Category: Entertainment

Education skills and employability are the pathway to a better life — that is the key takeaway expressed by 40% of young people across all age groups who participated in a survey to identify the hopes and aspirations of youth and learn what they need to enhance their prospects for a good, sustainable future.

In a bid to make their voices heard by decision-makers around the world, more than 700,000 children and adolescents between the ages of 10 and 24 participated in the project that coincides with this year’s observance of International Youth Day.

The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, or PMNCH, is a global alliance for the health and well-being of women, children and adolescents, hosted by the World Health Organization. In an effort to work toward improvements, PMNCH shared the preliminary findings of the largest survey into what young people want for their well-being.

The project aims to collect the voices of at least 1 million young people by October, when PMNCH will convene a global forum for adolescents at which the results of this mammoth undertaking will be unveiled.

“To date, there has not been enough knowledge, there has not been enough accountability and evidence around adolescent well-being,” said Helga Fogstad, PMNCH executive director. “This is our effort, together with this 1 million young people, intended to rectify.”

Young people were asked to express their views on a multitude of issues, including climate change, good health, optimum nutrition, connectedness, positive values, contributions to society, safety and a supportive environment.

“Adolescents and young people are responding to a fragile world of high living costs, pandemic disruptions, climate crises” and the rising complexities of the world “in which they live,” said David Imbago, a board member of PMNCH.

“Young people in low- and middle-income countries have been among the most affected of our increasingly fragile world, and there is no way to deny that,” he said. “For example, there are still consequences from the pandemic to school education, household food insecurity and income scarcity.”

UNICEF reports that more than 616 million students remain affected by full or partial school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. In low- and middle-income countries, it says, school closures “have left up to 70% of 10-year-olds unable to read or understand a simple text.”

More than two-thirds of respondents, 68.8%, are from the Africa region, followed by the Southeast Asia region at 27.5%, and a small minority from Latin America. Most respondents come from India. Uganda is the second-largest contributing country, followed by Indonesia and Zambia.

The survey uses digital technology and face-to-face outreach through teams of trained youth mobilizers.

“I was excited to be a part of this campaign that was asking what we young people want for our well-being and try to be heard by policymakers and government and taking action on them,” said Deep Shikha, a young mobilizer from India.

Shikha said she and her mobilizing team gathered information from chatbots online, visited schools and colleges, and interviewed people in local communities.

“We discussed with young people about what they want, what challenges they face and what they felt was ignored by officers and policymakers,” she said.

Shikha said most of the young people wanted the opportunity to get a higher education but were frustrated by a lack of resources. She said girls were discouraged from getting an education.

“Their parents do not want to send their child to another city for their higher education because they are concerned about their safety,” she said. “And, of course, there are girls who do not get an education because of lack of financial support.”

The survey indicated that addressing the concerns of adolescent girls worldwide was more challenging than addressing adolescent boys’ concerns about health, education, safety, security and well-being.

“It is not a matter of perception,” board member Imbago said. “It is reality.”

PMNCH expects the upcoming Global Forum for Adolescents to energize the 1.8 Billion Young People for Change campaign. The campaign was launched last year to help young people reach their full potential by influencing governments to change current policies and investments that fail to meet their needs.

“The voices of young people and adolescents need to be amplified, and the governments’ budgets and plans need to be more explicit about what young people want,” said Fogstad, the PMNCH executive director.

“This is a population and a generation that has not got enough attention because the evidence was missing,” she said, adding that the evidence produced by the survey results puts an end to that argument.

She said the movement of young people has been converted into a global movement “where young people are now increasingly taking the lead. And that is how it should be.”
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It was born in the break, all those decades ago — that moment when a song’s vocals dropped, instruments quieted down and the beat took the stage. It was then that hip-hop came into the world, taking the moment and reinventing it. Something new, coming out of something familiar.

At the hands of the DJs playing the albums, that break moment became something more: a composition in itself, repeated in an endless loop, back and forth between the turntables. The MCs got in on it, speaking their own clever rhymes and wordplay over it. So did the dancers, the b-boys and b-girls who hit the floor to breakdance. It took on its own visual style, with graffiti artists bringing it to the streets and subways of New York City.

It didn’t stay there, of course. A musical form, a culture, with reinvention as its very DNA would never, could never. Hip-hop spread, from the parties to the parks, through New York City’s boroughs and then the region, around the country and the world.

And at each step: change, adaptation, as new, different voices came in and made it their own, in sound, in lyric, in purpose, in style. Its foundations steeped in the Black communities where it first made itself known and also spreading out and expanding, like ripples in water, until there’s no corner of the world that hasn’t been touched by it.

Not only being reinvented, but reinventing. Art, culture, fashion, community, social justice, politics, sports, business: Hip-hop has impacted them all, transforming even as it has been transformed.

In hip-hop, “when someone does it, then that’s how it’s done. When someone does something different, then that’s a new way,” said Babatunde Akinboboye, a Nigerian-American opera singer and longtime hip-hop fan in Los Angeles who creates content on social media using both musical styles.

Hip-hop “connects to what is true. And what is true, lasts.”

How it all began

Those looking for a hip-hop starting point have landed on one, turning this year into a 50th-birthday celebration. Aug. 11, 1973, was the date a young Clive Campbell, known as DJ Kool Herc around his Bronx stomping grounds, deejayed a back-to-school party for his younger sister in the community room of an apartment building on Sedgwick Avenue.

Campbell, who was born and spent his early years in Jamaica before his family moved to the Bronx, was still a teen himself at that time, just 18, when he began extending the musical breaks of the records he was playing to create a different kind of dancing opportunity. He’d started speaking over the beat, reminiscent of the “toasting” style heard in Jamaica.

It wasn’t long before the style could be heard all over the city — and began to spread around the New York City metro region.

Among those who started to hear about it were some young men across the river in Englewood, New Jersey, who started making up rhymes to go along with the beats. In 1979, they auditioned as rappers for Sylvia Robinson, a singer-turned-music producer who co-founded Sugar Hill Records.

As the Sugarhill Gang, they put out “Rapper’s Delight” and introduced the country to a record that would reach as high as 36 on Billboard’s Top 100 chart list and even make it to No. 1 in some European countries.

