Friends, Romans and Latin lovers — lend the Vatican your ears. Vatican Radio is starting its first regular news bulletin in the language of Caesar and Cicero.

Called “Hebdomada Papae, Notitiae Vaticanae latine reddiate” (“The pope’s week, Vatican news in the Latin language”), it is the latest in a series of initiatives to broaden use of Latin, once a staple of Western European education and the language of all Roman Catholic services.

This month, Hebdomada Aenigmatum, a new book of crossword puzzles in Latin and ancient Greek, said to be the first with no help or definitions in modern languages, hit book stores in Italy.

The weekly Vatican Radio broadcast, which starts Saturday, will run for five minutes and be followed by a half-hour show with Latin conversation — and tips in Italian on using the language of ancient Rome in a modern setting.

“We wanted the official language of the Church to be experienced in news just as it is in the daily broadcast of a Mass in Latin,” said Andrea Tornielli, the editorial director for Vatican communications.

The program will be produced by the radio’s news team and the Vatican department that translates and writes official documents in Latin.

Growing interest

Luca Desiata, an Italian businessman who published the book of crosswords in Latin, said the internet has helped revive interest in the language just as more and more schools around the world stopped teaching it.

“We now have Wikipedia in Latin (“Vicipaedia Latina”), about 40 Latin Facebook groups around the world — and the pope’s Twitter account in Latin is followed by nearly a million people,” he told Reuters. “Not bad for a dead language.”

Desiata came up with the idea for the crossword book after publishing a weekly online Latin puzzle magazine for five years that pulled in 10,000 subscribers.

In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI started the Pontifical Academy for Latin Studies to promote the use of Latin in the Church and beyond.

Many attempts have been made to revive Latin. Some have tried to bring it up to date by introducing new words for things that did not exist at the time of the Roman Empire — not all of them very functional.

Years ago, Father Carlo Egger, a top Vatican Latinist, came up with “machina linteorum lavatoria” for washing machine; “escariorum lavator” for dishwasher; “autocinetorum lavatrix” for carwash — and “sphaeriludium electricum numismate actum” for pinball machine.
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It’s often hard for victims of sexual violence to speak about their experience. But 3,000 of them were able to express themselves through art, creating a personal square of fabric to be part of quilts that make up The Monument Quilt.

Not alone

Each square is a message from survivors of rape, incest or domestic violence. They are women, men and children from across the U.S. and Mexico. Laid out on the National Mall this month, the Quilt squares spelled out “YOU ARE NOT ALONE” in English and Spanish.

The project was envisioned and organized by FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture. The Baltimore-based activist collaboration produces large-scale public art projects to generate media attention and get millions of people talking.

“We’re a survivor-led organization,” said the group’s co-founder, Hannah Brancado. “We’re putting the needs of survivors first in creating a public platform for our healing. This display is the final, the 50th display that we’ve done around the country in the U.S. and Mexico in 33 different cities in the past six years.”

Four years ago, one of those events inspired Greg Grey Cloud to join the campaign.

“At that time, no male had shared their story until finally I got enough nerve to share my story,” he recalled. “Since I was 9 years-old, I was sexually assaulted. But these women here at the Monument FORCE, they created such a safe space for me to share my story.”

That changed his life. Now, he does not blame himself or feel guilty about what happened to him.

“For the longest time since, I stayed the 9-year-old,” he explained. “I was a grown up man, but I was a 9-year-old in my head. But they shared the space for me where I can be a grown-up man and continue to share what happened to me when I was a child.”

WATCH: Stitching Stories of Sexual Violence and Survival

​Quilts become needles

Kalima Young, a member of the leadership team for the Monument Quilt, has worked with hundreds of sexual violence survivors and their relatives. 

“Our commitment is to make sure that the most marginalized voiced and stories are included,” she said.

Through their workshops in Baltimore, Young has come to see how resilient people are. She recalls meeting a grandmother, mother and granddaughter. 

“The three of them experienced sexual violence from a family member,” she said. “Each of them was making her own quilt square. The grandmother had also brought along her grandson, who was around 8 years old. He made his own quilt square as well and it says, ‘I commit to being a better man.’”

In addition to allowing victims to speak up and share their experience, Young says the quilt making process is therapeutic.

“Traumas, especially gender-based violence and sexual trauma lives sort of in the soul, lives in the body,” she explained. “When you put the quilt out on display, it often acts like an acupuncture needle and opens up those places of trauma and often people who don’t even identify as survivors once they experience the quilt, they realize that they have sexual violence in their history.”

Healing and empowering

The quilt displays have attracted thousands of visitors, adults and families with children, men and women.

