It’s been more than 20 years since “Spy Kids” made its way to movie theaters around the world. Filmmaker Robert Rodriguez has rebooted the franchise to attract a new generation. VOA’s Veronica Villafañe spoke with the director and has more in this report.
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Imprisoned activist Narges Mohammadi won the Nobel Peace Prize Friday for fighting the oppression of women in Iran.

“She fights for women against systematic discrimination and oppression,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee who announced the prize in Oslo.

Authorities arrested Mohammadi in November after she attended a memorial for a victim of violent 2019 protests.

Mohammadi has a long history of imprisonment, harsh sentences and international calls for reviews of her case.

Before being jailed, Mohammadi was vice president of the banned Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran. Mohammadi has been close to Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, who founded the center.

Ebadi left Iran after the disputed re-election of then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009 that touched off unprecedented protests and harsh crackdowns by authorities. In 2018, Mohammadi, an engineer, was awarded the 2018 Andrei Sakharov Prize.

In 2022, Mohammadi was tried in five minutes and sentenced to eight years in prison and 70 lashes.

The Nobel Prizes carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor (about $1 million). Winners also receive an 18-carat gold medal and diploma at the award ceremonies in December.
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For years, Chinese officials have referred to the Tiananmen massacre as “political turmoil” and have attempted to make the violence of June 4, 1989, disappear.

Estimates of the death toll range from several hundred people to more than 10,000, though there has never been an official tally released. Thousands more were injured by troops who charged the student-led pro-democracy demonstration that began massing in Beijing’s vast open space in mid-April.

Against that backdrop, Tiananmen: A New Musical weaves a love story between two students in a production that opened Wednesday at the Phoenix Theatre Company in Arizona. Its world premiere will be Friday night.  

Wu’er Kaixi, who was one of the protest leaders and who now lives in Taiwan where he is a pro-democracy activist, served as a creative consultant.  

It is the latest in a subset of musicals that tackle serious issues. Cabaret addresses homophobia, antisemitism and the rise of Nazi Germany. Dear Evan Hansen grapples with suicide and bullying.  

It took three years to produce Tiananmen. Beijing’s growing willingness to track down its critics and exert pressure on them left many who auditioned wary of accepting roles that jeopardize family or business interests in China.  

The show’s musical director, theater veteran Darren Lee, told VOA Mandarin that before accepting the job, he had a career first: calling his parents to see if there were relatives still in China who would be endangered.

His family’s “most studious aunt” with the best “memory and connection to where we’ve all come from” greenlit Lee’s participation. The show’s original Chinese American director left the show because of “potential for retribution against his family in China if he were involved in telling this story,” Lee told Phoenix magazine.  

Lee said one of the core messages of the Tiananmen play is to explore the impact of this “long arm of fear” on people.  

“I’m an American-born Chinese person. I may share DNA with people in China, but I don’t have direct relatives that would be pressured in any way. So, I don’t have that same sense of — I guess it’s fear,” he said.

Producer Jason Rose said others involved in the show opted out due to concerns about family or business interests in China. Others used stage names or were credited as “Anonymous.”

Rose told VOA Mandarin he respected those decisions, but the show kept moving ahead despite possible pressure from Beijing.

“That’s what drew me to this show,” he said. “It is provocative. It is important. It is a celebration of bravery by these artists. … That is American art at its best, and to allow another country to dictate what’s going to be on the American stage — I’m sorry, that’s where I’ll hold up my hand and say, ‘Let’s go try and do this.’”

And while Kaixi hopes audiences will feel the students’ courage and the atmosphere of hope that permeated Tiananmen Square, he wants people to realize that the rulers of today’s China are no different from those who “decided to shoot and kill people” in 1989.