“Now what you hear is not a test: I’m rappin’ to the beat/And me, the groove, and my friends are gonna try to move your feet,” Michael “Wonder Mike” Wright said in one of the song’s stanzas.

Wright said he had no doubt the song — and, by extension, hip-hop — was “going to be big.”

“I knew it was going to blow up and play all over the world because it was a new genre of music,” he told The Associated Press. “You had classical jazz, bebop, rock, pop, and here comes a new form of music that didn’t exist.”

And it was one based in self-expression, said Guy “Master Gee” O’Brien. “If you couldn’t sing or you couldn’t play an instrument, you could recite poetry and speak your mind. And so it became accessible to the everyman.”

And everywomen, too. Female voices took their chances on the microphone and dance floors as well, artists like Roxanne Shante, a native of New York City’s Queens borough who was only 14 years old in 1984. That was the year she became one of the first female MCs, those rhyming over the beat, to gain a wider audience — and was part of what was likely the first well-known instance of rappers using their song tracks to take sonic shots at other rappers, in a back-and-forth song battle known as the Roxanne Wars.

“When I look at my female rappers of today, I see hope and inspiration,” Shante said. “When you look at some of your female rappers today and you see the businesses that they own and the barriers that they were able to break it down, it’s amazing to me and it’s an honor for me to even be a part of that from the beginning.”

Plenty of other women have joined her over the intervening decades, from Queen Latifah to Lil’ Kim to Nicki Minaj to Megan Thee Stallion and more, speaking on their experiences as women in hip-hop and the larger world. That doesn’t even begin to touch the list of women rappers hailing from other countries.

They’re women like Tkay Maidza, born in Zimbabwe and raised in Australia, a songwriter and rapper in the early part of her career. She’s thrilled with the diverse female company she’s keeping in hip-hop, and with the variety of subjects they’re talking about.

“There’s so many different pockets … so many ways to exist,” she said. “It’s not about what other people have done. … You can always recreate the blueprint.”

Speaking out about injustice

The emphasis on self-expression has also meant that over the years, hip-hop has been used as a medium for just about everything.

Want to talk about a party or how awesome and rich you are? Go for it. A cute guy or beautiful girl catch your eye? Say it in a verse. Looking to take that sound coming out of New York City and adapt it to a West Coast vibe, or a Chicago beat, a New Orleans groove, or an Atlanta rhythm, or these days, sounds in Egypt, India, Australia, Nigeria? It’s all you, and it’s all hip-hop. (Now whether anyone listening thought it was actually any good? That was a different story.)

Mainstream America hasn’t always been ready for it. The sexually explicit content from Miami’s 2 Live Crew made their 1989 album “As Nasty As They Want To Be” the subject of a legal battle over obscenity and freedom of expression; a later album, “Banned in the USA,” became the first to get an official record industry label about explicit content.

Coming from America’s Black communities, that has also meant hip-hop has been a tool to speak out against injustice, like in 1982 when Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five told the world in “The Message” that the stresses of poverty in their city neighborhoods made it feel “like a jungle sometimes/It makes me wonder how I keep from goin’ under.”

Other figures like Common and Kendrick Lamar have also turned to a conscious lyricism in their hip-hop, with perhaps none better known than Public Enemy, whose “Fight the Power” became an anthem when it was created for filmmaker Spike Lee’s 1989 classic “Do the Right Thing,” which chronicled racial tension in a Brooklyn neighborhood.

Some in hip-hop pulled no punches, using the art form and the culture as a no-holds-barred way of showcasing the troubles of their lives. Often those messages have been met with fear or disdain in the mainstream. When N.W.A. came “Straight Outta Compton” in 1988 with loud, brash tales of police abuse and gang life, radio stations recoiled.

Hip-hop (mainly that done by Black artists) and law enforcement have had a contentious relationship over the years, each eyeing the other with suspicion. There’s been cause for some of it. In some forms of hip-hop, the ties between rappers and criminal figures were real, and the violence that spiraled out, as in high-profile deaths like that of Tupac Shakur in 1996 and the Notorious B.I.G. in 1997, sometimes got very bloody. But in a country where Black people are often looked at with suspicion by authority, there have also been plenty of stereotypes about hip-hop and criminality.

As hip-hop spread over the years, a host of voices have used it to speak out on the issues that are dear to them. Look at Bobby Sanchez, a Peruvian-American transgender, two-spirit poet and rapper who has released a song in Quechua, the language of the Wari people that her father came from. “Quechua 101 Land Back Please” references the killing of Indigenous peoples and calls for land restoration.

“I think it’s very special and cool when artists use it to reflect society because it makes it bigger than just them,” Sanchez said. “To me, it’s always political, really, no matter what you’re talking about, because hip-hop, in a way, is a form of resistance.”

A worldwide phenomenon

Yes, it’s an American creation. And yes, it’s still heavily influenced by what’s happening in the United States. But hip-hop has found homes all over the planet, turned to by people in every community under the sun to express what matters to them.

When hip-hop first started being absorbed outside of the United States, it was often with a mimicking of American styles and messages, said P. Khalil Saucier, who has studied the spread of hip-hop across the countries of Africa.

That’s not the case these days. Homegrown hip-hop can be found everywhere, a prime example of the genre’s penchant for staying relevant and vital by being reinvented by the people doing it.

“The culture as a whole has kind of really rooted itself because it’s been able to now transform itself from simply an importation, if you will, to now really being local in its multiple manifestations, regardless of what country you’re looking at,” said Saucier, a professor of critical Black studies at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania.

That’s to everyone’s benefit, said Rishma Dhaliwal, founder of London’s I Am Hip-Hop magazine.

“Hip-hop is … allowing you in someone’s world. It’s allowing you into someone’s struggles,” she said. “It’s a big microphone to say, `Well, the streets say this is what is going on here and this is what you might not know about us. This is how we feel, and this is who we are.’ ”

The impact hasn’t just been in one direction. Hip-hop hasn’t just been changed; it has made change. It has gone into other spaces and made them different. It strutted through the fashion world as it brought its own sensibility to streetwear. It has revitalized companies; just ask Timberland what sales were like before its workboots became de rigueur hip-hop wear.