Naomi Chandel Kumar walked around the quilts laid out on the National Mall and was touched by the survivors’ stories.

“It’s really beautiful to see survivors standing up and not being afraid and being able to find healing in the community,” she said. “It’s really incredible to see that. It’s also very sad to see how impactful this is on all communities.”

Organizers say their work does not stop here. The display is just the launching platform for the group to take the issue of sexual violence to wider audiences, heal more survivors and inspire change.
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Thousands of stories told by sexual assault survivors are stitched together in hundreds of quilts. Together, they form The Monument Quilt, organized by the activist collective FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture. In the past five years, workshops around the U.S. encouraged survivors to speak up, share their experiences, in a square of fabric. Recently, as Faiza Elmasry tells us, The Monument Quilt arrived at the National Mall in Washington to show solidarity and seek healing. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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One of the first Lindy Hoppers in America, Norma Miller dazzled the country with this fast-paced, acrobatic dance in the 1930s and 1940s. A multitude of international tours and thousands of students and fans later, America fell in love with Lindy Hop and Miller became known as the Queen of Swing. Miller died in May at 99 in Florida, but her dance legacy continues. For VOA, Ksenia Turkova attended a farewell ceremony in New York and has more on Miller’s life and legacy. Anna Rice narrates.
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Dr. John, the New Orleans musician who blended black and white musical styles with a hoodoo-infused stage persona and gravelly bayou drawl, died Thursday, his family said. He was 77.

In a statement released through his publicist, the family said Dr. John, who was born Mac Rebennack, died “toward the break of day” of a heart attack. 

They did not say where he died or give other details. 

He had not been seen in public much since late 2017, when he canceled several gigs. He had been resting at his New Orleans area home, publicist Karen Beninato said last year in an interview.

Memorial arrangements were being planned. “The family thanks all whom have shared his unique musical journey, and requests privacy at this time,” the statement said.

His spooky 1968 debut “Gris-Gris” combined rhythm `n blues with psychedelic rock and startled listeners with its sinister implications of other-worldly magic. He later had a Top 10 hit with “Right Place, Wrong Time,” collaborated with numerous top-tier rockers, won multiple Grammy awards and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

A white man who found a home among black New Orleans musicians, he first entered the music scene when he accompanied his father, who ran a record shop and also fixed the P.A. systems at New Orleans bars.

As a teenager in the 1950s, he played guitar and keyboards in a string of bands and made the legendary studio of Cosimo Matassa his second home, Rebennack said in his 1994 memoir, “Under a Hoodoo Moon.” 

He got into music full-time after dropping out of high school, became acquainted with drugs and petty crime and lived a fast-paced life. His gigs ranged from strip clubs to auditoriums, roadhouses and chicken shacks. The ring finger of Rebennack’s left hand was blown off in a shooting incident in 1961 in Jacksonville, Florida.

He blamed Jim Garrison, the JFK conspiracy theorist and a tough-on-crime New Orleans district attorney, for driving him out of his beloved city in the early 1960s. Garrison went after prostitutes, bars and all-night music venues.

The underworld sweep put Rebennack in prison. At that time, he was a respected session musician who had played on classic recordings by R&B mainstays like Professor Longhair and Irma Thomas, but he was also a heroin addict. After his release from federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas, at age 24, Rebennack joined friend and mentor Harold Battiste who had left New Orleans to make music in Los Angeles.

Rebennack, who’d long had a fascination with occult mysticism and voodoo, told Battiste about creating a musical personality out of Dr. John, a male version of Marie Laveau, the voodoo queen.

In his memoir, Rebennack said, he drew inspiration from New Orleans folklore about a root doctor who flourished in the mid-1800s. 

Battiste, in a 2005 interview, recalled, “It was really done sort of tongue-in-cheek.”

But Dr. John was born and Rebennack got his first personal recordings done in what became “Gris-Gris,” a 1967 classic of underground American music.

In the years that followed, he played with The Grateful Dead, appeared with The Band in director Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Waltz” documentary, jammed on The Rolling Stones’ “Exile on Main Street” album and collaborated with countless others — among them Earl King, Van Morrison and James Booker.
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Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company Higher Ground has signed a deal with Spotify to create a series of podcasts for the music streaming service, which is seeking to diversify its content.

“We’re excited … because podcasts offer an extraordinary opportunity to foster productive dialogue, make people smile and make people think, and, hopefully, bring us all a little closer together,” the former U.S. president said in a statement released by Spotify and Higher Ground.

The former first lady also said she was “thrilled to have the opportunity to amplify voices that are too often ignored or silenced altogether.” 

