The Africa Football Cup of Nations tournament is scheduled to begin January 9 at Olembe Stadium in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde. On Monday, Confederation of African Football President Patrice Motsepe visited the 60,000-seat stadium, which is still under construction less than three weeks before the opening match. Motsepe says construction workers are improving on the stadium and he is optimistic Cameroon will be ready for the opener.   “There is a huge commitment and a focus to make sure that some of those issues that are being put in place in the next few days, good progress will be made,” he said. “My message is to Africa and to the world that the people of Cameroon are ready to show the world the best of African Football and also the best of African hospitality. It is going to be a successful AFCON, so come January 9, there must be a kickoff.”  Motsepe’s visit came amid persistent local media reports that Olembe Stadium would not be ready.    Bulldozers dug and arranged roads at the stadium entrance on Tuesday, a day after Motsepe’s visit. Several dozen young people transported and planted trees, flowers and grass that officials say will beautify the facility.  Among …

Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai is denying that she wrote a social media post last month accusing a now-retired Communist Party official of sexually assaulting her.  In a video posted Sunday on the website of the Singapore-based Chinese-language newspaper Lianhe Zaobao, Peng told the interviewer she has “never said or written anything accusing anyone of sexually assaulting me,” a point she said she needed “to emphasize…very clearly.”    Peng said in the interview that her initial post on the social media site Weibo was “a private matter” and told the interviewer she was able to move about freely.    The newspaper said the video was taken Sunday in Shanghai, where the 35-year-old Peng was attending a skiing competition. The video showed her standing alongside former National Basketball Association star Yao Ming and other Chinese sports figures.  Peng, a former Olympian who won titles at Wimbledon and the French Open, said on November 2 that former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli coerced her into sex before it evolved into an on-off consensual relationship. Her post was quickly deleted and she vanished from public view for several days.  She eventually appeared at a tennis event and spoke by video with Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee president, during which she said …

Ken Kragen, a top entertainment producer, manager and philanthropist who turned to such clients as Lionel Richie and Kenny Rogers in helping to organize the 1985 all-star charity single We Are the World, has died. He was 85. Kragen died Tuesday of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles, according to a statement released by his family. “Ken worked tirelessly on behalf of the artists he represented, but what I loved most about him, other than the essence of his spirit, was that he had a 360-degree understanding that the combination of art & commerce could be used to make the world a better place,” Quincy Jones, who produced We Are the World, tweeted this week. “As one of the original organizing partners on We Are the World, w/o Ken’s expertise & specific skill set, we may never have made the enormous global impact that we did,” Jones tweeted. Kragen was a Harvard Business School graduate whose other credits included producing The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and The Gambler television movies that starred Rogers. His most famous project began late in 1984 with a phone call from Harry Belafonte, who was anxious to raise money for starving people in …

An Australian-led study warns that 1,500 of the world’s 7,000 recognized languages might no longer be spoken by the end of this century. The research, published Friday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, details a wide range of factors putting endangered languages under pressure. Australian researchers have found that as roads increasingly connect cities to more remote areas around the world, Indigenous languages can be overwhelmed by their more dominant counterparts, such as English. The study also asserts that bilingual education has been neglected. Again, dominant languages have been found to smother those spoken by smaller groups. Experts have said Australia’s record is poor, and the country has one of world’s highest rates of language loss worldwide. Before European colonization, more than 250 First Nations languages were spoken in Australia. Today, there are just 40, and only a dozen are being taught to children. “This has been an on-going process through colonization and globalization,” said the University of Queensland’s professor Felicity Meakins, one of the study’s co-authors. “So, we do not want to forget, of course, in all of this that individual speech communities have their own histories and experiences, and in many places, including Australia, languages have been …

Multiple Grammy winner Bruce Springsteen has sold his masters and music publishing rights to Sony Music in a deal worth about $500 million, entertainment publication Billboard said Wednesday, citing sources.  The sale will give Sony ownership of the rock music legend’s entire catalog, including 15-times platinum album “Born in the U.S.A” and five-times platinum “The River,” Billboard reported.  It is the latest in a string of catalog deals over the past year or so that includes the music of David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Stevie Nicks, Neil Young and Carole Bayer Sager.  Warner Music bought worldwide rights to Bowie’s catalog in September, and Dylan sold his back catalog of more than 600 songs in December last year to Universal Music Group at a purchase price widely reported as $300 million.  Sony’s Columbia Records, where Springsteen recorded his music, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Representatives for Springsteen could not be reached.    …