That view is reflected in a scene described by Rose in an opinion piece Sept. 15 in the Arizona Capitol Times. China’s leader in 1989, Deng Xiaoping, walking through the carnage left by the government’s attack, delivers a monologue: “People will forget what happened here. People will forget what we did here. Westerners will. China will. Because you will want smartphones. Because Beijing will want skyscrapers. Twenty-thousand dying will bring 20 years of stability. Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. And at the edge of memory, who defines the truth? Me.”

VOA Mandarin sought comment from the Chinese Consulate General in San Francisco but did not receive a response.

Ellie Wang, who stars opposite Kennedy Kanagawa in Tiananmen, told Playbill, “This production is not just a celebration of art and storytelling but a powerful reminder of the importance of courage, resilience, and the universal desire for freedom.” 

Wen Baoling, a Hong Konger who lives in San Francisco, traveled to Phoenix to attend a preview of the show, which has a book by Scott Elmegreen, with music and lyrics by Drew Fornarola.

“I really wanted to support this team of very brave people who made this show about the Tiananmen massacre,” she said. “The Chinese regime tries to put a lot of pressure on people, even outside of China. So, we can’t really let the censorship — this complete erasure of history — we can’t let the Chinese regime extend that censorship outside of China and into the U.S.”

Audience member Jerry Vineyard told VOA Mandarin he had followed the Tiananmen protests when they began. He said the musical “brought up a lot of memories for me … because I remember I was in high school, I was 17, when all this happened. And I felt a lot of hope when I saw that started to happen. And then it just seemed like it was all dashed and crushed. And then … they mentioned in the play, the [Berlin] Wall came down shortly after. So, [Tiananmen] kind of got brushed away in history.”

Kaixi said the students’ pro-democracy movement of 1989 remains “unfinished business.”

“I hope everyone will remember this history, respect this history, and eulogize this history. This generation of young people, with their dedication and their bravery, can achieve the results we wanted,” he said.
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A photo of Dick Butkus sneering behind his facemask filled the cover of Sports Illustrated’s 1970 NFL preview, topped by the headline, “The Most Feared Man in the Game.” Opponents who wound up on the business end of his bone-rattling hits could testify that wasn’t an exaggeration. 

Butkus, a middle linebacker for the Chicago Bears whose speed and ferocity set the standards for the position in the modern era, died Thursday, the team announced. He was 80. 

According to a statement released by the team, Butkus’ family confirmed that he died in his sleep at his home in Malibu, California. 

Butkus was a first-team All-Pro five times and made the Pro Bowl in eight of his nine seasons before a knee injury forced him to retire at 31. He was the quintessential Monster of the Midway and was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979, his first year of eligibility. He is still considered one of the greatest defensive players in league history. 

“Dick Butkus was a fierce and passionate competitor who helped define the linebacker position as one of the NFL’s all-time greats. Dick’s intuition, toughness and athleticism made him the model linebacker whose name will forever be linked to the position and the Chicago Bears,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement. “We also remember Dick as a longtime advocate for former players, and players at all levels of the game.” 

A moment of silence honoring Butkus was held before the Bears played  the Washington Commanders on Thursday night. 

Trading on his image as the toughest guy in the room, Butkus enjoyed a long second career as a sports broadcaster, an actor in movies and TV series, and a sought-after pitchman for products ranging from antifreeze to beer. Whether the script called for comedy or drama, Butkus usually resorted to playing himself, often with his gruff exterior masking a softer side. 

“I wouldn’t ever go out to hurt anybody deliberately,” Butkus replied tongue-in-cheek when asked about his on-field reputation. “Unless it was, you know, important … like a league game or something.” 

Butkus was the rare pro athlete who played his entire career close to home. He was a star linebacker, fullback and kicker at Chicago Vocational High who went on to play at the University of Illinois. Born on December 9, 1942, as the youngest of eight children, he grew up on the city’s South Side as a fan of the Chicago Cardinals, the Bears’ crosstown rivals. 

