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The Blumhouse evil-doll horror film “M3gan” got off to a killer start, debuting with $30.2 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates, while “Avatar: The Way of Water” continued its box-office reign in the top spot.  Universal Pictures’ “M3gan,” about a robot companion built for a young girl after her parents are killed in a car accident, rode strong buzz and viral dancing memes to an above-expectations debut. In the low-budget slasher, starring Allison Williams, Blumhouse and producer James Wan crafted Hollywood’s first hit of the new year, likely spawning a new high-concept horror franchise.  Audiences gave the PG-13 film a “B” CinemaScore — though reviews (94% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) were stronger for the modern, techy twist on a “Child’s Play”-like thriller. It added $10 million internationally.  But while “M3gan” drew audiences largely in 2D showings, large-format screens continued to be soaked up by James Cameron’s “Avatar: The Way of Water.” The 3-D three-hour sequel remained No. 1 for the fourth straight week in U.S. and Canadian theaters with $45 million in sales.  Cameron’s sci-fi spectacle has now surpassed $500 million domestically and $1.7 billion globally. After dominating the otherwise lackluster holiday corridor, the “Avatar” sequel is nearly …

Nature photographers from around the world expressed their sentiments about an ever-changing planet in a contest sponsored by The Nature Conservancy, a U.S.-based environmental nonprofit. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more on the winning images. …

It was uplifting enough for the Buffalo Bills staff and players to see Damar Hamlin appear on the video screen in the team’s meeting room Friday — “larger than life,” as coach Sean McDermott put it — for the first time since the safety collapsed and had to be resuscitated on the field. What sent everyone’s emotions over the top was hearing Hamlin, his mouth and throat still raw shortly after having a breathing tube removed, softly say: ” Love you, boys.” “Amazing. Touching. To see Damar, No. 1, through my own eyes, I know it’s something I’ve been looking forward to, kind of needing to see,” McDermott said. “And to see the players’ reaction. They stood up right away and clapped for him and yelled some things at him. It was a pretty cool exchange.” Four days since his heart stopped after making what appeared to be a routine tackle in a game, the 24-year-old Hamlin from his hospital room in Cincinnati and the Bills enjoyed a moment of jubilation in celebrating the next step in what his doctors have termed a remarkable recovery. “We got our boy, man. It’s all that matters,” left tackle Dion Dawkins said. “To …

Jordynn Cromartie entered her senior year of high school facing a daunting choice, one countless other Black gymnasts have faced for decades. The teenager from Houston wanted to attend a historically Black college or university. And she wanted to compete in the sport she’s dedicated most of her life to. One problem. She knew she couldn’t do both, something Cromartie brought up over Thanksgiving dinner while talking to her uncle, Frank Simmons, a member of the Board of Trustees at Fisk University, a private HBCU of around 1,000 students in Nashville, Tennessee. “He and my aunt were like, ‘Oh you haven’t made a decision, you should come to Fisk,’” Cromartie said. “I’m like, ‘Well, they don’t have a gymnastics team.’ To go to a college that doesn’t have what I would be working for forever was crazy to me.” Simmons, stunned, made a promise to his niece. “Watch,” he told her. “I’ll make it happen.” In the span of a few weeks, Simmons connected Derrin Moore — the founder of Atlanta-based Brown Girls Do Gymnastics, an organization that’d been trying to drum up support for an HBCU for years — with Fisk’s trustees. One trustee listened to Moore’s pitch and …

Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin has shown what physicians treating him are calling “remarkable improvement over the past 24 hours,” the team announced Thursday, three days after the player went into cardiac arrest and had to be resuscitated on the field.  “While still critically ill, he has demonstrated that he appears to be neurologically intact,” the Bills said in a statement. “His lungs continue to heal and he is making steady progress.”  Bills rookie cornerback Kaiir Elam also posted a message on his Twitter account that said Hamlin “is doing better, awake and showing signs of improvement.”  The developments came as the Bills were scheduled to return to practice on Thursday for the first time since Hamlin collapsed after his heart stopped after making a tackle and was rushed to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center during the first quarter of Buffalo’s game against the Bengals on Monday night. The second-year player has spent the past two days sedated and listed in critical condition. The Bills’ announcement comes as they prepare to play a home game against the New England Patriots on Sunday, and with the team still dealing with the shock of seeing their teammate collapse on the field, …