For the past year, Spotify — better known for streaming music playlists — has been moving into the business of podcasting. In February, it paid $230 million for the respected U.S. podcast production house Gimlet Media.

Several major players in the industry are seeking to shift podcast production away from the current model, where the audio broadcasts are free and producers earn revenue from advertising, toward a platform where users pay for content.

Luminary, which has already raised $100 million from investors, launched its new platform for a monthly subscription fee of $7.99 in April.

On Tuesday, the French service Majelan was launched with programs accessible in 50 countries for a monthly fee of 4.99 euros ($5.63).

The Obamas’ production company was created in 2018 and has already signed an exclusive deal with Netflix to produce films, television series and documentaries for the streaming giant. 
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R&B singer R. Kelly pleaded not guilty to 11 additional sex-related charges Thursday, including four counts that carry a maximum prison term of 30 years in prison.

Prosecutors did not ask the judge to raise the bond amount for Kelly during the brief hearing in Cook County court.

Kelly stood with his hands folded in front of him and listened to Judge Lawrence Flood describe the charges to him. When Flood asked if he understood, Kelly, responded, “Yes, sir.” The Grammy award-winning singer, who has denied any wrongdoing, left without speaking to reporters. A status hearing was scheduled for June 26.

Among the 11 new counts are four counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault, which carries a sentence of up to 30 years in prison. That is more than four times as long as the maximum term for each of the 10 counts Kelly was originally charged with in February.

Kelly’s defense attorney, Steve Greenberg, said after the hearing that he couldn’t speculate as to why prosecutors brought the new charges, which pertain to one of the four women he was charged in February with sexually abusing years ago, three of whom were minors when the alleged abuse occurred.

“It’s the same case. It’s just that they’ve just changed what they’ve charged him with,” Greenberg said. “It’s the same facts … the same bond, the same evidence. We expect the same result.”

Asked how Kelly is coping, Greenberg said, “It’s tough. Everything is against him.”

Kelly’s spokesman, Darryll Johnson, told reporters that Kelly is “upbeat.” 

 

“Initially, he was a little depressed,” Johnson said. “But I mean, with anything, if someone accuses you of something, you’ll be depressed. He knows the truth.”

New felony counts

According to the new indictment, the first eight counts are from encounters that allegedly occurred between Jan. 1 and Jan. 31, 2010. Three others pertain to alleged encounters between May 1, 2009, and Jan. 31, 2010.

Among other things, prosecutors allege that Kelly used force or threatened to do so to pressure the accuser into sex or to perform oral sex on him. Since she was underage at the time, the statute of limitations for bringing charges was extended to 20 years from her 18th birthday, they wrote.

A woman has come forward to say publicly that 11 new felony counts stem from allegations she made about the R&B singer. 

 

Jerhonda Pace wrote on her Facebook page that she’s the accuser identified as “J.P.” in court documents. Anticipating an angry reaction by Kelly’s fans, Pace — one of four women Kelly is charged with sexually abusing — wrote that “no matter how “wrong” you think I am, the law is on my side, a MINOR at the time.” 

 

The Associated Press doesn’t usually name alleged victims of sexual assault, but Pace has gone public with her allegations.
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The Russian protest band Pussy Riot is planning a concert in Alabama to benefit Planned Parenthood after the state passed the nation’s toughest anti-abortion law.

Al.com reports that the feminist band is set to perform July 11 at a music venue in Birmingham.

A tweet by the band says the show will benefit both Planned Parenthood and the Yellowhammer Fund, which says it provides funding for anyone seeking care at one of the state’s three abortion clinics.

Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union are suing to block the Alabama law, which would ban all abortions except ones when the women’s health is at serious risk.

Backers of the law say they hope court challenges will lead to a Supreme Court decision outlawing abortions nationwide.
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Carrie Underwood extended her run as the most decorated act in the history of the CMT Music Awards with her 20th win Wednesday night.

 

Underwood won two prizes at the fan-voted show, including video of the year for “Cry Pretty” and female video of the year for “Love Wins.”

 

“Fans, thank you so much. I saw you guys doing the Twitter parties and getting together and doing your thing and voting,” she said. “None of us would be able to do any of what we do if not for you guys. You guys put us here. You guys keep us going. You guys let us live out our dreams.”

 

When she won the first televised award of the night, Underwood acknowledged her husband’s birthday (she is married to former hockey player Mike Fisher, who sat in the audience).

 

“It is my husband’s birthday today — look what they got you,” she said.

 

The Grammy-winning country star also performed at the show honoring the year’s best country music videos, which took place at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee.