But after being drafted in the first round in 1965 by both the Bears and Denver Broncos (at the time, a member of the now-defunct American Football League), Butkus chose to remain in Chicago and play for NFL founder and coach George Halas. The Bears also added future Hall of Fame running back Gale Sayers to the roster that year with another first-round pick. 

“He was Chicago’s son,” Bears chairman George McCaskey, Halas’ grandson, said in a statement. “He exuded what our great city is about and, not coincidentally, what George Halas looked for in a player: toughness, smarts, instincts, passion and leadership. He refused to accept anything less than the best from himself, or from his teammates.” 

Butkus inherited the middle linebacker job from Bill George, a Hall of Famer credited with popularizing the position in the NFL. In 1954, George abandoned his three-point stance in the middle of the defensive line and started each play several paces removed, a vantage point that allowed him to watch plays unfold and then race to the ball. 

Butkus, however, brought speed, agility and a scorched-earth attitude to the job that his predecessors only imagined. He intercepted five passes, recovered six fumbles and was unofficially credited with forcing six more in his rookie year, topping it off with the first of eight straight Pro Bowl appearances. But his reputation as a disruptor extended well past the ability to take away the football. 

Butkus would hit runners high, wrap them up and drive them to the ground like a rag doll. Playboy magazine once described him as “the meanest, angriest, toughest, dirtiest” player in the NFL and an “animal, a savage, subhuman.” Descriptions like that never sat well with Butkus. But they were also hard to argue. 

Several opponents claimed Butkus poked them in the face or bit them in pileups, and he acknowledged that during warmups, “I would manufacture things to make me mad.” When the Detroit Lions unveiled an I-formation against the Bears at old Tigers Stadium, Butkus knocked every member of the “I” — the center, quarterback, fullback and halfback — out of the game. 

And he didn’t always stop there. Several times Butkus crashed into ball carriers well past the sidelines. More than once he pursued them onto running tracks surrounding the field and even into the stands. 

“Just to hit people wasn’t good enough,” teammate Ed O’Bradovich said. “He loved to crush people.” 

Despite those efforts, the Bears lost plenty more games during his tenure than they won, going 48-74-4. Dealing with tendon problems that began in high school, Butkus suffered a serious injury to his right knee during the 1970 season and had preventive surgery before the next one. He considered a second operation after being sidelined nine games into the 1973 season. 

When a surgeon asked him “how a man in your shape can play football, or why you would even want to,” Butkus announced his retirement in May 1974. 

Soon after, Butkus sued the Bears for $1.6 million, contending he was provided inadequate medical care and owed the four years of salary remaining on his contract. The lawsuit was settled for $600,000, but Butkus and Halas didn’t speak for five years. 

Butkus, like Sayers, never reached the postseason. The Bears won the 1963 championship and by the time they made the playoffs again in 1977, Butkus and Sayers were long gone. 

After leaving football, Butkus became an instant celebrity. He appeared in “The Longest Yard” in 1974 and a dozen feature films over the next 15 years, as well as the sitcoms “My Two Dads” and “Hang Time.” He also returned to the Bears as a radio analyst in 1985, and replaced Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder on CBS’s “The NFL Today” pregame show in 1988. 

Through the Butkus Foundation, he helped establish a program at a Southern California hospital to encourage early screenings to detect heart disease. He promoted a campaign to encourage high school athletes to train and eat well and avoid performance-enhancing drugs. 

The foundation oversees the Butkus Award, established in 1985 to honor college football’s best linebacker. It was expanded in 2008 to include pros and high school players. 

Butkus is survived by his wife, Helen, and children Ricky, Matt and Nikki. Nephew Luke Butkus has coached in college and the NFL, including time with the Bears.
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Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga received the Africa Freedom Prize in Johannesburg on Thursday, which is awarded to individuals who “have shown remarkable courage and dedication to advancing the cause of freedom, democracy and human rights on the African continent.”