Or look at perhaps the perfect example: “Hamilton,” Lin Manuel Miranda’s groundbreaking musical about a distant white historical figure that came to life in the rhythms of its hip-hop soundtrack, bringing a different energy and audience to the theater world.

Hip-hop “has done a very good job at making culture more accessible. It has broken into spaces that we’re traditionally not allowed to break into,” Dhaliwal said.

For Usha Jey, freestyling hip-hop was the perfect thing to mix with the classical, formal South Asian dance style of Bharatnatyam. The 26-year-old choreographer, born in France to Tamil immigrant parents, created a series of social media videos last year showing the two styles interacting with each other. It was her training in hip-hop that gave her the confidence and spirit to do something different.

Hip-hop culture “pushes you to be you,” Jey said. “I feel like in the pursuit of finding yourself, hip-hop helps me because that culture says, you’ve got to be you.”

Hip-hop is, simply, “a magical art form,” said Nile Rodgers, legendary musician, composer and record producer. He would know. It was his song “Good Times,” with the band Chic, that was recreated to form the basis for “Rapper’s Delight” all those years ago.

“The impact that it’s had on the world, it really can’t be quantified,” Rodgers said. “You can find someone in a village that you’ve never been to, a country that you’ve never been to, and all of a sudden you hear its own local hip-hop. And you don’t even know who these people are, but they’ve adopted it and have made it their own.”
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Lebanon is considering banning the “Barbie” movie because the culture minister said the film “promotes homosexuality” and contradicts religious values, in a move that some experts say underscores the poor state of free speech and gay rights in the country and throughout the Middle East. 

Mohammad Mortada, Lebanon’s culture minister, moved to ban “Barbie” Wednesday, saying it was discovered to “promote homosexuality and sexual transformation” and “contradicts values of faith and morality” by disparaging the significance of the family unit.

Kuwait soon followed suit, with the state news agency, KUNA, reporting Thursday that the government had banned “Barbie” and the supernatural horror film “Talk to Me” in order to protect “public ethics and social traditions.”

Experts on human rights and free speech in Lebanon said the potential “Barbie” ban is a symptom of Beirut’s broader efforts to degrade free expression and LGBTQ rights in the country.

“It’s ridiculous and deadly serious at the same time,” said Justin Shilad, an expert on press freedom in the Middle East for the advocacy group PEN America.

Shilad said it may seem almost comical for Lebanon to consider banning Barbie, which brings to life the iconic child’s doll and follows her on her journey of self-discovery after an identity crisis. But, he said, it comes within the context of government officials increasingly restricting free speech, targeting critical journalists and amplifying anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.

“It speaks to this increasing willingness of all different power centers in Lebanon to crack down on dissent, crack down on those who are different, to increasingly ostracize an already marginalized community as part of this overall move to increasingly crack down on free expression,” Shilad told VOA from New York.

Based on Mortada’s move, Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi then asked the general security’s censorship committee — which falls under the interior ministry and is usually responsible for censorship decisions — to review the film and give its recommendation.

Meanwhile in Kuwait, Undersecretary of the Ministry for Press and Publication Lafy Al-Subei’e said both “Barbie” and “Talk to Me” were banned because they “promulgate ideas and beliefs that are alien to Kuwaiti society and public order.”

The bans in Lebanon and Kuwait underscore the prevalence of censorship throughout the region as well, according to Shilad.

“It also speaks to a larger trend in Lebanon, where free expression and the free exchange of ideas is increasingly becoming contested,” Shilad said. “This is also indicative of a larger regionwide phenomenon.”

Shilad believes Kuwait’s reasoning about banning the films was intentionally vague.

“It’s this very vague nod to stability, or moral or cultural values,” Shilad said. “And the reason why it’s so vague and so ill-defined is because under that umbrella, you can crack down on a broad range of speech and suppress a broad range of expression.”

Kuwait’s Washington embassy did not reply to VOA’s email requesting comment.

In response to a request for comment, Lebanon’s Washington embassy directed VOA to the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants, which did not reply to VOA’s email requesting comment.

This isn’t the first time the film has proven surprisingly controversial on the global stage. In early July, the Vietnamese government banned the film due to its perceived inclusion of Beijing’s controversial nine-dash line in a map. 

Lebanon was once held up as a relatively safe haven for the LGBTQ community in the Middle East. In 2017, it became the first Arab country to host a gay pride week.

In 2018, a court ruled that same-sex conduct is not illegal, but since that decision, the situation for the country’s LGBTQ community has grown more and more worrisome. For example, last year, Lebanon’s Interior Ministry banned any events aimed at “promoting sexual perversion,” referencing gatherings of LGBTQ people.

“Politicians are increasingly targeting vulnerable populations, such as LGBT[Q] people in Lebanon,” said Ramzi Kaiss, who researches Lebanon at Human Rights Watch.

Kaiss and Shilad think Lebanese lawmakers are ramping up their use of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric to distract the public’s attention from more pressing issues — like the struggling economy, government corruption and the status of the investigation into the devastating 2020 Port of Beirut explosion.

“Instead, they’re busy cracking down on freedom of expression and LGBT[Q] rights and banning the Barbie movie,” Kaiss told VOA from Beirut. “I think it’s outrageous that this is the main priority for the government, while there is a range of other actions that need to be taken.”
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Fans of an Indian movie star with a cult following thronged movie theaters and celebrated with dancing and prayers as his latest film hit screens on Thursday.

Hundreds of avid supporters of Rajinikanth, one of India’s biggest movie superstars, carried photo cutouts and flower garlands as they made their way to a theater in Mumbai to watch his latest film, Jailer. The first screening began at 6 a.m. local time.

When Rajinikanth appeared on screen, the theater stopped the movie for a minute as fans danced and cheered, rejoicing in his return after a period of two years.

Popular movie stars are treated like gods in India, often worshipped like deities by their fans.

Rajinikanth is one of Asia’s highest-paid actors, known for his superhero stunts. He enjoys a devoted fan base that cuts across generations and even continents. His films have broken box-office records in India and in countries like Malaysia and the United Kingdom, both of which have large Tamil-speaking populations.

Born Shivaji Rao Gaekwad, the actor today uses only one name. He once worked as a bus conductor for three years before attending acting school. He started in small roles as villains in Tamil cinema and worked his way up, before landing roles in Bollywood, the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai.