Chinese authorities are pledging unrestricted internet access for foreign athletes at February’s Beijing Winter Olympics, but rights advocates say athletes will likely be cautious about exploiting the rare crack in China’s “Great Firewall.” China has been strengthening that firewall for more than a decade, blocking access to internationally popular foreign messaging apps, social media platforms, search engines and websites deemed threatening to national security. In a statement emailed to VOA, the International Olympic Committee confirmed that China, as host of the 2022 Beijing Games, will honor a promise to allow athletes and accredited foreign media to have open internet service in the Olympic Village, competition and noncompetition venues, and contracted media hotels. “Accredited participants will be able to access open internet service with their own devices via wired or Wi-Fi OTN (optical transport network) connection … when purchasing Games SIM cards via the Beijing 2022 Rate Card program,” the IOC said. China has unblocked its Great Firewall for certain foreign visitors in certain venues on several occasions in the past decade. While working for another network, a VOA Mandarin Service journalist who was reporting from Hangzhou, China, for the 2016 Group of 20 summit and from Beijing for the 2017 …

Yarnbombing is part street art, part graffiti, and part activism. A new art trend in New York City takes the age-old craft of crocheting to the streets, where traditionally walls and fences have been serving as canvases for graffiti artists. Nina Vishneva has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. …

A family who went to court to ensure a quarter of the classes for their five-year-old son at a primary school are taught in Spanish were offered police protection Wednesday after they said they were harassed and abused.  The family, residents of Canet de Mar, a Mediterranean coastal town 50 kilometers northeast of Barcelona, won their case at the Catalan High Court last week. The case has spotlighted a bitter battle in Spain over languages and identity politics not just in Catalonia but in the Basque Country, Galicia, and the Balearic Islands. Spain has four official languages: Castilian Spanish, Catalan, Galician and Basque. Officially they have equal status in law. However, Castilian emerged as the dominant language because of widespread use of the language across the empire from 1492 until 1976. One of the largest empires in the world, it covered large portions of the Americas, Europe, the Philippines and Africa. During his rule from 1939 to 1975, General Francisco Franco banned the use of regional languages other than Castilian in schools and other public spaces.  After democracy returned to Spain in 1978, the nationalist regional government in Catalonia adopted the so-called ‘linguistic immersion’ model to re-establish the language. Under …

Congolese rumba is among at least nine new entries on UNESCO’s “representative list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity.” UNESCO is making its 2021 designations this week, recognizing cultural heritage ranging from Arabic calligraphy to falconry to Nordic clinker boat traditions.  Congolese rumba was named to the list Tuesday. The Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo jointly bid for UNESCO to recognize the music and dance, which helped energize people in those countries to shake off colonial rule by Belgium and France, respectively, in Congo, in 1960.  UNESCO’s director general, Audrey Azoulay, summarized rumba’s significance.  “In the 20th century, the Congolese rumba was a symbol for the fight for emancipation, dignity and political independence on the African continent,” she said in a statement shared with VOA. “Therefore, the inscription of this music is not just the recognition of a cultural practice but a historic decision. It underlines the political nature of this music, which inspires so many artists all around the world today.”  Through its ongoing list, UNESCO aims to safeguard cultural practices and ensure that they’re handed down through generations.  The list of new entries includes: — Pasillo song and poetry from Ecuador. — Pottery-related practices …