 

Thomas Rhett, Little Big Town and Trombone Shorty kicked off the event with a performance of “Don’t Threaten Me With a Good Time.” More collaborative performances followed: Brett Young sang “Here Tonight” with Boyz II Men, even blending in some of the R&B group’s “Water Runs Dry” for the performance. Sheryl Crow and Maren Morris teamed up onstage, while Tanya Tucker — whose new album will be produced by Brandi Carlile — sang “Delta Dawn” with the Grammy-winning Americana singer, Martina McBride, Trisha Yearwood, Lauren Alaina and more acts.

 

Little Big Town, who also performed and returned for a second year as hosts of the show, talked about the lack of female singers on country radio ahead of the strong female performance. On this week’s Billboard country airplay chart — which tracks radio airplay — only 10 of the 60 slots belong to women or songs co-starring a woman.

 

“Back in December it was even worse — there were none,” Little Big Town’s Karen Fairchild said. “Here’s my question, ladies in the house: ‘What do we have to do to get some airplay around here?'”

 

Little Big Town told jokes at the top of the show and even sang some of “Old Town Road,” the No. 1 country-rap hit from newcomer Lil Nas X that was booted from the Billboard country songs chart when the tune was deemed not country enough.

 

Dan + Shay — who won a Grammy this year as well as honors at the Academy of Country Music Awards and the Billboard Music Awards — kept their year of winning alive by taking home duo video of the year for “Speechless.”

 

Shay Mooney thanked “the real stars of the video” — their wives — when they accepted the award.

 

Zac Brown Band won group video of the year for “Someone I Used to Know” and its frontman was passionate as he read his speech from a paper.

 

“For you young artists, have courage to stand up against the machine, be yourself, work hard and one day you can stand up here and tell all the haters to ‘[expletive] off,'” Zac Brown said.

 

When Ashley McBryde won breakthrough video of the year, she took a drink from Luke Combs as she walked to the stage.

 

“I’m always awkward and I usually bring my drink with me, but I didn’t have a drink so I took Luke Combs’ drink,” said McBryde, who scored Grammy and Emmy nominations this year.

 

Keith Urban and Julia Michaels — the pop singer who has co-written hits for Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez and herself — won collaborative video of the year for “Coming Home,” while Kane Brown won male video of the year for “Lose It.”

 

Luke Combs and R&B singer Leon Bridges — who won his first Grammy this year — won CMT performance of the year for “Beautiful Crazy” from the series “CMT Crossroads.”

 

“First off, my beautiful fiance Nicole — thank you for inspiring this song,” Combs said.

 
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Muhammad Ali amazed the world as a champion boxer and political activist. After his death in 2016, Ali’s hometown of Louisville, Ky., is memorializing him by officially naming its airport after him on June 6. The move also highlights one of Ali’s most famous quirks. VOA’s Alam Burhanan reports from Louisville, Kentucky.
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The International Basketball Federation, known as FIBA, is expecting the professional African league due to launch in 2020 to be a showcase and breeding ground for new talents. With the support of Africa-born former NBA stars like Dikembo Mutombo, young talents are already getting support to move up to the next level. Elizabete Casimiro reports for VOA news in Luanda.
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Rapper Chhun Dymey seems to have struck a chord in Cambodia. He was somewhat of an unknown until his song, “This Society,” went viral last month, shared on social media platforms that included opposition leader Sam Rainsy’s YouTube channel.

Since then, police have visited Chhun Dymey’s parents’ home and his workplace and the 24-year-old artist, also known as Dymey-Cambo, has deleted it from his social media accounts. (At the time of this story’s publication it remained viewable online on Cambodian activist and politician Sam Rainsy’s account.)

The song touches on a range of social and political issues and is seen as critical of the government.

“I will stop composing such songs and turn to write sentimental songs that encourage the younger generation to love and unite in solidarity with one another,” Dymey told The Phnom Penh Post.

In an email, Sam Rainsy described the developments as “very worrying.”

“Even artists and musicians are now afraid in this repressive society,” he said. “We must not accept that even artists are held hostage by the Hun Sen regime.” Sam Rainsy was referring to the prime minister.

Musician Vartey Ganiva understands Chhun Dymey’s decision to delete his song and turn to less critical music. In her songs, she has addressed issues that include women’s rights and the environment, but is careful to not take it too far.

In an interview with VOA, Vartey Ganiva said she was worried police would also show up at her home if she wasn’t cautious with her choice of words.

“I write in a good way,” she said, explaining her strategy to avoid encounters with authorities. “I don’t go to the main problem, like, I don’t write about government stuff. [I] just [write] about the problem that happened. But I’m not going directly to the government. [I] just make people understand why the environment has problems right now. Because of what? Because of cutting trees, or [that] they have used so much plastic.”