Some offices in the southern cities of Chennai and Bengaluru declared Thursday a holiday so his fans could watch the movie.

“Scientists say that time machines are not possible, but Rajinikanth has the power to take us back to childhood,” said one fan named Arun, who watched the movie on opening day in Mumbai.

In Jailer, Rajinikanth plays a prison warden who learns that a criminal gang is trying to rescue its leader from the prison, and he sets out to stop them.

Rajinikanth, 72, has acted in more than 160 movies spanning more than five decades in several Indian languages, including Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali and Malayalam.
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The 75th Emmy Awards ceremony is postponed to Jan. 15, the Television Academy and broadcast network Fox said on Thursday, as Hollywood writers and actors strike over labor disputes with major studios.

The Emmys were originally slated to air on Fox on Sept. 18, and nominations for the highest honors in television were announced in July, just before the dual work stoppage was declared.

Hollywood actors last month joined film and television writers who have been on picket lines since May after negotiations between the Writers Guild of America and major studios reached an impasse.

It is the first time that both the writers’ and actors’ unions have gone on strike together since 1960, effectively halting production of scripted television shows and films and impacting businesses across the entertainment world’s orbit.

HBO drama “Succession,” the story of a family’s cutthroat fight for control of a media empire, leads the nominees for television’s Emmy awards alongside fellow HBO show “The Last of Us,” a dystopian videogame adaptation.

Others competing for best drama include HBO’s “Game of Thrones” prequel “House of the Dragon,” vacation-gone-wrong story “The White Lotus” and Star Wars series “Andor.” Previous nominees “Better Call Saul,” “Yellowjackets” and “The Crown” are also in the mix.

The Emmy Awards will be broadcast live on Fox from the Peacock Theater at LA Live on Jan. 15. The Creative Arts Emmys — a class of awards recognizing technical and similar achievements — will take place on Jan. 6 and 7.

The show will be executive-produced by Jesse Collins, Dionne Harmon and Jeannae Rouzan-Clay of Jesse Collins Entertainment.
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When faced with the task of painting a giant mural at Seattle’s Museum of Flight, artist Esmeralda Vasquez found it was best not to do it alone. More than 160 volunteers helped out, as reported in this story by VOA’s Natasha Mozgovaya.
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Sixto Rodriguez, who lived in obscurity in the U.S. only to find musical success in South Africa and a stardom he was unaware of, died Tuesday in Detroit. He was 81.

Rodriguez’s music career flamed out early in the U.S., but it took off after the singer and songwriter became the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary Searching for Sugar Man.

His death was announced on the Sugarman.org website and confirmed Wednesday by his granddaughter, Amanda Kennedy.

He died following a short illness, according to his wife, Konny Rodriguez, 72.

A 2013 Associated Press story referred to Rodriguez as “the greatest protest singer and songwriter that most people never heard of.”

His albums flopped in the United States in the 1970s, but — unknown to him — he later became a star in South Africa where his songs protesting the Vietnam War, racial inequality, abuse of women and social mores inspired white liberals horrified by the country’s brutal racial segregation system of apartheid.

Swedish filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul’s documentary Searching for Sugar Man presented Rodriguez to a much larger audience. The film tells of two South Africans’ mission to seek out the fate of their musical hero. It won the Academy Award for best documentary in 2013.

Rodriguez was “more popular than Elvis” in South Africa, Stephen “Sugar” Segerman said in 2013. The Cape Town record store owner’s nickname comes from the Rodriguez song Sugar Man.

As his popularity in South Africa grew, Rodriguez lived in Detroit. But his fans in South Africa believed he also was famous in the United States. They heard various stories that the musician had died dramatically.

In 1996, Segerman and journalist Carl Bartholomew-Strydom set out to learn the truth. Their efforts led them to Detroit, where they found Rodriguez working on construction sites.

“It’s rock-and-roll history now. Who would-a thought?” Rodriguez told The Associated Press a decade ago.

Rodriguez said he just “went back to work” after his music career fizzled, raising a family that includes three daughters and launching several unsuccessful campaigns for public office. He made a living through manual labor in Detroit.

Still, he never stopped playing his music.

“I felt I was ready for the world, but the world wasn’t ready for me,” Rodriguez said. “I feel we all have a mission — we have obligations. Those turns on the journey, different twists — life is not linear.”

Konny Rodriguez said the couple met in 1972 while both were students at Wayne State University in Detroit and married in the early 1980s. Although still married at the time of his death, the couple had been separated for a number of years, she said Wednesday while looking through some of Sixto Rodriguez’s memorabilia.

“He loved college. He was born to be taught, to teach himself,” Konny Rodriguez said. “The music was more to bring people together. He would play anywhere, anytime. That’s where I noticed him. He was walking down Cass Avenue with a guitar and a black bag. He was a really eccentric guy.”

The two albums she said he recorded in 1969 and 1971 “didn’t do well.”

“I’m sure that was still in his head,” Konny Rodriguez added. “Then in 1979, I picked up the phone and it was a guy with an Australian accent who said Rodriguez ‘must come to Australia because he’s very famous here.'”

She said they toured Australia in 1979 and 1981 and later learned about the impact of his music in South Africa.

“Apartheid was going on,” she said. “Frank Sinatra had a full-page ad, ‘Do not go to South Africa.’ We didn’t.”

After the end of apartheid, Sixto Rodriguez did travel to South Africa and perform in front of his fans there, she said.

“He did so well in South Africa. It was insane,” Konny Rodriguez said.

Sixto Rodriguez later pursued royalties he did not receive from his music being used and played in South Africa.

Some of Rodriguez songs were banned by the apartheid regime, and many bootlegged copies were made on tapes and later CDs. 
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Robbie Robertson, The Band’s lead guitarist and songwriter who in such classics as “The Weight” and “Up on Cripple Creek” mined American music and folklore and helped reshape contemporary rock, died Wednesday at 80. 

Robertson died in Los Angeles, surrounded by family, “after a long illness,” publicist Ray Costa said in a statement. 

From their years as Bob Dylan’s masterful backing group to their own stardom as embodiments of old-fashioned community and virtuosity, The Band profoundly influenced popular music in the 1960s and ’70s, first by literally amplifying Dylan’s polarizing transition from folk artist to rock star and then by absorbing some of Dylan’s own influences as they fashioned a new sound immersed in the American past. 

