Film icon Arnold Schwarzenegger told Russians in a video posted on social media Thursday they’re being lied to about the war in Ukraine and accused President Vladimir Putin of sacrificing Russian soldiers’ lives for his own ambitions. Schwarzenegger is hugely popular in Russia, and apparently also with Putin. The President of Russia Twitter account follows only 22 accounts — one of them the actor’s. In the nine-minute video, Schwarzenegger said Russian soldiers were told they’d be fighting Nazis in Ukraine, or to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine or that were going on military exercises, and that they’d be greeted like heroes. He said many of the troops now know those claims were false. “This is an illegal war,” Schwarzenegger said, looking straight into the camera while seated at a desk in a study. “Your lives, your limbs, your futures are being sacrificed for a senseless war condemned by the entire world.” Schwarzenegger posted his emotional video on Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. While some of those services are blocked in Russia, he also posted it on the Telegram messaging app — which is not — where it got more than a half-million views. It was subtitled in Russian. The former California …

St. Patrick’s Day celebrations across the country are back after a two-year hiatus, including the nation’s largest in New York City, in a sign of growing hope that the worst of the coronavirus pandemic may be over. The holiday served as a key marker in the outbreak’s progression, with parades celebrating Irish heritage among the first big public events to be called off in 2020. An ominous acceleration in infections quickly cascaded into broad shutdowns. The full-fledged return of New York’s parade on Thursday coincides with the city’s wider reopening. Major mask and vaccination rules were recently lifted. “Psychologically, it means a lot,” said Sean Lane, the chair of the parade’s organizing group. “New York really needs this.” The city’s entertainment and nightlife scenes have particularly welcomed the return to a normal St. Patrick’s Day party. “This is the best thing that happened to us in two years,” said Mike Carty, the Ireland-born owner of Rosie O’Grady’s, a restaurant and pub in the Theater District. “We need the business, and this really kicked it off,” said Carty, who will be hosting the parade’s grand marshal after the procession. Celebrations are back in other cities, too. Over the weekend, Chicago dyed …

The Pritzker Prize, architecture’s most prestigious award, was awarded Tuesday to Burkina Faso-born architect Diebedo Francis Kere, the first African to win the honor in its more than 40-year history. Kere, 56, was hailed for his “pioneering” designs that are “sustainable to the earth and its inhabitants — in lands of extreme scarcity,” said Tom Pritzker, chairman of the Hyatt Foundation that sponsors the award, in a statement. Kere, a dual citizen of Burkina Faso and Germany, said he was the “happiest man on this planet” to become the 51st recipient of the illustrious prize since it was first awarded in 1979. “I have a feeling of an overwhelming honor but also a sense of responsibility,” he told AFP during an interview in his office in Berlin. Kere is renowned for building schools, health facilities, housing, civic buildings and public spaces across Africa, including Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Togo, Kenya, Mozambique, Togo and Sudan. “He is equally architect and servant, improving upon the lives and experiences of countless citizens in a region of the world that is at times forgotten,” Pritzker said. Kere won plaudits for his 2001 project for a primary school in Gando village, in Burkina Faso, where …

“The Outfit,” a film noir by Academy Award winning writer Graham Moore, tells a fictional story of an expert tailor who finds himself caught up in a turf war among dangerous gangsters in 1950s Chicago. Moore, who won an Oscar for the film drama “The Imitation Game,” spoke to VOA’s Penelope Poulou about his interest in the characters in the film and how “The Outfit” resonates with today’s grim realities. …

Musher Brent Sass won the arduous Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race across Alaska on Tuesday as his team of 11 dogs dashed off the Bering Sea ice through a crowd of fans in downtown Nome. Sass mushed down Front Street and across the finish line just before 6 a.m. “It’s awesome, it’s a dream come true,” Sass said before he was presented the prize-winning check of $50,000, his beard and mustache partially encased in ice during the post-race interview. “When I started mushing, my goal was to win the Yukon Quest and win the Iditarod. Checked them both off the list now,” he said. Sass said he was “super, super, super proud” of his dog team. “It’s all on them. They did an excellent job the whole race. I asked a lot of them, and they preformed perfectly,” he said. “Every one of these dogs I’ve raised since puppies, and we’ve been working towards this goal the whole time, and we’re here,” he said, his voice cracking. “It’s crazy.” Fans lined the street welcoming the popular musher, who was escorted by police for the final few blocks to the famous burled arch that marked his victory. It’s the first Iditarod …