Asked whether she thought of herself as conducting self-censorship, she replied in the affirmative.

“I mean you can understand I cannot go to the government, because I also protect myself too. I want to stay longer with this kind of music … so if I write something about the government then [this] can cause problems,” she said.

Vartey Ganiva said she had to be mindful as she felt that the Camdodian legal system did not adequately protect artists.

Naly Pilorge, director of human rights organization Licadho, took it a step further, and said that laws were often used against those who criticized the government.

“Dymey’s case illustrates a worrying trend where the government’s attempts to intimidate and criminally charge Cambodians for expressing dissent has increased significantly. This is especially true of online expression,” she said in a message to VOA. “While art is a strong platform to express oneself and should be protected as free speech, we can also see that authoritarian regimes are threatened by them and are quick to ban anything critical of the establishment.”

Culture and Fine Arts Minister Phoerung Sackona did not respond to requests for comment.

Despite feeling that she had to be careful about the way she addressed social issues in her lyrics, Vartey Ganiva said she derived satisfaction about her work by having clear and meaningful messages. “[It makes me] a little bit sad, but…I am still writing some stuff that’s good,” she said.

“I really want [new artists] to focus on real music, not copy stuff… They could be writing more songs that can give more messages than love songs,” she said.

 
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Africa’s professional basketball league, due to be launched in 2020, is expected to be a showcase for new talent. With the support of Africa-born former professional stars like Dikembe Mutombo, young talent already have the incentive to step up their game.

Sitting on the benches at Kilamba Arena, former NBA star and Hall of Famer Dikembo Mutombo was helping set up a National Basketball Association-supported clinic, to train and observe new talent in Luanda, the capital of Angola, where he made a visit in May and spoke to the young players. 

Mutombo is following his roots, as he was born in and grew up in Kinshasa, a 45-minute flight from Angola, before he became an NBA all-star. 

“I think my presence means a lot to these young people who are playing the game here, that I am still caring about them. We are following them and we want them to succeed and we want the game of basketball to continue to grow in the continent,” Mutombo said.

The clinic was organized by Will Voigt, an American basketball coach, who is now coaching the Angola national basketball team. After training Nigeria’s team, he is helping Angola to build the next generation of players. He instructs and gives guidance to local coaches and young players.

“We are trying the best as we can to give them a fair opportunity to learn and grow. We already have seen what players from the continent can do when given them,” Voigt said.

Olumide Oyedeji, one of the former NBA players who came with Mutombo, believes that African basketball is growing and that it has overcome the times when the game was dominated by a few countries, like Angola and Egypt. 

He hopes one day an Africa national team might reach the FIBA world top 10.

“We have a chance; we just need to keep playing and getting better, beside the fact that it must start with each step. I believe we are taking the right steps,” Oyedeji said.

As the search for new talent takes place, Angola hosted the final of the FIBA-Africa Basketball League 2019. Local home team Primeiro de Agosto won the competition, beating Association Sportive de Sale 83-71 to get a record ninth African title. The team was given awards by NBA Africa Vice President Amadou Gallo Fall, Mutombo, Oyedeji, Jean Jacques Conceicao and Minnesota Timberwolves forward Luol Deng.

Now FIBA-Africa is getting ready to launch the first Pan-African professional basketball league with support from the NBA. Anibal Manave is the newly appointed president of the board for the Basketball Africa League, or BAL.

“The concept for this is African. It is not a national, but African awards. That is why we give the opportunity for the countries to have, apart from foreign players, African players as well,” Manave said.

The new BAL is scheduled to begin play in January with 12 club teams from across Africa. 

The teams will be chosen through regional competitions and the top teams will advance to the BAL.
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Woody Allen is set to shoot his next movie in Spain this summer with Oscar winner Christoph Waltz, the director’s first film project since “A Rainy Day in New York” that was shelved at the height of the #MeToo movement.

Spanish production company MediaPro Studio said in a statement on Tuesday that Allen would begin filming in San Sebastian in July on a romantic comedy about an American couple who visit the San Sebastian film festival.

Waltz, the Austrian actor who won Oscars for his roles in “Django Unchained” and “Inglourious Basterds,” – both directed by Quentin Tarantino – will be among the cast, along with American actress Gina Gershon, Spanish actressElena Anaya and Frenchman Louis Garrel.

“This latest movie has all the ingredients to be right up there along with what we’ve become accustomed to from a director of Woody Allen’s talent: an intelligent script and a first-rate international cast,” MediaPro said in statement.

No title or release date was given.

Allen’s last movie, “A Rainy Day in New York,” was never released in the United States. Amazon Studios declined in 2018 to distribute it after an accusation resurfaced that the director molested his adopted daughter in 1992.