Iran released a prominent actress from an Oscar-winning film on Wednesday, nearly three weeks after she was jailed for criticizing a crackdown on anti-government protests, local reports said. Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency said Taraneh Alidoosti, the 38-year-old star of Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning “The Salesman,” was released on bail. Her mother, Nadere Hakimelahi, had earlier said she would be released in a post on Instagram. After her release from the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran on Wednesday, Alidoosti posed with flowers among her friends. No further details have been released about her case. Alidoosti was among several Iranian celebrities to express support for the nationwide protests and criticize the authorities’ violent clampdown on dissent. She had posted at least three messages in support of the protests on Instagram before her account was disabled. One message had expressed solidarity with the first man to be executed on charges linked to the protests, which were triggered by the death of a woman in police custody and have escalated into widespread calls for the overthrow of Iran’s ruling clerics. The protests mark one of the biggest challenges to the Islamic Republic since it was established after the 1979 revolution. Security forces have used …

CES 2023 opens this week in Las Vegas. After an unusually low turnout last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and supply chain issues, organizers say the consumer electronics show is back in full swing. VOA’s Julie Taboh shows us some of what to expect. …

The suspected mastermind behind the removal of a Banksy mural in a Ukrainian town could face up to 12 years in prison if found guilty, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said Monday. The artwork, depicting a woman in a gas mask and a dressing gown holding a fire extinguisher, was taken off a wall in the town of Hostomel on December 2, according to officials. The ministry announced on its website that the man it believes orchestrated the operation had been handed a “suspicion notice.” The artwork by the renowned British artist had been valued at $243,900, the ministry statement said. “The criminals tried to transport this graffiti with the help of wooden boards and polyethylene,” it said. “Thanks to the concern of citizens, the police and other security forces managed to arrest the criminals.” The mural was retrieved. Banksy confirmed he had painted the mural and six others in places that were hit by heavy fighting after Russia invaded Ukraine in late February.    …

The Brazilian coastal city of Santos, which sporting giant Pele turned into a byword for soccer brilliance during a glittering club career, started bidding goodbye to its hero on Monday with a 24-hour wake. Mourners lined up to see Pele’s body in an open casket in the center of the field at the Vila Belmiro stadium, home of the Santos Football Club. Pele died on Thursday at 82 after battling colon cancer. “Pele leaves millions of Santos fans across our country. He was the creator of Brazilian soccer,” said Antonio da Paz, a fan outside the stadium for the memorial that began at 10 a.m. (1300 GMT).  FIFA President Gianni Infantino was among the first to arrive for the service and said he would ask every country to name a stadium after Pele, the only man to win the World Cup three times as a player. “Pele is eternal,” Infantino told reporters. “FIFA will certainly honor the ‘king’ as he deserves. We have asked all football associations in the world to pay a minute of silence before every game and will also ask them, 211 countries, to name a stadium after Pele. Future generations must know and remember who Pele …

An ancient wooden sarcophagus that was featured at the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences was returned to Egypt after U.S. authorities determined it was looted years ago, Egyptian officials said Monday. The repatriation is part of Egyptian government efforts to stop the trafficking of its stolen antiquities. In 2021, authorities in Cairo succeeded in getting 5,300 stolen artifacts returned to Egypt from across the world. Mostafa Waziri, the top official at the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the sarcophagus dates back to the Late Dynastic Period of ancient Egypt, an era that spanned the last of the Pharaonic rulers from 664 B.C. until Alexander the Great’s campaign in 332 B.C. The sarcophagus, almost 3 meters (9.5 feet) tall with a brightly painted top surface, may have belonged to an ancient priest named Ankhenmaat, though some of the inscription on it has been erased, Waziri said. It was symbolically handed over at a ceremony Monday in Cairo by Daniel Rubinstein, the U.S. charge d’affaires in Egypt. The handover came more than three months after the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office determined the sarcophagus was looted from Abu Sir Necropolis, north of Cairo. It was smuggled through Germany into the United States in …

Anita Pointer, one of four sibling singers who earned pop success and critical acclaim as The Pointer Sisters, died Saturday at the age of 74, her publicist announced. The Grammy winner died while she was with family members, publicist Roger Neal said in a statement. A cause of death was not immediately revealed. “While we are deeply saddened by the loss of Anita, we are comforted in knowing she is now with her daughter Jada and her sisters June & Bonnie and at peace. She was the one that kept all of us close and together for so long,” her sister Ruth, brothers Aaron and Fritz and granddaughter Roxie McKain Pointer said in the statement. Anita Pointer’s only daughter, Jada Pointer, died in 2003. Anita, Ruth, Bonnie and June Pointer, born the daughters of a minister, grew up singing in their father’s church in Oakland, California. The group’s 1973 self-titled debut album included the breakout hit, “Yes We Can Can.” Known for hit songs including “I’m So Excited,” “Slow Hand,” “Neutron Dance” and “Jump (For My Love),” the singers gained a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1994. The 1983 album “Break Out” went triple platinum and garnered …

