The Supreme Court said Monday it will not take up the sexual assault case against comedian Bill Cosby, leaving in place a decision by Pennsylvania’s highest court to throw out his conviction and set him free from prison. The high court declined prosecutors’ request to hear the case and reinstate Cosby’s conviction. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court last year threw out Cosby’s conviction, saying the prosecutor who brought the case was bound by his predecessor’s agreement not to charge Cosby. As is typical, the Supreme Court did not say anything in rejecting the case. The case was included in a long list of cases the court said Monday it would not hear. The 84-year-old Cosby became the first celebrity convicted of sexual assault in the #MeToo era when a jury in 2018 found him guilty of drugging and molesting Temple University employee Andrea Constand in 2004. A jury had previously deadlocked in Cosby’s case, resulting in a mistrial in 2017. Cosby spent nearly three years in prison before Pennsylvania’s high court ordered his release. The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission. Constand has done so. …

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Lost Daughter,” “Drive My Car” and “Summer of Soul” were among the big winners at the 37th Film Independent Spirit Awards Sunday. The ceremony hosted by Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally was held in a tent by the beach in Santa Monica, broadcast on AMC and IFC. It is the cool, casual counterpart to some of the more traditional film awards shows. “If you don’t win, you can just walk straight into the ocean,” Offerman said. Gyllenhaal won best feature, director and best screenplay for her adaptation of the Elena Ferrante novel “The Lost Daughter.” Through tears, Gyllenhaal said that more than anything she believes in love. She was effusive in her praise for her crew. “You were the first people to tell me I was a director,” she said. “Thank you to Netflix — I can’t even believe this — for your support. … Nobody ever makes their first movie and comes out loving their financiers.” “I love independent film,” Gyllenhaal added. “I grew up making independent film.” Japan’s “Drive My Car, which has also been nominated for a best picture Oscar, picked up best international feature. Taylour Paige won best female lead for “Zola,” which …

The 50th running of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race started Sunday with 49 mushers setting their sights on Alaska’s western coast. The race will take the mushers across Alaska’s untamed and unforgiving terrain, including two mountain ranges, the frozen Yukon River and the unpredictable Bering Sea ice. The winner is expected to cross the finish line in the western Alaska coastal community of Nome about nine days after the start. For the first time ever in 2021, the race did not finish in Nome because of the pandemic. Instead, the race started in Willow, went to the ghost town of Iditarod and then doubled back to Willow. Dallas Seavey won the 2021 race, matching musher Rick Swenson for the most wins ever with five apiece. Swenson, 71, last won in 1991 and hasn’t raced the Iditarod since 2012. Seavey is looking to make history by becoming the first musher to hold six titles. Seavey has said he will likely take a break after this year’s race to spend time with his daughter. There are two four-time champions in the race with Martin Buser and Jeff King. Buser is running in his 39th Iditarod, and King stepped in just days …

The fledgling Basketball Africa League tipped off its second season in Dakar, Senegal, on March 5, 2022, with a dozen men’s club teams from as many African countries vying for the 2022 BAL championship title. Senegal’s Dakar Université Club and Guinea’s Seydou Legacy Athlétique Club faced off in the season opener. They had their eyes on the prize claimed by Egypt’s Zamalek in last year’s inaugural season. The COVID-19 pandemic delayed the BAL’s original 2020 launch date by a year and restricted its games to two weeks in Rwanda’s capital. This season’s 38 scheduled games will extend over three months among Dakar, Kigali and Cairo. The BAL teams have been split into two conferences: Sahara and Nile. The Sahara teams — from Guinea, Morocco, Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal and Tunisia – will compete against each other through March 15 at the Dakar Arena. Nile teams – from Angola, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, South Africa and South Sudan — will play April 9 through 19 at Cairo’s Hassan Mostafa Indoor Sports Complex. Each conference’s top four teams will qualify for the playoffs, with a single-elimination tournament and finals at Kigali Arena May 21 to 28. The BAL is a …

Walter R. Mears, who for 45 years fluidly and speedily wrote the news about presidential campaigns for The Associated Press and won a Pulitzer Prize doing it, has died. He was 87. “I could produce a story as fast as I could type,” Mears once acknowledged — and he was a fast typist. He became the AP’s Washington bureau chief and the wire service’s executive editor and vice president, but he always returned to the keyboard, and to covering politics. Mears died Thursday at his apartment in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, eight days after being diagnosed with multiple forms of cancer, said his daughters Susan Mears of Boulder, Colorado, and Stephanie Mears of Austin, Texas, who were with him. They said he was visited on his last night by a minister, with whom he discussed Alf Landon, the losing Republican presidential candidate in 1936, a year after his birth. Mears’ ability to find the essence of a story while it was still going on and to get it to the wire — and to newspapers and broadcasters around the world — became legend among peers. In 1972, Timothy Crouse featured Mears in The Boys on the Bus, a book chronicling …