Allen has long denied the accusation by Dylan Farrow and has never been charged with a crime.

In February, he sued Amazon for $68 million in damages for refusing to distribute the film and backing out of a four picture deal.

Amazon responded by claiming it was justified in terminating the relationship.

Allen, 83, is a four-time Oscar winner, but some Hollywood actors distanced themselves from him in late 2017 and early 2018 as a sexual misconduct scandal, fueled by the grassroots #MeToo movement, swept the entertainment industry.

His 2017 film “Wonder Wheel,” starring Kate Winslet and Justin Timberlake, took in just $1.4 million at the North American box office but grossed $14.5 million overseas.
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FIFA and the French Development Agency (AFD) have pledged ahead of the June 7-July 7 World Cup in France to promote women’s soccer in Africa on a long-term basis, the governing body’s president Gianni Infantino said on Tuesday.

“I am happy that today, another strategic alliance has been forged to help use football as a platform for positive change in society,” Infantino said after signing the cooperation agreement with AFD Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Remy Rioux.

“This landmark agreement between FIFA and the AFD aims to make a lasting difference to communities around the world.

“It is also to ensure that football continues to play an even more important role in sustainable development, educating and empowering the next generation to help build a fairer, more peaceful society.”

Rioux said: “What better way to build a world in common than by leveraging the unifying power of football?

“I am extremely proud that the AFD and FIFA are today launching a unique partnership to promote gender equality and foster education in Africa through football.

“As the Women’s World Cup is about to kick off in France, I am confident that the AFD-FIFA alliance will help to showcase women’s sport as a strategic development objective in Africa.”

The ceremony was attended by France president Emmanuel Macron, former international football greats Marcel Desailly, Didier Drogba, Samuel Eto’o and Bernard Lama as well as former French female player Candice Prévost.

Macron underscored that equality between women and men was the great national objective of his five-year term in office as president, adding that “school is where we build the society we need and want to see”

The 24-nation Women’s World Cup kicks off on Friday with hosts France taking on South Korea in Group A at the Parc Des Princes stadium in Paris.

Holders United States open their Group F campaign against Thailand in Reims on June 11. Africa’s three nations taking part in the event are Nigeria, South Africa and Cameroon. 
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British star musician Elton John and the filmmakers of “Rocketman,” a feature film about his path to fame, have criticized a Russian distributor for removing gay and drug abuse scenes from the movie. Russia has a poor record on LGBT rights and a controversial law bans the promotion of “nontraditional sexual relationships” to minors. The artist’s Russian fans were disappointed with the cuts, recognizing that the LGBT community is still ostracized in the country. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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Legendary New Orleans chef and civil rights icon Leah Chase has died. She was 96.

Her family released a statement Saturday saying the “unwavering advocate for civil liberties” and “believer in the Spirit of New Orleans” had died.

Chase put the Dooky Chase restaurant on the map by turning it into the first white-tablecloth establishment that catered to the black community. She also challenged New Orleans’ segregation laws by seating black and white patrons together.

In her seven-decade culinary career, Chase fed civil rights icons, presidents, legendary artists and common folk alike, introducing them to Creole cooking, which combines the flavors of France, Africa and Native America.

Her fans included the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and musicians Ray Charles, Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughn.

Chase recalled when she hosted Barack Obama at the restaurant while he was campaigning for president in 2008. She said she had to slap him down when he tried to add hot sauce to her dish. “Mr. Obama, you don’t put hot sauce in my gumbo,” Chase recalled in an interview with WWL-TV. “So I had to reprimand him.”

Chase was born in Madisonville, Louisiana, on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, on Jan. 6, 1923.

She married Edgar “Dooky” Chase Jr., a jazz trumpeter and band leader in 1945. She went to work at her father-in-law’s sandwich shop in New Orleans, where she convinced the family to expand the business, to make it more like the finer restaurants she had worked at in the city’s French Quarter.

The restaurant became a gathering place for leaders of the civil rights movement to discuss strategy, often with their white allies.

In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city, the Dooky Chase restaurant was flooded, with 1.5 meters of water in the dining room for weeks. The damage was so extensive some thought it would never reopen. But it did two years later.

Leah Chase could be seen at the restaurant until a few months ago, greeting guests and overseeing the kitchen with the help of a walker.

“I love people and I love serving people. It’s fun for me to serve people. Because sometimes people will come in and they’re tired. And just a little plate of food will make people happy,” she said during a 2015 interview with The Associated Press.

 
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The spelling and vocabulary contest known as the National Spelling Bee in the United States was inaugurated in 1925 with help of nine American newspapers.