Movie dramas “The Power of the Dog” and “Belfast” led nominations on Monday for the annual Golden Globes in a year clouded by controversy and a scaled-down ceremony. “Belfast,” set in 1970s Northern Ireland, and director Jane Campion’s Western “The Power of the Dog” got seven nods each. They were followed by global-warming satire “Don’t Look Up”; “King Richard,” about the father of tennis champions Venus and Serena Williams; director Steven Spielberg’s new version of the classic musical “West Side Story” and coming-of-age tale “Licorice Pizza” with four each. Netflix movies received a leading 17 nominations. The winners of the Golden Globes will be announced on Jan. 9, but the ceremony’s format is unclear after broadcaster NBC earlier this year dropped plans to televise the glitzy awards dinner in Beverly Hills following a controversy over the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), the group that votes on them. Monday’s nominations were met mostly with silence from movie studios and actors who normally flood social media and reporters with thanks and reactions. It is unclear whether any of the nominees will attend the 2022 ceremony, which had been one of Hollywood’s biggest awards shows in the run-up to the Oscars. Rapper and …

Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk was named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” for 2021, a year that saw his electric car company become the most valuable carmaker in the world and his rocket company soar to the edge of space with an all-civilian crew. Musk is also the founder and CEO of SpaceX, and leads brain-chip startup Neuralink and infrastructure firm The Boring Company. Tesla’s market value soared to more than $1 trillion this year, making it more valuable than Ford Motor and General Motors combined.  Tesla produces hundreds of thousand of cars every year and has managed to avert supply chain issues better than many of its rivals, while pushing many young consumers to switch to electric cars and legacy automakers to shift focus to EV vehicles. “For creating solutions to an existential crisis, for embodying the possibilities and the perils of the age of tech titans, for driving society’s most daring and disruptive transformations, Elon Musk is TIME’s 2021 Person of the Year,” the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Edward Felsenthal, said. “Even Elon Musk’s spacefaring adventures are a direct line from the very first Person of the Year, Charles Lindbergh, whom the editors selected in 1927 to commemorate …

Vicente Fernandez, an iconic and beloved singer of Mexican regional music who was awarded three Grammys and nine Latin Grammys, and inspired a new generation of performers, including his son Alejandro Fernandez, died on Sunday. He was 81 years old. Fernandez was known for hits such as “El Rey,” and “Lastima que seas ajena,” his command of the ranchera genre and his dark and elegant mariachi suits with their matching wide-brimmed sombreros.  His music attracted fans far beyond Mexico’s borders. Songs like “Volver, Volver” and “Como Mexico no hay dos” were extremely popular among Mexican immigrant communities in the U.S. because of how they expressed the longing for the homeland. “It was an honor and a great pride to share with everyone a great musical career and give everything for the audience,” Fernandez’s family said on his official Instagram account. “Thank you for continuing to applaud, thank you for continuing to sing.”  Fernandez, known also by his nickname “Chente,” died at 6:15 a.m. in a hospital in Jalisco state, his family said. Funeral plans were not immediately announced. In August, he had suffered a serious fall and had been hospitalized since then for that and other ailments. Beginning early on …

Anne Rice, writer of the supernatural and the macabre, has died. She was 80. Christopher Rice, her son, posted on Twitter early Sunday: “. . . my mother, Anne Rice, passed away due to complications resulting from a stroke. . . The immensity of our family’s grief cannot be overstated.” Rice is best known for her Vampire Chronicles books, which included Interview With the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned. Interview With the Vampire became a movie in 1994, starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. AMC Networks is set to premiere a series next year based on Interview with the Vampire. The company has acquired the rights to 18 of Rice’s books. The prolific author wrote over 30 books and had more than a million followers on Facebook, according to her website. While Rice seemed to relish in the world of the undead, in the late 1990s, she rediscovered her Catholic faith, according to biography.com. That discovery prompted her to write Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Angel Time. Rice was born in New Orleans and the city became the backdrop for many of her books. Her son said in his Twitter post: “Next year, a …

When the nuns of Maredret Abbey in Belgium were struggling to scrape together the funds for badly needed renovation works, they turned to an occupation that for hundreds of years had been the preserve of monks: beer-brewing. The 20-strong Benedictine community, founded in 1893, decided about five years ago it was time to team up with a brewer with the aim of to producing beer infused with some of their history and values while helping repair their convent’s leaking roofs and cracked walls. After nearly three years of collaboration with brewer and importer John Martin, Maredret Altus, a 6.8% amber beer using cloves and juniper berries, and Maredret Triplus, an 8% blond incorporating coriander and sage, went on sale in summer. “It’s good for one’s health. It aids digestion. All the sisters like the beer, we are in Belgium after all,” said Sister Gertrude, adding the nuns allowed themselves one bottle each on Sundays.   The beers are based on spelt, a grain mentioned in texts by Saint Hildegard, a German Benedictine abbess from the 11th century who has inspired the Belgian order, along with plants commonly grown in the nuns’ garden. Edward Martin, head distiller and great-grandson of the …

