KATHMANDU, Nepal — The highest camp on the world’s tallest mountain is littered with garbage that is going to take years to clean up, according to a Sherpa who led a team that worked to clear trash and dig up dead bodies frozen for years near Mount Everest’s peak. The Nepal government-funded team of soldiers and Sherpas removed 11 tons of garbage, four dead bodies and a skeleton from Everest during this year’s climbing season. Ang Babu Sherpa, who led the team of Sherpas, said there could be as much as 40-50 tons of garbage still at South Col, the last camp before climbers make their attempt on the summit. “The garbage left there was mostly old tents, some food packaging and gas cartridges, oxygen bottles, tent packs, and ropes used for climbing and tying up tents,” he said, adding that the garbage is in layers and frozen at the 8,000-meter altitude where the South Col camp is located. Since the peak was first conquered in 1953, thousands of climbers have scaled it and many have left behind more than just their footprints. In recent years, a government requirement that climbers bring back their garbage or lose their deposits, along with …

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July 20 marks the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon. An interactive exhibit at Manhattan’s Intrepid Museum reminds viewers of the enormity of that undertaking and what went into the first moon landing. Evgeny Maslov has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Videographer: Vladimir Badikov. …

Phnom Penh — Buddhist monks in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh chanted blessings and threw flowers on Thursday to welcome 14 trafficked artifacts repatriated from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The Angkorian artworks, which included a 10th century goddess sandstone statute and a large Buddha head from the 7th century, were stolen by antiquities trafficker Douglas Latchford before ending up in New York.   “I am so glad and so happy to see our ancestors back home,” Cambodian Culture Minister Phoeurng Sackona said at the repatriation ceremony.   “We have many more treasures at the Met which we also hope will be returned to Cambodia,” she added. Sackona said more than 50 stolen artifacts would return to Cambodia from the United States in the near future. The minister also called on private collectors and museums around the world to follow the Met and return looted artifacts. “This return of our national treasures, held by the Met, is of utmost importance not only for Cambodia, but for all of humankind,” she said.   Latchford, who died aged 88 at his home in Bangkok, was widely regarded as a scholar of Cambodian antiquities, winning praise for his books on Khmer …

As Ukraine’s war against Russia’s invasion drags on, Ukrainians are fighting to preserve their history. They say Russia is deliberately attacking cultural monuments in a bid to erase the country’s history and identity as a separate nation. For VOA, Anna Chernikova reports from Kyiv. VOA footage by Eugene Shynkar, Vladyslav Smilianets. …

Arles, France — One of the world’s most renowned photo festivals, in the French town of Arles, returned this week with a timely ode to diversity at a moment when France is turning towards the far right. The Rencontres festival, which runs until Sept. 29, is spread across 27 venues in the ancient cobbled streets of this former Roman town in Provence and has been running since 1970. This year’s theme is “Beneath the Surface,” seeking to delve into diversity without the usual caricatures around minorities. The star exhibition is a world-first retrospective for U.S. portrait artist Mary Ellen Mark (1940-2015), who worked for magazines like Life and Rolling Stone. One of her celebrated images features an Icelandic child resting on the neck of a horse that focuses attention away from the boy’s disability. Mark “devoted a lot of time and attention to her protagonists, in a few cases returning to photograph them again and again over the course of many years, forging close relationships with many,” said co-curator Sophia Greiff. An example is Tiny, whom Mark followed from her years on the street falling into drug use, to tender moments with her children. “What I’m trying to do is make …

NEW YORK — In the winter of 1789, around the time George Washington was elected the country’s first president, a Boston-based printer quietly launched another American institution. William Hill Brown’s The Power of Sympathy, published anonymously by Isaiah Thomas & Company, is widely cited as something momentous: the first American novel. Around 100 pages long, Brown’s narrative tells of two young New Englanders whose love affair abruptly and tragically ends when they learn a shocking secret that makes their relationship unbearable. The dedication page, addressed to the “Young Ladies of United Columbia” (the United States), promised an exposé of “the Fatal consequences of Seduction” and a prescription for the “Economy of Human Life.” Outside of Boston society, though, few would have known or cared whether The Power of Sympathy marked any kind of literary milestone. “If you picked 10 random citizens, I doubt it would have mattered to any of them,” says David Lawrimore, an associate professor of English at the University of Idaho who has written often about early U.S. literature. “Most people weren’t thinking about the first American novel.” What the first American novel was like Subtitled The Triumph of Nature. Founded in Truth, Brown’s book is in many …

NEW YORK — Robert Towne, the Oscar-winning screenplay writer of “Shampoo,” “The Last Detail” and other acclaimed films whose work on “Chinatown” became a model of the art form and helped define the jaded allure of his native Los Angeles, has died. He was 89. Towne died Monday surrounded by family at his home in Los Angeles, said publicist Carri McClure. She declined to comment on a cause of death. In an industry that gave birth to rueful jokes about the writer’s status, Towne for a time held prestige comparable to the actors and directors he worked with. Through his friendships with two of the biggest stars of the 1960s and ’70s, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson, he wrote or co-wrote some of the signature films of an era when artists held an unusual level of creative control. The rare “auteur” among screen writers, Towne managed to bring a highly personal and influential vision of Los Angeles onto the screen. “It’s a city that’s so illusory,” Towne told The Associated Press in a 2006 interview. “It’s the westernmost west of America. It’s a sort of place of last resort. It’s a place where, in a word, people go to make their …

Panama’s pollera is the country’s beautiful, elaborate and very expensive national dress, and one of the most recognized Latin American traditional costumes. But production of the gorgeous garment faces an uncertain future. Oscar Sulbarán explains why in this story narrated by Veronica Villafañe. (Camera: Oscar Sulbarán; Produced by: Veronica Villafañe) …

Washington, D.C., home to the world’s largest collection of William Shakespeare’s works, has unveiled a treasure trove that most have never seen. The Folger Shakespeare Library reopened its doors after a four-year long renovation, revealing the most valuable part of its collection to the public for the first time. Maxim Adams visited the library. …