Leon Schwarzbaum, a survivor of the Nazis’ death camp at Auschwitz and a lifelong fighter for justice for the victims of the Holocaust, has died. He was 101. Schwarzbaum died early Monday in Potsdam near Berlin, the International Auschwitz Committee reported on its website. No cause of death was given. “It is with great sadness, respect and gratitude that Holocaust survivors around the world bid farewell to their friend, fellow sufferer and companion Leon Schwarzbaum, who in the last decades of his life became one of the most important contemporary witnesses of the Shoah,” the committee said. Schwarzbaum was the only one of his family to survive the concentration camps at Auschwitz, Buchenwald and a subcamp Sachsenhausen, the Auschwitz committee said. He became known to a wider audience when film director Hans Erich Viet made a movie in 2018 about his life. “The Last of the Jolly Boys” was shot with Schwarzbaum himself at original locations. Schwarzbaum was born in 1921 to a Polish-Jewish family in Hamburg in northern Germany. He grew up in Bedzin, Poland, from where the family was deported to Auschwitz in 1943 after the ghetto there was dissolved. After the war, he lived in Berlin for …

Clarissa Ward interrupted her live TV report on Ukrainian refugees to help a distraught older man, then a woman, down a steep and explosion-mangled path, gently urging them on in their language. A day later, Lynsey Addario, a photographer for The New York Times, captured a grim image of a Russian mortar attack’s immediate outcome: the bodies of a mother and her two children crumpled on a road, amid their suitcase, backpacks and a pet carrier. The memorable reports illustrate both the skill and gutsiness of female journalists serving as eyewitnesses to Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine and the way their presence — hard-won after overcoming ingrained notions of why women shouldn’t cover combat — has changed the nature of war reporting. They cover the tactics of war but give equal measure to its toll. “People are so exhausted, they can barely walk,” Ward told viewers in her report. “It’s just an awful, awful scene. And they’re the lucky ones.”  The author of “You Don’t Belong Here,” a 2021 book that profiles three pioneering women who covered the Vietnam War, said there’s “absolutely no doubt that the reporting is what I would call more humane, looking at the human side …

American actor William Hurt, known for much-loved films such as “The Big Chill” and “A History of Violence,” has died at age 71, US media reported Sunday. Multiple outlets cited Hurt’s son, Will, who said in a statement: “It is with great sadness that the Hurt family mourns the passing of William Hurt, beloved father and Oscar winning actor, on March 13, 2022, one week before his 72nd birthday. He died peacefully, among family, of natural causes.” The actor had been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer in May 2018, but his son’s statement did not specify whether the disease contributed to Hurt’s passing. Hurt built his reputation on his willingness to play quirky and unusual characters such as a Russian police officer in “Gorky Park” (1983), a wealthy and aloof husband in Woody Allen’s “Alice” (1990) and a man seeking to build a machine that would benefit blind people in “Until the End of the World” (1991). His first film role was as an obsessed scientist in Ken Russell’s 1980 film “Altered States.” Appearing opposite Kathleen Turner in “Body Heat” in 1981 turned him into a sex symbol, and he won the best actor Oscar in 1985 for playing a …

Sci-fi epic “Dune” took four early prizes from a field-leading 11 nominations as the British Academy Film Awards returned Sunday with a live, black-tie ceremony after a pandemic-curtailed event in 2021. Acting nominees Benedict Cumberbatch and Lady Gaga were among the stars walking the red carpet at London’s Royal Albert Hall before a ceremony hosted by Australian actor-comedian Rebel Wilson. Last year’s event was largely conducted online, with only the hosts and presenters appearing in person. This year, stars were gathering in the shadow of Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine. Krishnendu Majumdar, chairman of the British Film Academy, known as BAFTA, opened the show with a message of support for Ukraine. “We stand in solidarity with those who are bravely fighting for their country and we share their hope for a return to peace,” he said. After that came the glitz, with 85-year-old diva Shirley Bassey and a live orchestra performing “Diamonds Are Forever” to mark the 60th anniversary of the James Bond films. “Bond is turning 60, and his girlfriends are turning 25,” joked host Wilson, who toned down her usual bawdy material for the ceremony’s early-evening TV broadcast on the BBC. Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune,” starring Timothee Chalamet and …

Brent Sass continued to lead the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Sunday, but he must hold off the defending champion as mushers have reached the Bering Sea coast and its treacherous ice. Sass breezed through the checkpoint in the village of Shaktoolik on Sunday morning, staying only eight minutes. The village is 1,213 kilometers (754 miles) into the nearly 1,609-kilometer (1,000-mile) race, and the winner is expected to cross the finish line in Nome on Tuesday or Wednesday. According to GPS trackers each musher carries, Sass had a lead of just over 16 kilometers (10 miles) on Dallas Seavey, who tied Rick Swenson for the most Iditarod victories at five with his 2021 Iditarod win. But the GPS data on the race’s Iditarod Insider website also showed Seavey running at a faster clip even though he is mushing with two fewer dogs than the 12 Sass has in harness. Aaron Burmeister was in third place, but about 64 kilometers (40 miles) behind Seavey. Sass picked up another award late Saturday when he was the first musher to reach the Gold Coast. Among the prizes presented to him in the community of Unalakleet was 28.35 grams (one ounce) of gold …