Italy’s La Scala has postponed its ballet season premiere after a coronavirus outbreak in its ranks, just days after the famed Milan theater staged its high-profile opera season opener with a full-capacity audience. At least one of the four ballerinas who tested positive for COVID-19 also appeared in the Dec. 7 premiere of the opera Macbeth. Ten other people linked to the outbreak tested positive for the virus, all of them theater support personnel, including someone who worked in the hairdressing department, the theater said in a statement. Italian health authorities placed several other people in quarantine because they were in close contact with those confirmed infected, La Scala said. La Scala Theatre Ballet was scheduled to perform La Bayadere to open its season on Dec. 15. The performance has been pushed back until Dec. 21. The 19th century ballet is based on a score by Ludwig Minkus and choreography that Rudolf Nureyev debuted with the Paris Opera ballet in 1992. La Scala’s performance of the ballet marks the first time the Nureyev Foundation has allowed another company to perform it. The opening of La Scala’s opera season is considered a highlight of Italy’s cultural calendar and took on added …

Shortly after Kholoud al-Faqeeh was appointed judge in an Islamic religious court in the Palestinian territories, a woman walked in, laid eyes on her and turned around and walked out, murmuring that she didn’t want a woman to rule in her case. Al-Faqeeh was saddened, but not surprised — people have long been accustomed to seeing turbaned men in her place. It was only in 2009 that she became one of the first two women appointed in the West Bank as Islamic religious court judges. But she sees her presence on the court as all the more important since it rules on personal status matters ranging from divorce and alimony to custody and inheritance. “What was even more provoking is that these religious courts are in charge of women’s cases,” al-Faqeeh said. “A woman’s whole life cycle is before these courts.” Women like al-Faqeeh are increasingly carving out space for themselves in the Islamic sphere, and in doing so, paving the way for others to follow in their footsteps. Around the world, women are teaching in Islamic schools and universities, leading Quran study circles, preaching and otherwise providing religious guidance to the faithful. This story is part of a series …

Al Unser, one of only four drivers to win the Indianapolis 500 a record four times, died Thursday following a long illness. He was 82. Unser died at his home in Chama, New Mexico, with his wife, Susan, by his side, Indianapolis Motor Speedway said early Friday. He had been battling cancer for 17 years. “My heart is so saddened. My father passed away last night,” son Al Unser Jr., himself a two-time Indy 500 winner, posted on social media. “He was a Great man and even a Greater Father. Rest In Peace Dad!” Unser is the third member of one of America’s most famed racing families to die in 2021. His oldest brother, three-time Indy 500 winner Bobby Unser, died in May, and Bobby Unser Jr. passed six weeks after his father. Known as “Big Al” once his own son made a name for himself in racing, Unser is part of an elite club of four-time winners of “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.” Unser won the Indy 500 in 1970, 1971, 1978 and 1987, and is the only driver in history to have both a sibling and a child also win one of the biggest races in the world. …

Experts say that for the U.S. diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics to be effective, more countries will need to participate. But that could be challenging given some countries’ economic ties to China or recognized prowess in winter sports. Since the Biden administration’s announcement this week that it would not send an official U.S. delegation to the Beijing Olympics, Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada have joined the diplomatic boycott. That means no officials or diplomats from these countries will attend, although their athletes are still scheduled to compete in the February 4-20 Games. All four countries said the boycott was in response to human rights violations by the Chinese government. During Monday’s White House briefing, press secretary Jen Psaki said the U.S. boycott was a statement against China’s “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.” Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said at a news conference on Wednesday that his government had raised its concerns with Beijing regarding “human rights abuses and issues in Xinjiang.” And as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the decision, he expressed “extreme concern by the repeated human rights violations by the Chinese government.” New Zealand reiterated this week that it would not send …