Avatar: The Way of Water” is the box office king for a third straight week and shows no sign of slowing down. James Cameron’s long-awaited sequel to the first “Avatar” film brought in an estimated $63 million over the holiday weekend, roughly the same as the previous week, and now has made more than $400 million domestically and more than $1.3 billion globally. “The Way of Water” is already the 15th highest global release ever, just behind the first “Black Panther.” Numbers released Sunday by Comscore showed “Avatar” far ahead of the runner-up, Universal’s “Shrek” spinoff “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” which made an estimated $16 million, and Disney’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” which brought in around $4.8 million. The Sony biopic “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” made $4.2 million in its second week of release. “Babylon,” the epic of early Hollywood starring Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie, continued to fare badly despite its five Golden Globe nominations. The Paramount release earned just $2.7 million in its second week, a 24% drop, and averaged just $815 per location. By comparison, the new “Avatar,” a 20th Century Studios film, averaged more than $15,000. Estimated ticket sales for Friday …

The world welcomed the new year with a packed party in Times Square and fireworks soaring above European capitals, while hoping for an end to the war in Ukraine and a return to post-COVID normality in Asia. It was a year marked by the conflict in Ukraine, economic stresses and the effects of global warming. But it was also a year that saw a dramatic soccer World Cup, rapid technological change, and efforts to meet climate challenges. After 2023 descended upon Asia, Africa and Europe, New York rang in the new year in typical style as thousands corralled themselves into pens under pouring rain in Times Square, waiting hours for the ball to drop. A 12-foot (3.7-meter) geodesic sphere made of Waterford crystal triangles slid down a pole atop a 25-story building to mark the calendar change. Meanwhile, millions watched the accompanying musical acts and countdown on television from dry and warm living rooms around the world. Tommy Onolfo, 40, a mechanic from nearby Nassau County, said he wore a diaper during his drenched, 14-hour wait in Times Square, as security measures require spectators to deprive themselves of all comforts to maintain a front-row view. “I’m a lifeguard in the …

Sherlock Holmes is finally free to the American public in 2023. The long-running contested copyright dispute over Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales of a whip-smart detective will finally come to an end as the 1927 copyrights expiring January 1 include Conan Doyle’s last Sherlock Holmes work. Alongside the short-story collection The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, books such as Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, Ernest Hemingway’s Men Without Women, William Faulkner’s Mosquitoes and Agatha Christie’s The Big Four — an Hercule Poirot mystery — will become public domain as the calendar turns to 2023. Once a work enters the public domain it can legally be shared, performed, reused, repurposed or sampled without permission or cost. The works from 1927 were originally supposed to be copyrighted for 75 years, but the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act delayed opening them up for an additional 20 years. While many prominent works on the list used those extra two decades to earn their copyright holders good money, a Duke University expert says the copyright protections also applied to “all of the works whose commercial viability had long subsided.” “For the vast majority — probably 99% — of works from 1927, no copyright holder financially benefited …

Photo collage above: Top row, from left, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, singer Ronnie Spector, actor Sidney Poitier, Queen Elizabeth, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev. Bottom row, from left, actress Angela Lansbury, singer Jerry Lee Lewis, Pakistani doctor who championed women’s health and rights Nafis Sadik, Soviet cosmonaut Valery Polyakov, Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, revered Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh and NBA star Bill Russell. …

Cristiano Ronaldo completed a lucrative move to Saudi Arabian club Al Nassr on Friday in a deal that is a landmark moment for Middle Eastern soccer but will see one of Europe’s biggest stars disappear from the sport’s elite stage. Al Nassr posted a picture on social media of the five-time Ballon d’Or holding up the team’s jersey after Ronaldo signed a deal until June 2025, with the club hailing the move as “history in the making.” “This is a signing that will not only inspire our club to achieve even greater success but inspire our league, our nation and future generations, boys and girls to be the best version of themselves,” the club wrote. It also gives the 37-year-old Ronaldo a massive payday in what could be the final contract of his career. Media reports have claimed the Portugal star could be earning up to $200 million a year from the deal, which would make him the highest-paid soccer player in history. Ronaldo said in a statement that he was “eager to experience a new football league in a different country.” “I am fortunate that I have won everything I set out to win in European football and feel …

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, the first pope in 600 years to resign, has died. Below are highlights from his life. April 16, 1927: Born Joseph Alois Ratzinger in Marktl am Inn, Germany, youngest of three children to Joseph and Maria Ratzinger. 1943-45: Assistant in Germany’s anti-aircraft defense and infantry soldier; imprisoned in 1945 in American POW camp in Neu-Ulm. June 29, 1951: Ordained along with brother Georg Ratzinger in Freising. 1969-77: Professor at University of Regensburg. March 25, 1977: Named archbishop of Munich and Freising. June 27, 1977: Made a cardinal by Pope Paul VI. Nov. 25, 1981: Named prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith by Pope John Paul II; takes up post in March 1982. April 2, 2005: Pope John Paul II dies. April 8, 2005: As dean of the College of Cardinals, Ratzinger presides over John Paul’s funeral. April 19, 2005: Elected 265th pope in one of the fastest conclaves in history. Choosing name Benedict XVI, he says he is merely a “simple, humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord.” April 24, 2005: Installed as pope with Mass. Aug. 18-21, 2005: First foreign trip, to World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany. Sept. 24, …

