ACULCO, Mexico — The corral gate swings open and an energetic calf charges in, only to be wrestled struggling to the ground and immobilized by having its legs tied. The men go to work vaccinating the calf and marking its number with a burning iron on its back. It happened in one of the sessions of a workshop that José Arturo Jiménez gave this past week at his ranch in Aculco, a town in the State of Mexico near Mexico City, attended by about 40 university students and others. The event was part of an initiative by the Mexican Association of Bullfighting to attract new followers for the centuries-old tradition of bullfighting by educating young people about the different activities that surround the breeding of fighting bulls. The association is trying to counter the growing global movement driven by animal defenders who seek to abolish bullfighting, which they consider torture of bulls. Although bullfighting is still allowed in much of Mexico, it is suspended in some states, such as Sinaloa, Guerrero, Coahuila and Quintana Roo. There is also a legal fight in Mexico City that threatens the future of the capital’s Plaza Mexico, the largest bullfighting arena in the world. Jimenez …

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA — Aryna Sabalenka continued to be an irrepressible force at the Australian Open as she powered to a 6-3, 6-2 victory over Chinese 12th seed Zheng Qinwen on Saturday to successfully defend her title and add a second Grand Slam trophy to her cabinet.  The Belarusian second seed has barely put a foot wrong as she became the first woman to retain the Melbourne Park crown since compatriot Victoria Azarenka in 2013.  “It’s been an amazing couple of weeks, and I couldn’t imagine myself lifting this trophy one more time,” Sabalenka said.  “I want to congratulate you, Qinwen, on an incredible couple of weeks here in Australia. I know it’s really tough to lose in the final, but you’re such an incredible player,” she said. “You’re such a young girl, and you’re going to make many more finals and you’re going to get it.”  Sabalenka came into the match without dropping a set at the year’s first major. She remained perfect to join Ash Barty, Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova and Lindsay Davenport in the elite club of players to have managed the feat since 2000.  She unleashed monster groundstrokes to grab the final by the scruff of the neck …

NEW YORK — Pornographic deepfake images of Taylor Swift are circulating online, making the singer the most famous victim of a scourge that tech platforms and anti-abuse groups have struggled to fix. Sexually explicit and abusive fake images of Swift began circulating widely this week on the social media platform X. Her ardent fanbase of “Swifties” quickly mobilized, launching a counteroffensive on the platform formerly known as Twitter and a #ProtectTaylorSwift hashtag to flood it with more positive images of the pop star. Some said they were reporting accounts that were sharing the deepfakes. The deepfake-detecting group Reality Defender said it tracked a deluge of nonconsensual pornographic material depicting Swift, particularly on X. Some images also made their way to Meta-owned Facebook and other social media platforms. “Unfortunately, they spread to millions and millions of users by the time that some of them were taken down,” said Mason Allen, Reality Defender’s head of growth. The researchers found at least a couple dozen unique AI-generated images. The most widely shared were football-related, showing a painted or bloodied Swift that objectified her and in some cases inflicted violent harm on her deepfake persona. Researchers have said the number of explicit deepfakes has grown …

Washington, DC has turned the National Building Museum into a wonderland of children’s literature. Using children’s books, it’s an immersive journey into architecture, engineering and design. Maxim Adams has the story. Camera and edit: Andrey Degtyarev, Andrey Degtyarev, Anna Rice …

MELBOURNE, Australia — Jannik Sinner has upset Novak Djokovic to reach the Australian Open men’s final, ending the 10-time champion’s career unbeaten streak in semifinals at Melbourne Park. The 22-year-old Italian broke Djokovic’s serve twice in each of the first two sets but missed a match point in the third set of a 6-1, 6-2, 6-7 (6), 6-3 victory Friday that earned him a place in a Grand Slam final for the first time. On his second match point, 55 minutes later, he made no mistake and completed his third victory in four matches against Djokovic since losing to the world No. 1 in last year’s Wimbledon semifinals. “It’s always nice to have this kind of player who you can learn from,” Sinner said in his on-court TV interview. “I lost last year in the semifinals in Wimbledon, and I learned a lot from that. The confidence from the end of last year has for sure kept the belief that I can play the best players in the world.” The youngest player to reach the men’s final in Australia since Djokovic’s first title in 2008, Sinner will play either third-seeded Daniil Medvedev or No. 6 Alexander Zverev for the championship on …