The Canadian-born Robertson was a high school dropout and one-man melting pot — part-Jewish, part-Mohawk and Cayuga — who fell in love with the seemingly limitless sounds and byways of his adopted country and wrote out of a sense of amazement and discovery at a time when the Vietnam War had alienated millions of young Americans.

The Band started out as supporting players for rockabilly star Ronnie Hawkins in the early 1960s and through their years together in bars and juke joints forged a depth and versatility that made them able to take on virtually any kind of music.

Stellar start 

Besides Robertson, the group featured drummer-singer Levon Helm, bassist-singer-songwriter Rick Danko, keyboardist singer-songwriter Richard Manuel and all-around musical wizard Garth Hudson. They were originally called the Hawks but ended up as The Band — a conceit their fans would say they earned — because people would point to them when they were with Dylan and refer to them as “the band.” 

They remain defined by their first two albums, “Music from Big Pink” and “The Band,” both released in the late 1960s.  

The rock scene was turning away from the psychedelic extravagances of the Beatles’ “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and a wave of sound effects, long jams and strange lyrics.  

“Music from Big Pink,” named for the old house near Woodstock, New York, where Band members lived and gathered, was for many the sound of coming home. The mood was intimate, the lyrics alternately playful, cryptic and yearning, drawn from blues, gospel, folk and country music. The Band itself seemed to stand for selflessness and a shared and vital history, with all five members making distinctive contributions and appearing in publicity photos in plain, dark clothes. 

Through the “Basement Tapes” made with Dylan in 1967 and through the group’s own albums, The Band has been widely credited as a founding source for Americana or roots music. Fans and peers would speak of their lives being changed.  

Eric Clapton broke up with his British supergroup Cream and journeyed to Woodstock in hopes he could join The Band, which influenced albums ranging from The Grateful Dead’s “Workingman’s Dead” to Elton John’s “Tumbleweed Connection.” The Band’s songs were covered by Joan Baez, the Staple Singers and many others. 

Like Dylan, Robertson was a self-taught musicologist and storyteller who absorbed everything American from the novels of William Faulkner to the scorching blues of Howlin’ Wolf to the gospel harmonies of the Swan Silvertones.  

At times his songs sounded not just created but unearthed. In “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” he imagined the Civil War through the eyes of a defeated Confederate. In “The Weight,” with its lead vocals passed around among group members like a communal wine glass, he evoked a pilgrim’s arrival to a town where nothing seems impossible. 

At Woodstock

The Band played at the 1969 Woodstock festival, not far from where they lived, and became newsworthy enough to appear on the cover of Time magazine. But the spirit behind their best work was already dissolving. Albums such as “Stage Fright” and “Cahoots” were disappointing even for Robertson, who would acknowledge that he was struggling to find fresh ideas. While Manuel and Danko were both frequent contributors to songs during their “Basement Tapes” days, by the time of “Cahoots,” released in 1971, Robertson was the dominant writer. 

They toured frequently, recording the acclaimed live album “Rock of Ages” at Madison Square Garden and joining Dylan for 1974 shows that led to another highly praised concert release, “Before the Flood.”  

But in 1976, after Manuel broke his neck in a boating accident, Robertson decided he needed a break from the road and organized rock’s ultimate sendoff, an all-star gathering at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom that included Dylan, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Muddy Waters and many others. The concert was filmed by Martin Scorsese and was the basis for his celebrated documentary “The Last Waltz,” released in 1978. 

Robertson had intended The Band to continue recording together but “The Last Waltz” helped permanently sever his friendship with Helm, whom he had once looked to as an older brother. Helm accused Robertson of greed and outsized ego, noting that Robertson had ended up owning their musical catalog and calling “The Last Waltz” a vanity project designed to glorify Robertson. In response, Robertson contended that he had taken control of the group because the others — excepting Hudson — were too burdened by drug and alcohol problems to make decisions on their own. 

“It hit me hard that in a band like ours, if we weren’t operating on all cylinders, it threw the whole machine off course,” Robertson wrote in his memoir Testimony, published in 2016. 

Solo career, soundtracks

The Band regrouped without Robertson in the early 1980s, and Robertson went on to a long career as a solo artist and soundtrack composer. His self-titled 1987 album was certified gold and featured the hit single “Show Down at Big Sky” and the ballad “Fallen Angel,” a tribute to Manuel, who was found dead in 1986 in what was ruled a suicide (Danko died of heart failure in 1999 and Helm of cancer in 2012). 

Robertson, who moved to Los Angeles in the 1970s while the others stayed near Woodstock, remained close to Scorsese and helped oversee the soundtracks for “The Color of Money,” “The King of Comedy,” “The Departed” and “The Irishman” and the upcoming “Killers of the Flower Moon.” He also produced the Neil Diamond album “Beautiful Noise” and explored his heritage through such albums as “Music for the Native Americans” and “Contact from the Underworld of Redboy.” 

Robertson married the Canadian journalist Dominique Bourgeois in 1967. They had three children before divorcing. His other survivors include his second wife, Janet Zuccarini, and five grandchildren.
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Modernist structures designed by African Americans targeted for preservation
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Watching news of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. comic book editor Scott Dunbier felt compelled to help. He reached out to comic book professionals to create “Comics for Ukraine: Sunflower Seeds” to raise funds to provide emergency supplies and services to Ukrainians. Genia Dulot has this report.
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Throngs of fans lined the streets of Sinead O’Connor’s former hometown in Ireland to bid farewell to the gifted singer as her funeral procession passed by Tuesday following a private memorial service.

A vintage VW camper van with rooftop speakers blasting Bob Marley’s song “Natural Mystic” led a hearse at walking pace through a thick crowd of admirers along the waterfront in Bray. O’Connor said she loved Marley’s music.

Devotees of O’Connor’s singing and those touched by her sometimes-troubled life tossed roses and other flowers on the hearse.

A group that had been waiting for well over an hour outside O’Connor’s former home, singing her songs at times, began to clap as four police officers on motorcycles leading the cortege approached and the procession came to a halt.

They snapped photos through the windows of the hearse where her coffin was dwarfed by a pile of blue hydrangeas and pink roses.