Tsitsi Dangarembga has long been one of Zimbabwe’s most highly regarded and beloved fiction writers — from her lauded first novel “Nervous Conditions” in 1988 to “This Mournable Body,” which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2020. 

Tinashe Mushakavanhu, a research fellow at the University of Oxford who specializes in Zimbabwean literature, said Dangarembga has a place in the modern canon.

“Her most important contribution is being the first Black, Zimbabwean woman writer to publish a novel in English. In that sense, she is a pioneer and a leading light, so much that her book, “Nervous Conditions,” is considered one of the best African books of the 20th century,” said Mushakavanhu.

That’s one of the reasons the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, which promotes liberal politics and democracy around the world, is awarding Dangarembga their greatest honor today. She is also the recipient of the 2021 PEN International Award for Freedom of Expression. 

Aside from her writing, Dangarembga has made headlines for her political activism. The 64-year-old was convicted by a Zimbabwean court last year of “inciting violence” after staging a peaceful protest with a friend during which the two women stood quietly on a roadside holding placards calling for political reform. That conviction was overturned earlier this year by a higher court.  

So, would Dangarembga consider herself a political writer?

“I don’t conceive of myself as an activist writer. I conceive of myself as a person who has a story to tell, and my story has an intention. My intention is to tell stories in which Zimbabweans can see themselves reflected. And I think that is important for the well-being of the individual — to understand the complexities of the lives they are living and the challenges, and to possibly point to possible solutions. And I think when individuals are able to engage in that process, it leads to the health of the nation,” she said.

After independence in 1980, the former British colony was ruled by one man, Robert Mugabe, for almost four decades until he was overthrown in a bloodless coup in 2017. His successor from the same party, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, has failed to fix the country’s broken economy and has cracked down on dissent.

The political opposition called the last elections, held in August, a fraud, and the Southern African Development Community, which sent a mission to observe polls, expressed concerns over the fairness of the vote.

Among the previous winners of the Africa Freedom Prize are Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Danai Mupotsa, a senior lecturer in African literature at Johannesburg’s Witwatersrand University, notes that female writers from the continent have been receiving more attention and accolades lately.

“There’s definitely a particular kind of moment for African writers and African women writers, I think, in particularly the last 10 years,” said Mupotsa.

Asked about this, Dangarembga said what it indicates is the publishing world has “’shifted to open up” and is publishing more work by African woman writers.
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Norwegian author Jon Fosse has been awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Swedish Academy highlighted what it said were Fosse’s “innovative plays and prose, which give voice to the unsayable.”

“His immense oeuvre written in Norwegian Nynorsk and spanning a variety of genres consists of a wealth of plays, novels, poetry collections, essays, children’s books and translations,” the academy said.

Fosse never achieved popular recognition outside of Norway. But within literary circles, the 64-year-old playwright is considered among the greatest of all time.

He has been honored across Europe and was even knighted in France in 2007. Norway’s government has long covered his living expenses and financed his work with a lifetime stipend.

The American writer Damion Searls described Fosse as “probably the best craftsman of them all.” Others have likened him to Henrik Ibsen, whose 19th century plays popularized modernism in theater.

Fosse had limited success as a playwright until he finally made a name for himself in his 40s, with a 1998 showing of his first-ever play in Paris, called Nokon kjem til å komme, or, in English, Someone Is Going to Come.

Since then, Fosse’s plays have been produced in more than 60 countries, his translator said.

While many in theater are celebrating Fosse’s victory, critics have long accused the Committee of unfairly favoring European and white writers, snubbing artists of color from the Global South.

The Nobel announcements began Monday with the prize in Medicine going to Hungary’s Kataline Kariko and Drew Weissman of the United States for their joint research that led to the rapid development of the mRNA COVID vaccines.

The academy on Tuesday awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier for their individual efforts that led to the creation of “extremely short pulses of light that can be used to measure the rapid processes in which electrons move or change energy.”

On Wednesday, Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work in advancing the field of nanotechnology.

