the BJP were supporting the film in order to instigate people along religious lines.

Kashmir resident Sameer Kaul told VOA that some of the gory incidents portrayed in the documentary-style film actually occurred, but that the movie falsely suggests the entire Kashmiri Muslim community played a part in the violence. In fact, he said, some Muslims opposed the violence and others were simply frightened.

Kaul said the impact of the movie will be to increase religious polarization and potential intercommunal discord. “Never before has the justification for institution of an unbiased judicial probe by central government seemed as convincing. Truth should hopefully pave the way for closure, reconciliation and desperate peace.”

A similar view has been expressed by one Kashmiri Pandit girl, Sagrika Kissu. “Not every Muslim is a terrorist/militant or a terrorist sympathizer,” she posted on social media. “We should be very sensitive when we paint all of them in one color. This movie sets in a very bitter emotion for Kashmiri Muslims as whole.”

Real-life impact

Meanwhile, the impact from the movie is being felt in real life. A hotel in Delhi recently refused to accommodate a Kashmiri man even after he provided appropriate identification and other credentials.

The hotel’s receptionist said the Delhi Police had told the hotel not to accept reservations from guests from Jammu and Kashmir. A video of the incident went viral, prompting Delhi Police to deny having issued any such order.

In an immediate reaction, the hotel chain Oyo Rooms removed the hotel from its platform.

Nevertheless, the film is doing blockbuster business despite a lack of promotion and marketing, appearing on 700 screens across India and grossing $3 million since its release on March 11. It is also being shown in the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia, taking in $1.38 million in its first week on international screens.
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Up to 40% of food in the U.S. is discarded. But as VOA’s Julie Taboh reports, a company in the Netherlands has come up with technology that can help reduce food waste in industrial kitchens.

Camera: Tina Trinh, Orbisk;         
Produced by Julie Taboh, Adam Greenbaum
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Actor Will Smith apologized to comedian Chris Rock one day after slapping him across the face during Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony following a joke Rock made about the actor’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.

Smith’s apology Monday came after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences issued a formal statement condemning his behavior for slapping Rock and announced it was initiating an investigation.

“Violence in all of its forms is poisonous and destructive,” Smith said Monday in a statement his publicist posted on Instagram.

“I would like to publicly apologize to you, Chris. I was out of line and I was wrong. I am embarrassed and my actions were not indicative of the man I want to be,” Smith added.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced it was initiating an investigation into the incident. According to the Academy’s code of conduct, Smith could face consequences such as “suspension of membership or expulsion from membership.”

In recent years, violations of this code have led to the removal of members such as Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and Roman Polanski, who were expelled over allegations of sexual misconduct.

Rock did not file a police report.

“LAPD investigative entities are aware of an incident between two individuals during the Academy Awards program. The incident involved one individual slapping another. The individual involved has declined to file a police report,” said the LAPD in an official statement to the press. “If the involved party desires a police report at a later date, LAPD will be available to complete an investigative report.

Ahead of presenting the award for best documentary, Rock directed a comment to Pinkett Smith saying: “Jada, I love you. ‘G.I. Jane 2,’ can’t wait to see it,” apparently drawing a comparison to actress Demi Moore’s shaved hairstyle in the 1997 movie G.I. Jane.

While Pinkett Smith was shown rolling her eyes following the comment, her husband walked over to the stage and slapped Rock across the face during the live broadcast, a moment that went viral shortly after.

After taking his seat again, Smith directed profanity at the comedian, demanding he not speak of his wife.

Pinkett Smith, 50, has previously been vocal about her struggles with hair loss due to the autoimmune disease alopecia. She publicly shared her diagnosis in 2018 during a segment of her Facebook talk show series Red Table Talk.

Initially, the Academy had only issued a statement via its Twitter account after the ceremony ended.

“The Academy does not condone violence of any form,” the tweet said.

Later Sunday evening, Smith was awarded an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his performance as Richard Williams, the father of tennis champions Venus and Serena Williams, in the film King Richard.

During his acceptance speech, Smith appeared emotional and apologized to the Academy and his fellow nominees, but did not directly mention Rock.

“Love will make you do crazy things,” Smith said, addressing his behavior.

“Thank you. I hope the Academy invites me back.”

VOA’s Zoya Mirza contributed to this report.   

 
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Teff, an ancient grain from the Horn of Africa, has found new enthusiasts in the United States. It’s being cultivated in the American West and Midwest, where growers note its appeal as a gluten-free “super food.” VOA’s Tewelde Tesfagabir reports from Nevada, narration by Vincent Makori.
Videographer: Trésor M. Matondo
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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences issued a formal statement Monday condemning Will Smith’s behavior for slapping comedian Chris Rock and announced it was initiating an investigation. 

Smith slapped Rock across the face during a live broadcast of the 94th Academy Awards ceremony Sunday after the comedian made a joke about the actor’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, poking fun at her shaved head.   

“The Academy condemns the actions of Mr. Smith at last night’s show,” the statement said. “We … will explore further action and consequences in accordance with our bylaws, standards of conduct and California law.” 

According to the Academy’s code of conduct, such consequences could entail “suspension of membership or expulsion from membership.”  

In recent years, violations of this code have led to the removal of members such as Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and Roman Polanski, who were expelled over allegations of sexual misconduct. 

Rock did not file a police report. 

“LAPD investigative entities are aware of an incident between two individuals during the Academy Awards program. The incident involved one individual slapping another. The individual involved has declined to file a police report,” said the LAPD in an official statement to the press. ”If the involved party desires a police report at a later date, LAPD will be available to complete an investigative report.”  

Ahead of presenting the award for best documentary, Rock directed a comment to Pinkett Smith saying: “Jada, I love you. ‘G.I. Jane 2,’ can’t wait to see it,” apparently drawing a comparison to actress Demi Moore’s shaved hairstyle in the 1997 movie ”G.I. Jane.”   

While Pinkett Smith was shown rolling her eyes following the comment, her husband walked over to the stage and slapped Rock across the face during the live broadcast, a moment that went viral shortly after.   

After taking his seat again, Smith directed profanity at the comedian, demanding he not speak of his wife.  

Pinkett Smith, 50, has previously been vocal about her struggles with hair loss due to the autoimmune disease alopecia. She publicly shared her diagnosis in 2018 during a segment of her Facebook talk show series Red Table Talk.  

Initially, the Academy had only issued a statement via its Twitter account after the ceremony ended.  

“The Academy does not condone violence of any form,” the tweet said.  

Later Sunday evening, Smith was awarded an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his performance as Richard Williams, the father of tennis champions Venus and Serena Williams, in the film ”King Richard.”  

During his acceptance speech, Smith appeared emotional and apologized to the Academy and his fellow nominees, but did not directly mention Rock.   

“Love will make you do crazy things,” Smith said, addressing his behavior.  

“Thank you. I hope the Academy invites me back.” 

VOA’s Zoya Mirza contributed to this report.

 
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