LONDON — An American scientist has sparked a trans-Atlantic tempest in a teapot by offering Britain advice on its favorite hot beverage. Bryn Mawr College chemistry professor Michelle Francl says one of the keys to a perfect cup of tea is a pinch of salt. The tip is included in Francl’s book Steeped: The Chemistry of Tea, published Wednesday by the Royal Society of Chemistry. Not since the Boston Tea Party has mixing tea with salt water roiled the Anglo-American relationship so much. The salt suggestion drew howls of outrage from tea lovers in Britain, where popular stereotype sees Americans as coffee-swilling boors who make tea, if at all, in the microwave. “Don’t even say the word ‘salt’ to us,” the etiquette guide Debrett’s wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. The U.S. Embassy in London intervened in the brewing storm with a social media post reassuring “the good people of the U.K. that the unthinkable notion of adding salt to Britain’s national drink is not official United States policy.” “Let us unite in our steeped solidarity and show the world that when it comes to tea, we stand as one,” said the tongue-in-cheek post. “The U.S. Embassy will continue to …

San Francisco — Netflix added 13 million subscribers in the final three months of last year, the company said on Tuesday, despite price hikes at the leading streaming service. Netflix finished 2023 with slightly more than 260 million subscribers worldwide, with a profit of $938 million in the final quarter versus just $55 million in the same period a year earlier. “We believe there is plenty of room for growth ahead as streaming expands,” the U.S. company said in an earnings letter. Netflix shares were up more than 8% to $532.75 in after-market trades that followed the release of the earnings figures. “Netflix sticks out as the clear front-runner in the streaming wars,” said Insider Intelligence principal analyst Ross Benes. The streaming pioneer said that despite last year’s strikes by Hollywood actors and writers, the company has a “big, bold” slate of content for release this year. The company touted coming content including a sequel to the hit Squid Game series out of South Korea and a brand new “3 Body Problem” show based on a bestselling novel by the same name. “Choice and control are the price of entry in modern entertainment, and that is streaming,” Netflix said in the …

Park City, Utah — An audience member was ejected from a Sundance festival event Tuesday in a spat over artificial intelligence, triggering a walkout that illustrates the divisions the technology has rapidly wrought in the film industry. AI — a key driver of the recent and devastating Hollywood strikes — has been debated extensively at this year’s indie movie festival in Utah. Filmmakers have experimented with using the technology as a creative tool, while also cautioning about its potential to erase jobs and stifle human expression and connection. At a Tuesday screening of “Being (The Digital Griot),” in which audience members were encouraged to approach the screen and discuss issues like racism and the patriarchy with an AI bot, an audience member appeared to shout profanity about AI. “I’m not here to be cursed out and I’m not going to have my AI child be cursed out either,” responded the film’s creator, artist Rashaad Newsome, refusing to participate in a post-screening Q&A until action was taken. Festival staff forced the woman who had apparently yelled to leave the auditorium, prompting jeers. Roughly a quarter of the auditorium walked out in solidarity, with some complaining that debate was being shut down and …

Nairobi, Kenya — Being the preferred choice of footwear for many, flip-flops – typically made of plastic or rubber – break easily and often aren’t disposed of properly. Therefore, millions of them end up in oceans, waterways, dumpsites, and landfills all over the world.  Ocean Sole, a Kenya-based company, has found creative and functional ways to reuse the hundreds of thousands of discarded flip-flops that arrive regularly at their warehouse located in Karen, about 45 minutes from Nairobi’s city center. Joe Mwakiremba has been working for the company for about 10 years. He says the company was “founded on the premise of cleaning our ocean and waterways [while] at the same time employing lots of artists from high-impact communities in Kenya.”  He told VOA that flip-flops are generally collected from weekly beach cleanups and other places.   At Ocean Sole, they usually weigh the material and pay collectors about 18 cents per kilogram. Then, to prepare them for carving, they are first hand-washed, one flip-flop at a time. “The next stage for our smaller and medium-size sculptures, we have a die cut machine that would punch out a template of a giraffe, a lion or a rhino. Those templates are joined together …