The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday, followed by the final prize for economic sciences on Monday.

All the categories except economics were established in the will of 19th century Swedish businessman Alfred Nobel, who made a fortune with his invention of dynamite.

The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901, five years after his death.

The economics prize was established in 1968 by Sweden’s central bank Sveriges Riksbank in Nobel’s memory, with the first laureates, Norway’s Ragnar Frisch and Jan Tinbergen of the Netherlands, announced the next year.
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It’s been 15 years since the world’s elite gas balloon pilots have gathered in the United States for a race with roots that stretch back more than a century.

The pilots will be launching for this year’s Gordon Bennett competition during an international balloon fiesta that draws hundreds of thousands of spectators to the heart of New Mexico each fall. The race has been held in the United States only 13 times before, and this will be the fifth time the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta has played host.

The launch window opens Saturday evening for what is billed as one of the most prestigious events in aviation.

Some worry that the massive spheres could be mistaken for Chinese spy balloons as they traverse the upper reaches of America’s airspace. But the pilots who will be racing aren’t worried. They’re more concerned about charting a course that will keep them out of bad weather and give their hydrogen-filled balloons a path to victory.

There are no stops to refuel or to pick up extra supplies. They will be aloft for days, carrying everything they need to survive at high altitude as they search for the right combination of wind currents to push their tiny baskets as far as they can go. Prevailing winds are expected to carry the competitors through the Midwest toward the northeastern U.S. and potentially into Canada.

A Belgium team holds the record for traveling just over 3,400 kilometers in 2005. A German team was added to the record books for staying aloft the longest — more than 92 hours — during the 1995 competition. Willi Eimers, a member of that German team, holds the record for the number of times a pilot has competed in the race. He and his son, Benjamin, are back this year to defend their title.

Albuquerque balloonists Barbara Fricke and husband Peter Cuneo will be among three American teams. Their ballooning résumé includes four wins in the America’s Challenge long-distance gas balloon race, and third- and fourth-place finishes in previous Gordon Bennett competitions.

The couple are at a slight disadvantage because of their height. Their long legs make it tough to squeeze into a basket that is about 1.22 meters by 1.52 meters wide. They do have a trap door on the side so they can stretch out if needed.

On a recent day, Fricke and Cuneo had their equipment spread out on their living room floor as they checked their radio, transponder and GPS unit. A small solar panel and batteries will help to keep things charged while in the air. Dried foods, including Cheez-Its, are on the in-flight menu.

The idea was to get everything ready in advance so they could rest in the days leading up to the race and get themselves in the right state of mind.

“You’ve got to start thinking — yes, I’m going to live in this basket for three days, and this is going to be home, and I’m just camping out in the sky,” Fricke said.

Another U.S. entry in the race is the team of Mark Sullivan and Cheri White, both of whom have a long list of accolades: Sullivan holds the record for the most competition gas balloon flights — 25 Gordon Bennett flights and 21 America’s Challenge races, while White has flown in the Gordon Bennett 14 times, the most ever by a female pilot.

Sullivan, president of the FAI Ballooning Commission, said this will be an important year as the fiesta is partnering with hydrogen company BayoTech on a new system to convert high-pressure gas typically used for the long-haul trucking industry and other vehicles so that it can fill the race balloons.

Pilots and organizers say hydrogen has been hard to come by.

Never mind the cost — it can be a few thousand dollars to fill a 1,000 cubic meter balloon.

Sullivan got his first taste of gas ballooning in 1985. After launching from a rural area east of Albuquerque, he and fellow pilot Jacques Soukup tried to land in West Texas. The wind was howling, and they busted through a barbed wire fence. They bailed from the basket as it got dragged for another a mile, crashing through more barbed wire and herds of horses and cattle.

The balloon was shredded, the basket was mangled and Sullivan was hooked on the sport.

Competitive gas ballooning is something of an exclusive club, but Sullivan and others are trying to get a new generation involved by training younger pilots.