International Women’s Day, celebrated on March 8, aims to focus global attention on the state of women when it comes to gender equality, bias, stereotypes and discrimination.  Its goal is to make the world more diverse, equitable and inclusive for them. VOA’s Laurel Bowman has that story. …

The arts may be a luxury many children of underprivileged families can’t afford, but at the Sitar Arts Center in Washington, D.C., it’s available to all who want to participate. VOA’s Virginia Gunawan reports. Camera – Laurentius Wahyudi. …

With the threat of financial sanctions looming, Chelsea’s Russian owner Roman Abramovich confirmed Wednesday he is trying to sell the Premier League club he turned into an elite trophy-winning machine with his lavish investment. The speed of Abramovich’s pending exit from Chelsea is striking as he was trying to instigate a plan this past weekend to relinquish some control in order to keep the club under his ownership. But as Russia’s war on Ukraine entered a seventh day, pressure was growing on the British government to include him among the wealthy Russians to be targeted in sanctions. “In the current situation, I have therefore taken the decision to sell the club, as I believe this is in the best interest of the club, the fans, the employees, as well as the club’s sponsors and partners,” Abramovich said in a statement. Abramovich said he will not be asking to be repaid 1.5 billion pounds ($2 billion) in loans he has granted the club during 19 years of injecting cash to elevate the team into one of the most successful in Europe. The Blues won the Club World Cup for the first time last month — in front of Abramovich in Abu …

Kenyan refugee aid group RefuSHE is hosting a virtual international fashion show in East Africa for female refugees. Organizers say the show’s proceeds will go toward helping female refugees fleeing conflict in East and Central Africa. Brenda Mulinya reports from Nairobi, Kenya.  Videographer and producer: Amos Wangwa  …

The invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces has ignited responses from arts and cultural institutions around the world, which are canceling performances by Russian artists, many of whom are supporters of Russian President Vladimir Putin.  The Cannes Film Festival, an invitation-only event that previews top-quality films from more than 80 countries, announced that no Russian delegations will be welcome this year, following the continued conflict between Ukraine and Russia. The festival is set to begin in May.  “Unless the war of assault ends in conditions that will satisfy the Ukrainian people, it has been decided that we will not welcome official Russian delegations nor accept the presence of anyone linked to the Russian government,” festival organizers said in a statement released Tuesday.  The festival may allow individual Russian filmmakers but has not stated whether their films will be permitted to compete.  The European Broadcasting Union, producers of Eurovision, declared that Russia will no longer be allowed to enter acts for the popular Eurovision Song Contest. The decision came after recent recommendations by the contest’s governing body, the Reference Group, which underscored the values of the broadcasting union.    Broadcasters from Iceland, Norway, Finland and the Netherlands had requested that Russia …

Major League Baseball has canceled opening day, with Commissioner Rob Manfred announcing Tuesday the sport will lose regular-season games over a labor dispute for the first time in 27 years after acrimonious lockout talks collapsed in the hours before management’s deadline.  Manfred said he is canceling the first two series of the season that was set to begin March 31, dropping the schedule from 162 games to likely 156 games at most. Manfred said the league and union have not made plans for future negotiations. Players won’t be paid for missed games.  “My deepest hope is we get an agreement quickly,” Manfred said. “I’m really disappointed we didn’t make an agreement.”  After the sides made progress during 13 negotiating sessions over 16 1/2 hours Monday, the league sent the players’ association a “best and final offer” Tuesday on the ninth straight day of negotiations.   Players rejected that offer, setting the stage for MLB to follow through on its threat to cancel opening day.  “Not a particularly productive day today,” Manfred said.   At 5:10 p.m., Manfred issued a statement that many fans had been dreading: Nothing to look forward to on opening day, normally a spring standard of renewal …

Yellowstone, the first U.S. national park, draws 4 million visitors annually. Parkgoers marvel at fantastic geysers, colorful hot pools and amazing wildlife. Yellowstone National Park photos courtesy of Tom Murphy Photography …

While many people spent Valentine’s Day with the traditional flowers and chocolates, Brittney Johnson was making theater history. The young Broadway veteran was gently lowered onto the Gershwin Theatre stage to become the first Black actor to assume the role of Glinda full-time in “Wicked,” shattering a racial barrier on the day of love. “One of the most rewarding parts of this is that it’s not just for me. I think it’s the least amount about me,” she says. “It’s about what it means for other people, for people that are going to see me do it or for people that just know that I’m here.” Johnson is part of a sisterhood of women who have recently broken boundaries on American stages, including Emilie Kouatchou, who became the first Black woman to play Christine in “The Phantom of the Opera” on Broadway, and Morgan Bullock who has become Riverdance’s first Black female dancer. “I do see things shifting, and I am very optimistic about the future,” Johnson says. “Because specific conversations are starting to happen now, people’s eyes are being opened in ways that they never had been before, either because they never needed to be, or because they just …