Jane Campion hailed the shattering of Hollywood’s glass ceiling as her movie “The Power of the Dog” was named the year’s best film by her fellow directors Saturday — a major accolade which historically leads to Oscars glory. Campion won the Directors Guild of America’s top prize for her Netflix adaptation of a Western novel about the toxic masculinity of sexually repressed cowboys, fending off illustrious rivals at the Los Angeles gala including Steven Spielberg. Campion is the third woman to ever win the top Directors Guild of America prize, after Kathryn Bigelow for 2008’s “The Hurt Locker,” and Chloe Zhao last year for “Nomadland.” The New Zealand auteur said it was increasingly common to hear about glass ceilings being shattered during Hollywood’s award season, and that “perhaps it’s time to claim a sense of victory on that front.” “We’ve come so far and what’s more, we’re never going backwards,” she said, before capping the night by taking the top prize, presented by last year’s winner Zhao. “I’m so proud of you… I’m here because I care about women having voices as well,” said Campion. Campion, who was first nominated in 1994 for “The Piano,” earlier in the night reflected …

Many athletes are already looking forward to the 2026 Winter Olympics to be held in Italy. Asian American athletes are sure to be well represented there, thanks in part to a new athletic alliance designed to get Asian Americans into the Games. VOA’s Jessica Stone reports. Camera: Jessica Stone Produced by: Jessica Stone  Video editor: Keith Lane …

High in the U.S. Rocky Mountains, skiers race through an obstacle course pulled by riders on horseback in a decades-long tradition that is part skiing and part rodeo. VOA correspondent Scott Stearns has our story from Leadville, Colorado. …

Actor Jussie Smollett, onetime star of the TV drama Empire, was sentenced in a Chicago court to 30 months’ probation and 150 days in jail on Thursday for staging a hate crime against himself.  Smollett, 39, was also ordered to pay $120,000 in restitution and fined $25,000 by Cook County Circuit Court Judge James Linn.  Smollett was found guilty by a jury in December of five of the six felony disorderly conduct counts he faced, one for each time he was accused of lying to police.  Prosecutors said Smollett, who is Black and gay, lied to police when he told them he was accosted on a dark Chicago street by two masked strangers in January 2019.  Smollett claimed the attackers threw a noose around his neck and poured chemicals on him while yelling racist and homophobic slurs and expressions of support for former U.S. President Donald Trump.  Police arrested the actor a month later, saying he paid two brothers $3,500 to stage the attack in an effort to raise his show business profile. He eventually pleaded not guilty to six counts of felony disorderly conduct.  His case took an unexpected turn in spring 2019 when the Cook County state’s attorney’s …

Major League Baseball canceled more games on Wednesday and pushed back Opening Day until April 14 after talks on a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with players stalled again. MLB locked out its players in December after failing to reach terms on a CBA and had canceled the first week of the regular season. “Regrettably, after our second late-night bargaining session in a week, we remain without a deal,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “Because of the logistical realities of the calendar, another two series are being removed from the schedule, meaning that Opening Day is postponed until April 14. “We worked hard to reach an agreement and offered a fair deal with significant improvements for the players and our fans,” Manfred added. “I am saddened by this situation’s continued impact on our game and all those who are a part of it, especially our loyal fans.” MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), which represents the players, remain far apart on issues like luxury tax, minimum salaries and an international draft, according to media reports. The 2022 season was scheduled to begin on March 31, and this year marks the first missed MLB games …

U.S. golfing great Tiger Woods will be formally inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame Wednesday night at a ceremony in Florida. Woods’ 14-year-old daughter Sam, who was born the day after he finished second at the 2007 U.S. Open, will formally introduce him at the new headquarters of the PGA Tour in Ponte Verde Beach. The 46-year-old Woods dominated his sport from the moment he turned professional in 1996, becoming the first Black golfer to win a major event when he won The Masters the following year. He has since won 15 major titles, putting him second only to fellow American great Jack Nicklaus, and is tied with another golfing legend, Sam Snead, for the most PGA Tour victories with 82. His career has been interrupted by numerous back and leg injuries which have required several surgeries. The worst of his injuries occurred last year when he suffered serious fractures to his lower right leg and damage to his ankle and foot when the vehicle he was driving sped off a road outside of Los Angeles. Woods announced last February that he will “never” play full time on the PGA Tour again due to his injuries, but he …

Three sisters from Irbil have won gold and silver medals in weightlifting events in the regional 2021 Arab Weightlifting Championship. While preparing for future weightlifting competitions, the three Kurdish women are inspiring young girls to step into a male dominated field. VOA’s Ahmad Zebari reports from Irbil, narrated by Namo Abdulla. Camera: Ahmed Zebari  Produced by: Ahmed Zebari  …

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. …