There have been many technological advancements over the years — baskets are now made of carbon fiber, mapping and tracking apps are top-notch, and equipment is getting lighter and more compact.

But the pilots still take great pains to ensure sure they’re at fighting weight. Every pound shaved means they might be able to add another ballast — extra weight in the form of sandbags or water jugs that are used to help keep the balloon flying longer.

Unlike the colorful hot air balloons that ascend en masse during the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta by using heated ambient air, gas balloons have an envelope filled with a gas lighter than air — usually hydrogen. Some of the gas is lost as it expands and contracts as temperatures fluctuate throughout the day, so pilots get rid of ballast to maintain altitude.

Teams dress in layers — long johns, hats, gloves and hand warmers for the frigid overnight and morning hours. In the afternoon, the sun can be more intense at high altitude.

Sullivan, 73, spent last week getting his basket ready and reviewing his checklist. It depends on where he and White are flying, but sometimes survival suits and inflatable life rafts are on the list.

He recalled the Gordon Bennett competition that occurred after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. The gas balloons were the only things in the sky as planes were still grounded.

In 1995, two fellow Americans were killed when they were shot down over Belarus by the military. Sullivan and his copilot were detained when they landed in the country.

Every flight is different, with the pilots never sure about where they might land. Risk is inherent, and they know how far they can push the envelope.

“It’s the adventure,” Sullivan said. “Every year when we land, we say, ‘We’re not doing this. It’s crazy.’ Then you decide, ‘OK, let’s go up there.’ Because once you get up there, it’s wonderful — just that experience of flying.”
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The 2030 World Cup will play out across three continents, FIFA, soccer’s governing body, announced Wednesday. 

The World Cup is usually limited to one host nation, sometimes two. But 2030’s edition will be hosted by an unprecedented six countries:  Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. 

Originally, Spain and Portugal proposed to host the 2030 World Cup jointly. Their bid expanded to include Morocco. Bid rivals Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay joined next. 

The unprecedented intercontinental tournament could open in Uruguay’s capital, Montevideo, where the inaugural World Cup was played in 1930. 

“The centennial World Cup could not be far from South America, where everything began,” said Alejandro Dominguez, president of South America’s soccer federation CONMEBOL. 

FIFA’s tricontinental World Cup plan awaits formal approval in 2024 at a conference of 211 worldwide soccer federations. That vote is typically a formality. 

Like 2026’s World Cup, 2030’s is scheduled for June and July of that year and will feature 48 teams vying for soccer’s most prestigious trophy, with 104 games to be played in total. 

National teams will have to cover vast distances and adjust to time zone shifts to participate. 

“In 2030, we will have a unique global footprint, three continents … six countries … welcoming and uniting the world while celebrating the beautiful game, the centenary and the FIFA World Cup,” FIFA President Gianni Infantino said. 

Now that a decision has been reached over where the 2030 World Cup will take place, the 2034 World Cup bidding contest will start soon. The 2034 World Cup will be limited to FIFA member nations in Asia and Oceania. Saudi Arabia and Australia have both expressed interest. 

Some information for this report is from The Associated Press.
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When members of a tourist group did not like the food in the only restaurant in Turkey’s ancient city of Mardin in 2000, their tour guide, Ebru Baybara Demir, invited them to her home for dinner. That decision created a whole new life and career for Demir. VOA’s Mahmut Bozarslan has this report from Mardin, narrated by Begum Donmez Ersoz.
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Hollywood actors on strike want to limit the use of Artificial Intelligence in moviemaking, hoping for the same success as Hollywood writers, who ended their five-month strike last week after a deal with major studios. From Los Angeles, Genia Dulot has our story. Video edit: Bakhtiyar Zamanov
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Muslim comic creators are working to change Islamic stereotypes in American pop culture. Genia Dulot has our story, with videography by Roy Kim.
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