The rudeness pandemic, the actual pandemic, and all things gray. There’s a lot to leave behind when 2022 ends and uncertainty rules around the world. The health crisis brought on the dawn of slow living, but it crushed many families forced to hustle for their living. Rudeness went on the rise. Crypto currencies tanked. Pete Davidson’s love thing with Kim Kardashian made headlines. A list of what we’re over as we hope for better times in 2023: Incivility be gone The pandemic released a tsunami of overwrought people, but heightened incivility has stretched well beyond their raucous ranks. Researcher Christine Porath restricted herself to rudeness, disrespect or insensitive behavior when she recently wrote about the subject in Harvard Business Review. The professor of management at Georgetown University found incidents of incivility way up, in line with a steady climb stretching back nearly 20 years. Particularly hammered this year, Porath wrote, were frontline workers in health care, retail, transportation, hospitality and education. All were declared heroes when the pandemic struck. It didn’t take long for that to become a beat down. Noting that incivility can and does escalate to physical aggression and other violence, Axios dubbed it the rudeness pandemic. Crypto …

Barbara Walters, one of the most visible women on U.S. television as the first female anchor on an evening news broadcast and one of TV’s most prominent interviewers, has died at age 93, her longtime ABC home network said on Friday. Walters, who created the popular ABC women’s talk show The View in 1997, died Friday at her home in New York, Robert Iger, chief executive of ABC’s corporate parent, the Walt Disney Co., said on Twitter. In a broadcast career spanning five decades, Walters interviewed an array of world leaders, including Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, Libyan ruler Moammar Gadhafi, Saddam Hussein of Iraq and every U.S. president and first lady since Richard and Pat Nixon. She earned 12 Emmy awards, 11 of those while at ABC News, the network said. Walters began her journalism career on NBC’s The Today Show in the 1960s as a writer and segment producer. She made broadcast history as the first woman co-anchor on a U.S. evening newscast, opposite Harry Reasoner. …

Web searches reveal what America really cared about this year   …

Brazil and the world said goodbye Thursday to a man who many consider the greatest football player of the last century. Pele died in São Paulo at the age of 82. Brazilians took to the streets to honor their greatest idol in the country’s most popular sport. For VOA, Edgar Maciel reports from Sao Paulo. …

As the person who dressed the Sex Pistols, Vivienne Westwood, who died Thursday at 81, was synonymous with 1970s punk rock, a rebelliousness that remained the hallmark of an unapologetically political designer who became one of British fashion’s biggest names. “Vivienne Westwood died today, peacefully and surrounded by her family, in Clapham, South London. The world needs people like Vivienne to make a change for the better,” her fashion house said on Twitter. Climate change, pollution and her support for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange were all fodder for protest T-shirts or banners carried by her models on the runway. She dressed up as then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for a magazine cover in 1989 and drove a white tank near the country home of a later British leader, David Cameron, to protest fracking. The rebel was inducted into Britain’s establishment in 1992 by Queen Elizabeth, who awarded her the Order of the British Empire medal. But, ever keen to shock, Westwood turned up at Buckingham Palace without underwear — a fact she proved to photographers by a revealing twirl of her skirt. “The only reason I am in fashion is to destroy the word ‘conformity,’” Westwood said in her 2014 biography. …

Brazilian football legend Pelé has died at the age of 82, after battling cancer and cardiac problems the past year. Over the course of his legendary career, the man who led his national team to an unprecedented three World Cup titles became known as one of the sport’s greatest players. VOA’s Robert Raffaele has more on the life of the international icon. …

Before Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo came along, the enduring debate in soccer about who was the greatest player centered on two men: Pele and Diego Maradona. It was an argument that played out for years on terraces and in bars, on radio and on television. Brazil’s Pele, a prolific goal scorer who died aged 82 on Thursday in Sao Paulo, won the World Cup an unprecedented three times as a player in 1958, 1962 and 1970 and put the small town of Santos on the map before conquering the United States with the New York Cosmos. Maradona, who died at the age of 60 in 2020, guided Argentina to the World Cup in 1986 with perhaps the most influential performance ever at a major tournament and lifted Napoli to unparalleled heights in Italy and Europe. The argument about whose legacy was greater so divided the football world that when Maradona was voted the player of the 20th century in a FIFA internet poll, there was widespread outrage, with many griping that Pele’s earlier career put him at a disadvantage with younger fans. FIFA held another poll voted on by its own “football family,” won by Pele, allowing the pair …