Orchids are among the world’s most beautiful flowers. Although the blossoms come in different shapes, sizes and colors, they all belong to one of the largest and oldest families of flowering plants on earth. The U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington is showcasing some of the thousands of different orchid varieties in a spectacular exhibit that runs until the first week of April. VOA’s Deborah Block takes us there for a fragrant look at the exotic world of orchids.
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Day: March 1, 2018
Daichi Yamamoto is a Japanese photographer who has called Senegal home for the past two years. His work captures local fashion, and he’s helped launch the careers of several Senegalese fashion models. For VOA, Chika Oduah has the story from Dakar.
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The biggest drama at Sunday’s Academy Awards may be not on the Dolby Theatre stage but in the behind-the-scenes moves to tackle the sexual misconduct scandal that has rocked the industry.
After moving swiftly to expel Oscar-winning film producer Harvey Weinstein last October after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has yet to take action against other people in its ranks who have been accused of impropriety.
They include actor Kevin Spacey, director Roman Polanski and comedian Bill Cosby.
Weinstein, who has denied having nonconsensual sex with anyone, was only the second person in the academy’s 90-year history to be thrown out. His expulsion made the publicity-averse Academy, whose 8,000 members vote on the Oscars, the moral guardian in the #MeToo scandal that has led to dozens of Hollywood figures stepping down or being dropped from creative projects.
“The academy has always wanted to be the symbol of Hollywood, the glamour and excitement and creativity. But now this awful stuff is being told about Hollywood and it’s like, ‘You’re going to be the symbol of the downside, too,’ ” said Tim Gray, awards editor of Hollywood trade publication Variety.
“This is new territory for them. I think they haven’t quite figured it out,” said Gray.
Challenging, fair, methodical
The job of policing accusations against filmmakers, agents and actors among the academy’s members has proved slow and difficult.
The academy issued its first-ever code of conduct in December and set up a task force to handle allegations on a wide range of potential violations. Chief Executive Dawn Hudson told members in a January email that it was “a
challenging process that will not be solved overnight.”
Hudson’s email said the academy’s goal was “not to be an investigative body but rather ensure that when a grievance is made, it will go through a fair and methodical process.”
The academy is developing an online form for submitting claims of misconduct that go beyond sexual behavior to include abuses in matters of gender, sexual orientation, race, age, and religion.
According to the guidelines, claimants must supply evidence of alleged behavior and an accused person has 10 days to respond before the academy’s membership committee reviews the matter.
Only the board of governors can decide whether to suspend or expel a member.
‘Slippery slope’
“Traditionally it’s up to the employer to monitor bad behavior — in this case the studios, TV networks and the agencies,” said Gray. “It’s a slippery slope to get into that. Where do you draw the line?”
The membership list of the invitation-only academy has never been published but the academy said that Spacey, Polanski and Cosby are still members.
Double Oscar-winner Spacey has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than 30 men. He apologized to the first accuser and has retreated from public life.
Polanski won an Oscar in 2003 despite being wanted in the United States to serve time for his 1977 admission of the rape of a minor.
Cosby faces retrial in Pennsylvania in April on a charge of sexual assault and has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than 60 other women. He denies the allegations.
Director and actor Woody Allen, who won Oscars for Annie Hall and Midnight in Paris, has repeatedly denied a resurfaced 1992 accusation that he molested his stepdaughter when she was a child. Allen has never been a
member of the academy, it said.
Dave Karger, special correspondent for entertainment website IMDB.com, said he didn’t expect any quick action.
“My sense with the academy is that they act judiciously, carefully and deliberately. I can see them making moves to expel certain members, but I see that happening as a multistep process,” Karger said.
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If microbes can live in the most extreme regions on Earth, scientists say it is quite possible they can live on other celestial bodies.
In a recently published study, researchers from Washington State University say bacteria, found in the hyper-arid soil of Chile’s Atacama Desert, can live dormant for decades, patiently waiting for very rare rainfalls.
Once the rain arrives, they quickly reanimate and produce offspring. Since Mars once had flowing water, scientists say it is possible that similar microorganisms may be waiting there for the next opportunity to continue life.
But other celestial bodies within our solar system, such as Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus, have water now, so they too may harbor extraterrestrial life.
Studying life around deep-sea hydrothermal vents near Japan’s island of Okinawa, microbiologists led by a team from the University of Vienna found that certain microbes thrive in conditions similar to those on Enceladus.
The hardiest of the microbes were able to reproduce even in the presence of extremely unfriendly chemicals, such as ammonia and carbon monoxide.
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