NEW YORK — Charles Osgood, a five-time Emmy Award-winning journalist who anchored “CBS Sunday Morning” for more than two decades, hosted the long-running radio program “The Osgood File” and was referred to as CBS News’ poet-in-residence, has died. He was 91.  CBS reported that Osgood died Tuesday at his home in Saddle River, New Jersey, and that the cause was dementia, according to his family.  Osgood was an erudite, warm broadcaster with a flair for music who could write essays and light verse as well as report hard news. He worked in radio and television with equal facility and signed off by telling listeners: “I’ll see you on the radio.”  “To say there’s no one like Charles Osgood is an understatement,” Rand Morrison, executive producer of “Sunday Morning,” said in a statement. “He embodied the heart and soul of ‘Sunday Morning.’ … At the piano, Charlie put our lives to music. Truly, he was one of a kind — in every sense.”  “CBS News Sunday Morning” will honor Osgood with a special broadcast on Sunday.  Osgood took over “Sunday Morning” after the beloved Charles Kuralt retired in 1994. Osgood seemingly had an impossible act to follow, but with his folksy erudition …

NEW YORK — After a tumultuous movie year marred by strikes and work stoppages, the Academy Awards showered nominations Tuesday on Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster biopic, “Oppenheimer,” which came away with a leading 13 nominations. Nolan’s three-hour opus, viewed as the best picture frontrunner, received nods for best picture; Nolan’s direction; acting nominations for Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr. and Emily Blunt; and multiple honors for the craft of the J. Robert Oppenheimer drama. But the year’s biggest hit, “Barbie,” came away with a nominations haul notably less than its partner in Barbenheimer mania. Greta Gerwig’s feminist comedy, with more than $1.4 billion in ticket sales, was nominated for eight awards, including best picture; Ryan Gosling for best supporting actor; and two best-song candidates in “What Was I Made For” and “I’m Just Ken.” But Gerwig was surprisingly left out of the best director field. Gerwig was nominated for best director in 2018 for her solo directorial debut, “Lady Bird.” At the time, she was just the fifth woman nominated for the award. Since then, Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”) and Jane Campion (“The Power of the Dog”) have won best director. Before those wins, Kathryn Bigelow (“The Hurt Locker,” in 2010) was the …

Being the preferred choice of footwear for many, flip-flops — typically made of plastic or rubber — break easily and don’t get disposed of properly. Millions of them, therefore, end up in oceans, waterways, dumpsites and landfills all over the world. A Kenya-based company has found creative and functional ways to reuse them. VOA Nairobi Bureau Chief Mariama Diallo visited their warehouse located in Karen, about 45 minutes from the city center, and has this report. Camera: Amos Wangua …

NEW YORK — Norman Jewison, the acclaimed and versatile Canadian-born director whose Hollywood films ranged from Doris Day comedies and “Moonstruck” to social dramas such as the Oscar-winning “In the Heat of the Night,” has died at age 97.  Jewison, a three-time Oscar nominee who in 1999 received an Academy Award for lifetime achievement, died “peacefully” Saturday, according to publicist Jeff Sanderson. Additional details were not immediately available.  Throughout his long career, Jewison combined light entertainment with topical films that appealed to him on a deeply personal level. As Jewison was ending his military service in the Canadian navy during World War II, he hitchhiked through the American South and had a close-up view of Jim Crow segregation. In his autobiography “This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me,” he noted that racism and injustice became his most common themes.  “Every time a film deals with racism, many Americans feel uncomfortable,” he wrote. “Yet it has to be confronted. We have to deal with prejudice and injustice or we will never understand what is good and evil, right and wrong; we need to feel how ‘the other’ feels.”  He drew upon his experiences for 1967’s “In the Heat of the Night,” …

New York — On a quiet weekend in movie theaters, “Mean Girls” repeated atop the box office with $11.7 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday, while a handful of awards contenders sought to make an impact ahead of Oscar nominations Tuesday. With a dearth of new releases in cinemas, Paramount Pictures’ Tina Fey-scripted musical “Mean Girls” pushed its two-week total past $50 million, along with $16.2 million internationally. So far, it’s outpacing the tally for the 2004 original “Mean Girls.” Only one new film debuted in wide release: “I.S.S.,” a modestly budgeted sci-fi thriller starring Ariana DeBose. The film, which speculates what would happen aboard the International Space Station if war broke out between the U.S. and Russia, debuted with $3 million on 2,518 screens for Bleecker Street. Expectations weren’t high for “I.S.S.,” which drew only so-so reviews and was lightly marketed. Audiences also didn’t like it, giving the film a “C-” CinemaScore. But even for January, historically a low ebb for moviegoing, it was a sparsely attended weekend, with paltry options on the big screen. The top 10 films collectively accounted for just $51.3 million in box office, according to Comscore. With a similarly thin release schedule …