 

While the winning elementary and middle school students had family names of Neuhauser, Bell, Lucas, Robinson, Hogan, Jensen and Randall in the contest’s first years, beginning in the 1980s, children from South Asian immigrant families, particularly India, have started gaining a solid footing among champions.  

In fact, from 2008 until 2018, winners of every single year’s spelling bee hail from families of Indian heritage.  

 

This year, the southern state Alabama’s 14-year-old Erin Howard was the lone non-Indian American who won the prestigious championship  along with seven other kids, aged 12 and 13, all of whom came from Indian American families.

While some have expressed concern that the contest appears to be dominated by Indian Americans, the competition’s organizers don’t seem to be troubled.

“We are proud of the diversity of our participants and are delighted with the success of Indian-American students in our program,” Paige P. Kimble, executive director of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, tells VOA.

Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Shalini Shankar, professor of anthropology and Asian American studies at Northwestern University, herself a native of Mumbai, India, points out that “spelling bees have become a vital part of the Indian American experience.”

Shankar credits “a confluence of factors” that include “feel-good documentaries that inspired future spellers, a culture invested in competitive spelling and parental investment in a child’s educational success” to the persisting phenomenon of Indian-American students’ domination of the national spelling bee contests in the last decade.

According to the Spelling Bee’s official website, 11 million students across America, from grades one to eight (aged seven to 15), participated in spelling bee contests this year, a majority (65%) of them enrolled in public schools.  The southern state of Texas so far boasts the most champions.

In addition to students who already live and study in the United States, Kimble says this year’s competition also had participants from Canada, Jamaica, Germany, The Bahamas, Ghana, Japan and South Korea.  

 

Kimble tweeted that “the school bee winner is often the one who memorized a 450-word list. The regional winner is the one who memorized a 1500-word list; has broad knowledge of roots and patterns; and composure in applying knowledge to off-list words asked at the end of the bee.”

The Merriam-Webster unabridged online dictionary, “a dictionary of American English,” as Kimble puts it, serves as the official source where contest words are found.

Following its news report of the 2019 national competition that saw eight parallel winners, each bringing home a $50,000 cash prize (which they all reportedly indicated an interest in putting aside for their college education), The New York Times gave readers an opportunity to try out the paper’s own Spelling Bee contest, a step-up from the usual Crossword feature.

Kimble, the executive director of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, a non-profit organization under The E. W. Scripps Company, a Cincinnati, Ohio-based media conglomerate, says there is also a yearly Bee in the nation’s capital between members of the press and members of congress.  Winner of the 2018 contest was a journalist writing for The Washington Post.  In 1913, when the first such Bee took place, Congressman Frank B. Willis from Ohio [who went on to become the state’s governor] beat participating scribes in that “most American of showdowns.”
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It’s the soundtrack of  “Chocolate City,” the non-federal Washington that has traditionally been a tent pole of black America.

 

Go-go music, a distinctive D.C.-specific offshoot of funk, has endured for decades through cultural shifts, fluctuations in popularity and law enforcement purges.

 

Now go-go has taken on a new mantle: battle hymn for the fight against a gentrification wave that’s reshaping the city.

 

“It’s a very deep cultural thing,” said Justin “Yaddiya” Johnson, an activist and creator of the #Don’tMuteDC campaign. “When you think about go-go, you should think about D.C. culture. It should be the symbol of our culture.”

 

Many longtime Washingtonians fear that culture is being steadily eroded as the city becomes whiter and richer. A recent controversy over an innocuous noise complaint placed go-go at the center of a perfect storm of gentrification symbolism.

 

The owner of a popular mobile phone store in the historically black Shaw neighborhood was told to turn off the go-go that he had been playing through sidewalk speakers for more than 20 years. He claims the complaint came from a resident of the gleaming new mixed-used apartment building erected on the next block.

The reaction was fierce. Seemingly overnight, a protest movement and petition drive sprung up and members of the D.C. Council started weighing in. Within days, the decision was reversed.

The mini-controversy was over almost before it started. But it obviously touched a nerve.

 

“I think that was messed up. Go-go IS D.C. Go-Go is our history,” said community activist Tiffany Richardson, one of the thousands of fans who turned out on a Tuesday night this month for an outdoor concert/protest featuring go-go mainstays Backyard Band. “They’re not going to stop go-go.”

 

The concert, mischievously named “Moechella,” was organized by Johnson under the #Don’tMuteDC banner. And since it was a protest, he didn’t need to secure a permit, so police obligingly blocked off several city blocks. The location – the corner of 14th and U streets – was no accident. That intersection was once one of the hearts of black D.C.; now it’s within two blocks of a Trader Joe’s (market) and a lululemon (apparel store).