Former Empire actor Jussie Smollett was convicted Thursday on charges he staged an anti-gay, racist attack on himself nearly three years ago and then lied to Chicago police about it. In the courtroom as the verdict was read, Smollett stood and faced the jury, showing no visible reaction. The jury found the 39-year-old guilty on five counts of disorderly conduct — for each separate time he was charged with lying to police in the days immediately after the alleged attack. He was acquitted on a sixth count, of lying to a detective in mid-February, weeks after Smollett said he was attacked. Outside court, special prosecutor Dan Webb called the verdict “a resounding message by the jury that Mr. Smollett did exactly what we said he did.” Judge James Linn set a post-trial hearing for Jan. 27 and said he would schedule Smollett’s sentencing at a later date. Disorderly conduct is a felony that carries a prison sentence of up to three years, but experts have said if convicted, Smollett would likely be placed on probation and ordered to perform community service. The damage to his personal and professional life may be more severe. Smollett lost his role on the TV …

Despite a growing number of Western countries announcing diplomatic boycotts of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the United Nations secretary-general, António Guterres, will attend the Games. “The Secretary-General received an invitation from the International Olympic Committee to attend the Beijing Winter Games, and he has accepted it,” said U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric.   “I mean, as you know, I think his two immediate predecessors have attended almost every Olympic Game since at least 2002.” Citing China’s human rights abuses, the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and Lithuania will not be sending diplomatic delegations to the Games. The boycott allows the nations to send athletic delegations to the Games while refusing to send any high-ranking officials or dignitaries as an official delegation. Human rights groups have called on nations to fully boycott the Beijing Winter Games over China’s human rights abuses, including the detention of millions of Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang province and the crackdown on pro-democracy forces in Hong Kong.    Beijing has denounced the boycotts as “posturing” and has vowed to retaliate with unspecified “countermeasures” against the United States over its decision to stage a diplomatic boycott of the Games, which run from February 4 to 20.  Some information for this …

During COVID when all the theaters were closed, two sisters decided to take their musical talents to the only stage available: the street. The rest, as they say, is history. Anna Nelson reports. Anna Rice narrates her story. Camera: Natalia Latukhina, Vladimir Badikov …

98-year-old photographer Tony Vaccaro was a simple infantryman, but he unofficially photographed World War II for 272 days. Anna Nelson met with Vaccaro to talk about his role in documenting the war. Anna Rice narrates her story. …

Australia will stage a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, mirroring a  similar move by the United States.  Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the boycott Wednesday in Canberra, citing a range of issues including accusations of human rights abuses against China and Beijing’s refusal to hold bilateral talks to resolve lingering trade and diplomatic disputes.  A diplomatic boycott means that no Australian officials will attend any Beijing Olympics events, but its athletes will still be allowed to participate.    Relations between Australia and China have turned sour in recent years, beginning when Canberra banned Chinese-based tech giant Huawei from building its new 5G broadband network. Relations took a turn for the worse over Australia’s push for an independent probe into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, which was first detected in late 2019 in central China. Beijing has retaliated by imposing heavy tariffs on Australia’s barley exports, and imposed tight restrictions on exports of wine, beef and other commodities. China is also angered by Australia’s recent decision to purchase nuclear-powered submarines as part of a new defense pact with Britain and the United States.  Prime Minister Morrison said “there has been no obstacle” on Australia’s side to hold talks with …

U.S. news outlets say the Biden administration is expected to announce a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games this week.    A diplomatic boycott means no U.S. officials would attend any events of the Beijing 2022 Games, while still allowing athletes on Team USA to participate. That would avoid a repeat of 1980, when then-President Jimmy Carter kept U.S. athletes from attending the Moscow Summer Games over the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979.    CNN was first to report the expected announcement.  President Joe Biden has been under enormous pressure from congressional lawmakers to announce a boycott over China’s human rights abuses, including the detention of millions of Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang province and the crackdown on pro-democracy forces in Hong Kong.    Biden said last month he was considering a diplomatic boycott.  The Beijing Winter Olympics will run from February 4-20.  …