Ruth O’Shea, who had come to the coastal town of Bray south of Dublin with her two daughters, became teary as she spoke of O’Connor’s significance, saying she had “meant the world” to her.

“She was so rebellious and empowering and inspiring, and my mother hated me listening to her music,” O’Shea said. “She was just brilliant. Brilliant — I loved her, and then the kids, I suppose by osmosis because I played her when they were both growing up, they’d go, ‘Oh God, mom’s listening to Sinead O’Connor, she’s obviously had a rough day.’ She just gave me hope. And I just loved her, I loved her.”

O’Connor, 56, was found unresponsive at her London home on July 26. Police have not shared a cause of death, though they said her death was not suspicious.

O’Connor’s family had invited the public to pay their respects during the funeral procession.

“Sinead loved living in Bray and the people in it,” her family said in a statement. “With this procession, her family would like to acknowledge the outpouring of love for her from the people of Wicklow (county) and beyond, since she left … to go to another place.”

Fans tucked handwritten notes and flowers behind a chain wrapped around a granite post at the entrance to her former home, thanking her for sharing her voice and her music. One sign listed causes that the singer had expressed support for, including welcoming refugees.

“Thanks for your short special life,” one note read. “Gone too soon.”

O’Connor, a multi-octave mezzo soprano of extraordinary emotional range who was recognizable by her shaved head, began her career singing on the streets of Dublin and soon rose to international fame.

She became a sensation in 1990 with her cover of Prince’s ballad “Nothing Compares 2 U,” which topped charts from Europe to Australia.

She was a critic of the Roman Catholic Church well before allegations of sexual abuse were widely reported. She made headlines in October 1992 when she tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II while appearing on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” and denounced the church as the enemy.

She was public about her struggles with mental illness. When her teenage son Shane died by suicide last year, O’Connor tweeted there was “no point living without him” and she was soon hospitalized. Her final tweet, sent July 17, read “For all mothers of Suicided children,” and linked to a Tibetan compassion mantra.

Since her death, celebrities have paid tribute to her, and ordinary people have shared acts of kindness she performed.
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William Friedkin, the Oscar-winning director who became a top filmmaker in his 30s with the gripping “The French Connection” and the horrifying “The Exorcist” and struggled in the following decades to match his early success has died. He was 87.

Friedkin, who won the best director Oscar for “The French Connection,” died Monday in Los Angeles, Marcia Franklin, his executive assistant for 24 years, told The Associated Press on behalf of his family and wife, former studio head Sherry Lansing.

“The French Connection,” based on a true story, deals with the efforts of maverick New York City police Detective James “Popeye” Doyle to track down Frenchman Fernando Rey, mastermind of a large drug pipeline funneling heroin into the United States. It contains one of the most thrilling chase scenes ever filmed.

Doyle, played by Gene Hackman in an Oscar-winning performance, barely misses making the arrest on a subway train, then hurries to his police car to follow the train as it emerges on an elevated railway. He races underneath, dodging cars, trucks and pedestrians, including a woman pushing a baby buggy, before abandoning the pursuit.

The movie also won Academy Awards for best picture, screenplay and film editing and led critics to hail Friedkin, then just 32, as a leading member of a new generation of filmmakers.

He followed with an even bigger blockbuster, “The Exorcist,” based on William Peter Blatty’s best-selling novel about a 12-year-old girl possessed by the devil.

The harrowing scenes of the girl’s possession and a splendid cast, including Linda Blair as the girl, Ellen Burstyn as her mother and Max Von Sydow and Jason Miller as the priests who try to exorcise the devil from her, helped make the film a box-office sensation.

It received 10 Oscar nominations, including one for Friedkin as director, and won two, for Blatty’s script and for sound.

With that second success, Friedkin would go on to direct movies and TV shows well into the 21st century. But he would never again come close to matching the success of those early works.

Other film credits included “To Live and Die in L.A.,” “Cruising,” “Rules of Engagement” and a TV remake of the classic play and Sidney Lumet movie “12 Angry Men.” Friedkin also directed episodes for such TV shows as “The Twilight Zone,” “Rebel Highway” and “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.”

Born in Chicago on August 29, 1939, he began working in local TV productions as a teenager. By age 16 he was directing live shows.

“My main influence was dramatic radio when I was a kid,” he said in a 2001 interview. “I remember listening to it in the dark, everything was left to the imagination. It was just sound. I think of the sounds first and then the images.”

He moved from live shows to documentaries, making “The People Versus Paul Crump,” in 1962. It was the story of a prison inmate who rehabilitates himself on Death Row after being sentenced for the murder of a guard during a botched robbery at a Chicago food plant.

Producer David Wolper was so impressed with it that he brought Friedkin to Hollywood to direct network TV shows.

After working on such shows as “The Bold Ones,” “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour” and the documentary “The Thin Blue Line,” Friedkin landed his first film, 1967’s “Good Times.” It was a lighthearted musical romp headlined by the pop duo Sonny and Cher.

He followed that with “The Night They Raided Minsky’s,” about backstage life at a burlesque theater, and “The Birthday Party,” from a Harold Pinter play. He then gained critical attention with 1970’s “The Boys in the Band,” a landmark film about gay men.

Friedkin had three brief marriages in the 1970s and ’80s, to French actress Jeanne Moreau; British actress Lesley-Anne Down, with whom he had a son; and longtime Los Angeles TV news anchor Kelly Lange. In 1991 he married Paramount studio executive Lansing.

In recent years, Friedkin was often called on to reflect on his career around the 50th anniversaries of his classics and was always candid. He also wrote a memoir, The Friedkin Connection, which came out in 2012. And he wasn’t done working: A new film, “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” starring Kiefer Sutherland, is set to premiere at the Venice Film Festival next month.
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K-pop star Suga, songwriter and rapper for the boy band supergroup BTS, has begun the enlistment process for mandatory military service, the band’s label said on Monday, making him the third band member to go off to perform the military duty.

“We would like to inform our fans that SUGA has initiated the military enlistment process by applying for the termination of his enlistment postponement,” Big Hit Music said in a statement.

All able-bodied South Korean men ages 18-28 must serve in the military for about two years.