 

To the uninitiated, go-go music seems indistinguishable from funk. What sets it apart are a specific conga-driven syncopation, known as the pocket beat, and a culture of call-and-response that turns the crowd into part of the show. Go-go bands feature multiple percussionists and often multiple vocalists- with one usually designated as “lead talker.”

 

“It’s the drumming it’s the rhythm pattern. It’s the feel of the rhythm,” said Liza Figueroa Kravinsky, founder of the band Go-Go Symphony. “In go-go, the fans know who the conga player is more than the guitar player.”

 

The late Chuck Brown is generally considered the godfather of the sound, starting in the early 1970s. And bands like Rare Essence and Trouble Funk have all flirted with mainstream success, but there has never been a full-scale breakout star. Probably the most famous go-go song is”Da Butt” by Experience Unlimited, which was showcased in the Spike Lee film “School Daze.”

 

While the music retains a local fanbase, musicians and devotees say the scene is still recovering from the effects of the crack epidemic, which ravaged Washington and turned go-go shows into magnets for violence. Eventually police began shutting down famous clubs like the Ibex in 1990s and forcing the shows out of the city.

 

Anwan “Big G” Glover, lead talker of Backyard Band, still recalls the time with bitterness. Authorities blamed the music for drawing violence when he says go-go was simply the ambient soundtrack of a city in crisis .

 

“Those rave parties in the suburbs with these rich kids – if anything happened there, they could just cover it up. That was the difference,” he said.

The purge was especially damaging because go-go is all about live performances. Glover and others say there’s a missing generation of fans who weren’t exposed to live go-go in their youth.

 

“The reason a lot of kids don’t know about go-go is that it’s been erased,” said Angela Byrd, founder of “Made in the DMV” incubator for local artists and activists. She was speaking at a recent #Don’tMuteDC conference. “I feel like go-go was pushed out, but it’s coming back.”

 

This official mistrust has continued. As recently as 2010 the alternative weekly City Paper published the Metropolitan Police Department’s bi-weekly internal “go-go report” tracking all the shows in the area.

 

Glover says the attitudes of the police have eased a bit in recent years and Backyard Band and others now play regular shows around the district. But there’s still a shortage of the all-ages shows that used to be the main gateway for young new fans. That age gap was evident during one of Backyard Band’s recent shows at a bowling alley in Chinatown. The concert drew a healthy crowd of about 150 people – many of whom were obvious hardcores who knew every song by heart. But almost everybody seemed to be at least 35 years old.

 

Now the renewed attention comes at a time when go-go may organically be approaching one of its periodic flirtations with mainstream popularity .

 

Glover has gained personal fame for a memorable recurring role as Slim Charles on the popular TV show “The Wire.” Artists as diverse as Snoop Dog and Dave Grohl from Foo Fighters have paid public tribute to the genre. Rare Essence and Backyard Band have both performed at the South by Southwest music festival and Backyard Band recently scored an improbable hit with a go-go cover of Adele’s “Hello.” Wale, the most famous Washington rapper, pays regular homage to go-go and recorded a song with TCB, purveyors of a neo-go-go sound called bounce-beat.

 

But local musicians still feel authorities have kept the culture at arms-length. They want to see the District government embrace go-go the way Chicago has done with blues and New Orleans with jazz. They want a go-go museum , a hall of fame and go-go landmark-themed tours.

 

Glover says District politicians tend to rediscover their affection for go-go during election season.

 

“They love us at campaign rally time,” he laughed. “They know that’s the only way to bring people out.”

 

 
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In 2000, Magnus Liljedahl received an Olympic gold medal in sailing. He has been in love with the sport all his life, and it paid off. But after finishing a career in professional sports, he never gave up sailing, and today, he is introducing the therapeutic and healing sport to underserved young people, U.S. veterans, and individuals with disabilities. Lilia Anisimova met with the Olympic champion. Anna Rice narrates her story.
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Muslims around the world break their fast at sundown during the holy month of Ramadan. Muslims believe Ramadan is an opportunity to get closer to God by, in some cases, learning more about the poor. That’s why every Tuesday, a group of young volunteers break their Ramadan fast with homeless people in Washington. The young Muslims are part of an Islamic charity, where they raise money, buy food and feed the homeless. VOA’s Nilofar Mughal has more.
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The huge Smithsonian Institution is getting a new leader soon — the first insider and African American. Lonnie Bunch, the founding director of the Smithsonian’s popular National Museum of African American history and culture in Washington, will become the new secretary June 16. As we hear from VOAs Deborah Block, Bunch says the Smithsonian should be a place to help everyone understand a diverse America.
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