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SEOUL, South Korea — Video footage released by an organization that works with North Korean defectors shows North Korean authorities publicly sentencing two teenagers to 12 years’ hard labor for watching K-pop. The footage, which shows the two 16-year-olds in Pyongyang convicted of watching South Korean movies and music videos, was released by the South and North Development (SAND) Institute. Reuters was unable to independently verify the footage, which was first reported by the BBC. North Korea has for years imposed tough sentences on anyone caught enjoying South Korean entertainment or copying the way South Koreans speak in a war on outside influences since a sweeping new “anti-reactionary thought” law was imposed in 2020. “Judging from the heavy punishment, it seems that this is to be shown to people across North Korea to warn them. If so, it appears this lifestyle of South Korean culture is prevalent in North Korean society,” said Choi Kyong-hui, president of SAND and Doctor of Political Science at Tokyo University, who defected from North Korea in 2001. “I think this video was edited around 2022. … What is troublesome for (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Un is that Millennials and Gen Z young people have changed …

NEW YORK — New York prosecutors on Friday returned two pieces of art they say were stolen by Nazis from a Jewish performer and collector murdered in the Holocaust. The artworks were surrendered by museums in Pittsburgh and Ohio, but prosecutors are still fighting in court to recover third artwork by the same artist, Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele, that was seized from a Chicago museum at the same time. On Friday in Manhattan, the estate of Holocaust victim Fritz Grünbaum accepted Portrait of a Man, which was surrendered by the Carnegie Museum of Art and Girl with Black Hair, surrendered by the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College. Prosecutors have collectively valued the two pieces at around $2.5 million. Ten of Schiele’s works have now been returned to the family, but Russian War Prisoner remains at the Art Institute of Chicago, which maintains that it was legally acquired. Grünbaum was the son of a Jewish art dealer and law school student who began performing in cabarets in Vienna in 1906. As the Nazis rose to power, he mocked them, once saying on a darkened stage, “I can’t see a thing, not a single thing; I must have stumbled into National …

VALLEJO, Calif. — The ordeal of Denise Huskins, whose kidnapping from her boyfriend’s Northern California home was first dismissed as a hoax by law enforcement, is getting renewed attention as the subject of a new Netflix docuseries, American Nightmare. Here’s a look at the facts of the case, which captivated the country: The kidnapping On March 23, 2015, Huskins was kidnapped by a masked intruder who broke into the home in Vallejo, a city in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, told detectives he woke up to a bright light on his face and that intruders had drugged, blindfolded and tied both of them up before forcefully taking Huskins in the middle of the night. Quinn also said the kidnappers were demanding an $8,500 ransom. A Vallejo police detective interrogated Quinn for hours, at times suggesting he may have been involved in Huskins’ disappearance. Quinn took a polygraph test which an FBI agent told him he failed, the couple said later in a book about their ordeal. Huskins, who was 29 at the time, turned up unharmed two days later outside her father’s apartment in Huntington Beach, a city in Southern California, where she said she was dropped …

AYODHYA, India — The private jet parking lots at airports near the Indian city of Ayodhya are full and the shops have run out of gold-plated idols, as wealthy devotees prepare for the invitation-only opening ceremony of one of Hinduism’s holiest temples. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, are among the 8,000 or so attendees at Monday’s inauguration event for the Ram Temple, which devotees believe is built on the birthplace of Lord Ram, a sacred Hindu deity. The temple is built on land where the Babri mosque stood until it was demolished in 1992, leading to some of the worst Hindu-Muslim rioting in the country, killing nearly 3,000 people. The construction of the temple began after the Supreme Court awarded the site to Hindus in 2019. Its completion fulfills a key campaign promise of Modi and his Hindu nationalist party. The opening ceremony, organized by the trust that built the temple, comes months before a national election that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is widely expected to win, and the who’s who of India is expected to be there. “It’s become like a status symbol to be invited to this event,” said Rajan Mehra, CEO …

SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO — A grand jury indicted Alec Baldwin on Friday on an involuntary manslaughter charge in a 2021 fatal shooting during a rehearsal on a movie set in New Mexico, reviving a dormant case against the actor.  Special prosecutors brought the case before a grand jury in the city of Santa Fe in New Mexico this week, months after receiving a new analysis of the gun that was used. They declined to answer questions after spending about a day and a half presenting their case to the grand jury.  Defense attorneys for Baldwin indicated they’ll fight the charge.  “We look forward to our day in court,” said Luke Nikas and Alex Spiro, defense attorneys for Baldwin, in an email.  While the proceeding is shrouded in secrecy, two of the witnesses seen at the courthouse included crew members — one who was present when the fatal shot was fired and another who had walked off the set the day before due to safety concerns.  Baldwin, the lead actor and a co-producer on the Western movie “Rust,” was pointing a gun at cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during a rehearsal on a movie set outside Santa Fe in October 2021 when the …

Paris — The oldest person ever to win an Oscar, renowned director James Ivory, is still making films at 95, with a documentary about his formative trip to Afghanistan in 1960. Though American, Ivory is best-known for a string of costume dramas about the repressed emotions of Brits, including Remains of the Day and Howard’s End, both starring Anthony Hopkins, and Room with a View with Daniel Day-Lewis. In 2017, he reached a new generation with his screenplay for Call Me By Your Name starring Timothee Chalamet as a teenager discovering his sexuality, which won Ivory an Oscar at the age of 89. But his career began as a student making films about art in Venice and South Asia. “I was making a film in India, and it was getting hotter and hotter,” he told AFP. “I couldn’t take it another minute. The backers told me to go to a cooler climate, so I went to Afghanistan. I knew nothing about it, but I went.” Decades later, his footage from Kabul has been worked into a documentary that shows a peaceful Afghanistan, before the wars and extremism that would drag it into decades of violence. “(The footage) was amazing from the …

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The director and producer of a banned Malaysian film that explores the afterlife were charged Wednesday with offending the religious feelings of others in a rare criminal prosecution of filmmakers, slammed by critics as an attack on freedom of expression. Mohamad Khairianwar Jailani, the director and co-scriptwriter of Mentega Terbang, and producer Tan Meng Kheng pleaded not guilty to having a “deliberate intention of wounding the religious feelings of others” through the independent, low-budget film. If found guilty, they could face up to a year in jail, a fine or both. Defense lawyer N. Surendran said the two believe the charge is “unreasonable and unconstitutional” because it violates their right to freedom of expression. “As far as we are concerned, these are groundless charges and we will challenge those charges in court,” he said. The film, which debuted at a regional film festival in 2021, revolves around a young Muslim girl who explores other religions to figure out where her ailing mother would go when she dies. Scenes that angered Muslims included ones showing the girl desiring to eat pork, which is forbidden in Islam, and pretending to drink holy water, and her father supporting her wish …

In the Western United States, professional bull riders risk serious injury on the back of bulls that can weigh more than 700 kilograms. But eight seconds on a bucking beast can mean thousands of dollars. VOA’s Scott Stearns takes us to the show. …

LOS ANGELES — List of the top winners of the prime-time Emmy Awards. BEST DRAMA SERIES: “Succession” BEST COMEDY SERIES: “The Bear” BEST LIMITED OR ANTHOLOGY SERIES: “Beef” ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES: Kieran Culkin, “Succession” ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES: Jeremy Allen White, “The Bear” ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES: Sarah Snook, “Succession” SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES: Ayo Edebiri, “The Bear” ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES: Quinta Brunson, “Abbott Elementary” SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES: Jennifer Coolidge, “The White Lotus” SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES: Matthew Macfadyen, “Succession” SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES: Ebon Moss-Bachrach, “The Bear” SCRIPTED VARIETY SERIES: “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A LIMITED OR ANTHOLOGY SERIES OR MOVIE: Niecy Nash-Betts, “Dahmer, Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” REALITY COMPETITION SERIES: “RuPaul’s Drag Race” TALK SERIES: “The Daily Show With Trevor Noah” SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A LIMITED OR ANTHOLOGY SERIES OR MOVIE: Paul Walter Hauser, “Black Bird” LIVE VARIETY SPECIAL: “Elton John Live: Farewell From Dodger Stadium” ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES OR TV MOVIE: Steven Yeun, “Beef” ACTRESS IN A LIMITED SERIES OR TV MOVIE: Ali Wong, “Beef” …