Under a 2019 revision of the law, globally recognized K-pop stars were allowed to put off their service until the age of 30. Parliament is now debating a new amendment that would allow K-pop stars to do just three weeks of military training.

In April, J-Hope, another member of Grammy-nominated BTS, began his mandatory military service, following Jin, the oldest, who joined the military in December.

“We ask you for your continued love and support for SUGA until he completes his military service and safely returns,” the label said.

Suga went on his first solo world tour earlier this year, running his YouTube talk show.
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Greta Gerwig should be feeling closer to fine these days. In just three weeks in theaters, “Barbie” is set to sail past $1 billion in global ticket sales, breaking a record for female directors that was previously held by Patty Jenkins, who helmed “Wonder Woman.”

“Barbie,” which Gerwig directed and co-wrote, added another $53 million from 4,178 North American locations this weekend according to studio estimates on Sunday. The Margot Robbie-led and produced film has been comfortably seated in first place for three weeks and it’s hardly finished yet. Warner Bros. said the film will cross $1 billion before the end of the day.

In modern box office history, just 53 movies have made over $1 billion, not accounting for inflation, and “Barbie” is now the biggest to be directed by one woman, supplanting “Wonder Woman’s” $821.8 million global total. Three movies that were co-directed by women are still ahead of “Barbie,” including “Frozen” ($1.3 billion) and “Frozen 2” ($1.45 billion) both co-directed by Jennifer Lee and “Captain Marvel” ($1.1 billion), co-directed by Anna Boden. But, “Barbie” has passed “Captain Marvel” domestically with $459.4 million (versus $426.8 million), thereby claiming the North American record for live-action movies directed by women.

New competition came this weekend in the form of the animated, PG-rated “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” and the Jason Statham shark sequel, “Meg 2: The Trench,” both of which were neck-in-neck with Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” also in its third weekend, for the second-place spot.

“Meg 2” managed to sneak ahead and land in second place. It overcame its abysmal reviews to score a $30 million opening weekend from 3,503 locations. The Warner Bros. release, directed by Ben Wheatley, currently has a 29% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes and a B- CinemaScore from audiences. The thriller was released in 3D, which accounted for 22% of its first weekend business.

Third place went to “Oppenheimer,” which added $28.7 million from 3,612 locations in North America, bringing its domestic total to $228.6 million. In just three weeks, the J. Robert Oppenheimer biopic starring Cillian Murphy has become the highest grossing R-rated film of the year (ahead of “John Wick Chapter 4”) and the sixth-biggest of the year overall, surpassing “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”

“Oppenheimer” also celebrated a landmark, crossing $500 million globally in three weeks. Its worldwide tally is currently $552.9 million, which puts it ahead of “Dunkirk,” which clocked out with $527 million in 2017, and has become Nolan’s fifth-biggest movie ever. It’s also now among the four top grossing biographies ever (company includes “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “The Passion of the Christ” and “American Sniper”) and the biggest World War II movie of all time.

Paramount’s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” was close behind in fourth place with an estimated $28 million from 3,858 theaters in North America. Since opening on Wednesday, the film, which is riding on excellent reviews (96% on Rotten Tomatoes) and audience scores, has earned $43.1 million.

“This is one of those movies that is a multigenerational joy,” said Chris Aronson, Paramount’s president of domestic distribution. “I think the enduring popularity of ‘Turtles’ is showing its true colors. And there hasn’t been an animated film in eight weeks and there won’t be another for eight weeks which is great for us.”

“Turtles” cost $70 million to produce and features a starry voice cast that includes Jackie Chan, Ice Cube, Paul Rudd, Ayo Edebiri and Seth Rogen, who produced and co-wrote the film, which leans into the “teenage” aspect of the turtles.

“Barbie,” “Oppenheimer” and even the surprise, anti-trafficking hit “Sound of Freedom” (now at $163.5 million and ahead of “Mission: Impossible 7”) have helped fuel a boom at the box office, bringing in many millions more than was expected and helping to offset pains caused by some summer disappointments.

“After ‘The Flash,’ ‘Indiana Jones’ and, to a certain extent, ‘Mission: Impossible,’ people were saying the summer was a disappointment. But it’s not over yet,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “We’re going to have a summer that is going to go out on a high note.”

But the moment of triumph for the industry will likely be short lived if the studios can’t reach an agreement with striking actors and writers soon. The fall release calendar has already gotten slimmer, with some studios pushing films into 2024 instead of trying to promote them without movie stars.

Sony had planned to release its PlayStation-inspired true story “Gran Turismo” in theaters nationwide next Friday, but will now be rolling it out slowly for two weeks before going wide on Aug. 25. The thinking? If movie stars can’t promote the film, maybe audiences can.

“We have to be realistic,” Dergarabedian said. “We’re on this emotional high of movies doing so well, but we have to temper our enthusiasm and optimism with the fact that the strike is creating a lot of uncertainty. The longer it goes on the more profound the issues become. But the audience has spoken and they love going to the movie theater.”

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. “Barbie,” $53 million.

2. “Meg 2: The Trench,” $30 million.

3. “Oppenheimer,” $28.7 million.

4. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem,” $28 million.

5. “Haunted Mansion,” $9 million.

6. “Sound of Freedom,” $7 million.

7. “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part I,” $6.5 million.

8. “Talk to Me,” $6.3 million.

9. “Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani,” $1.5 million.

10. “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” $1.5 million.
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Netherlands advanced to the quarterfinals of the Women’s World Cup on Sunday with a 2-0 win over South Africa.

Jill Roord and Lineth Beerensteyn scored in each half at the Sydney Football Stadium to secure the 2019 runners-up a place in the last eight.

But South Africa, one of the surprise teams of the tournament, gave the Dutch a scare, forcing goalkeeper Daphne van Domselaar into a string of saves to keep Thembi Kgatlana at bay.

Netherlands lost to the U.S. team in the World Cup final four years ago and look like contenders again after finishing above the Americans in Group E.

South Africa had already exceeded expectations by advancing to the knockout stage for the first time after its dramatic 3-2 win over Italy in its final group game.

Roord scored in the ninth minute with a header from close range.

Kgatlana had a series of chances as South Africa searched for an equalizer before the break.

Netherlands regained control in the second half and scored its second in the 68th after an error from keeper Kaylin Swart.

Beerensteyn’s weak shot should have been easily caught by Swart, but she allowed it to squirm out of her control and over the line.
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Aitana Bonmati scored twice as Spain routed Switzerland 5-1 on Saturday to advance to the quarterfinals of the Women’s World Cup for the first time.

Spain responded emphatically to its 4-0 loss against Japan in its group-stage finale in a blowout against the Swiss in Auckland.

Alba Redondo, Laia Codina and Jennifer Hermoso also scored in the win at Eden Park. Codina showed plenty of relief to score from close range after conceding an own goal in the first half.

Spain coach Jorge Vilda made some big calls after his team was routed by Japan. Two-time Ballon d’Or winner Alexis Putellas was left on the bench and goalkeeper Cata Coll was picked for her full international debut. They were among five changes to his starting lineup, which paid off as his team produced a dominant performance.

Switzerland was one of only three teams that didn’t concede a goal in the group stages but was 4-1 down by halftime.

Bonmati scored her first in the fifth minute after Switzerland goalkeeper Gaelle Thalmann had pushed Alba Redondo’s effort against the post. The Swiss couldn’t clear the ball and Bonmati collected it, turned sharply in the box and fired low into the corner.

Switzerland was gifted an equalizer in the 11th through Codina’s own goal. The defender picked up the ball just inside her own half, but without looking, turned and swept an overhit backpass beyond Coll, who was advanced out of her goal.

Spain was back in front in the 17th as Redondo headed a bouncing ball low into the corner. It was her third goal of the tournament.

Spain continued to look for more goals and Bonmati scored her second in the 36th when showing quick footwork to make space in the box before placing a shot into the corner.

It was 4-1 in the 45th as Codina made amends for her earlier error by bundling the ball over the line from a corner.

Meriame Terchoun, one of three half time substitutes for Switzerland, forced a save from Coll from close range after the break. It was her team’s only effort on target all match.

Switzerland all-time leading scorer Ana-Maria Crnogorcevic had just one shot on goal in group play and didn’t fire a shot against Spain.

Hermoso swept in a fifth for Spain in the 70th to score her third of the tournament.
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A crowd of thousands that packed Manhattan’s Union Square for a popular livestreamer’s hyped giveaway got out of hand Friday afternoon, with some clambering on vehicles, hurling chairs and throwing punches, leaving police struggling to rein in the chaos.

Aerial TV news footage showed a surging, tightly packed crowd running through the streets, scaling structures in the park and snarling traffic. Shouting teenagers swung objects at car windows, threw paint cans and set off fire extinguishers. Some people climbed on a moving vehicle, falling off as it sped away. Others pounded on or climbed atop city buses.

By 5:30 p.m., police officers in growing numbers had regained control of much of the area, but small skirmishes were still breaking out, with young people knocking over barricades and throwing bottles and even a flowerpot at officers. Police were seen wrestling people to the ground and chasing them down the street.

Police planned to charge the streamer, Kai Cenat, with inciting a riot, NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey said Friday evening. Officers arrested 65 people, including 30 juveniles.

A number of people were injured, including some police. Details and numbers were not yet available.

“People were suffering out here,” Maddrey said, adding that he saw people bleeding and having asthma and panic attacks. Some motorists were trapped as people climbed on top of their cars. Maddrey said several police vehicles were damaged, including his.

On his Instagram feed, Cenat had an image promoting a giveaway at 4 p.m. in the park. People started lining up as early as 1:30 p.m. By 3 p.m., the crowd had swelled and was getting unruly. Some young people leaving the park said they had come expecting to get a computer for livestreaming or a new PlayStation.

Skylark Jones, 19, and a friend came to see Cenat and try to get something from his giveaway, which they said was promoted as a chance for things like gaming consoles or a gaming chair.

When they arrived, the scene was already packed. Bottles were being thrown. There was a commotion even before Cenat appeared, they said.

“It was a movie,” Jones said. Police “came with riot shields, charging at people.”

Cenat, 21, is a video creator with 6.5 million followers on the platform Twitch, where he regularly livestreams. He also boasts 4 million subscribers on YouTube, where he posts daily life and comedy vlogs ranging from Fake Hibachi Chef Prank! to his most recent video, I Rented Us Girlfriends In Japan! 

His 299 YouTube videos have amassed more than 276 million views among them. In December he was crowned streamer of the year at the 12th annual Streamy Awards. Messages sent to his publicist, management company and an email address for business inquiries were not immediately returned.

Livestreaming on Twitch from a vehicle as the event gathered steam, Cenat displayed gift cards he planned to give away. Noting the crowd and police presence, he urged, “Everybody who’s out there, make sure y’all safe. … We’re not gonna do nothin’ until it’s safe.”

Eventually he and an entourage got out of the vehicle and hustled through an excited crowd, crossed a street and went into the park, where Cenat was at the center of a cheering, shoving mob.

Maddrey said Cenat at some point in the afternoon was removed “for his safety” and that police were in contact with him. Videos posted on social media and taken from news helicopters showed Cenat being lifted over a fence and out of the crowd and then placed in a police vehicle.

The police chief also said a city bus filled with people who were arrested came under attack, and more police had to be sent to protect it. Numerous people were seen in hand restraints, sitting on the sidewalks, and multiple young men were taken away in handcuffs.

“We have encountered things like this before but never to this level of dangerousness,” Maddrey said.

Businesses adjoining the square closed their doors. Carina Treile, manager of Petite Optique, an eyeglass shop nearby, sheltered inside while police dispersed the crowd.

“Usually with people giving away free stuff, it’s never like this. It’s very organized,” she said. “And here we have a very chaotic scene.”

Loud bangs at one point frightened some in the crowd.

“That was a little bit scary, especially when people started running,” Treile said.

Police, some with batons, used metal barricades to push the crowd back and loudspeakers to repeatedly declare the gathering unlawful.

“Listen, we’re not against young people having a good time, we’re not against young people gathering,” Maddrey said. “But it can’t be to this level where it’s dangerous. A lot of people got hurt today.”
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A film taking place during Russia’s war on Ukraine was recently screened before the U.S. Congress. It tells the story of two Ukrainian teens who were forcibly transferred to a Russian-occupied territory. Andriy Borys has this report, narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by Viacheslav Filiushkin
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