Category: Extraordinary

Read time : 4 mins

Level : Intermediate

By JESSICA GRESKO Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s silver tea set is going to a family with a 5-year-old daughter who once was Ginsburg for Halloween. A medal Ginsburg was awarded when inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame is going to a family that demonstrated recently for reproductive rights. And a drawing of her that hung in her office was a Utah-based scientist’s Mother’s Day gift to his wife.

All told, an online auction of 150 of items owned by the late justice raised $803,650 for Washington National Opera, one of the late justice’s passions. The auction ended in late April, and buyers are now picking up items or arranging to have them shipped to their homes in 38 states, the District of Columbia, Canada and Germany. Winning bids ranged from $850 to $55,000. Continue reading

Read time : 4 mins

Level : Intermediate

By MEG KINNARD Associated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Fifty years after his Apollo 16 mission to the moon, retired NASA astronaut Charlie Duke says he’s ready for the U.S. to get back to lunar exploration.

Part of that effort, Duke said Friday, will come in the form of the Artemis program, which includes NASA’s upcoming flight to the moon using its new Space Launch System rocket. The first of the huge rockets is supposed to blast off without crew later this year, with crewed flights planned subsequently.

“With Artemis, NASA is going to be focused on deep space, to the moon and beyond, and I’m excited about that,” Duke told The Associated Press in an interview in Columbia. Continue reading

Read time : 3 mins

Level : Intermediate

By JILL LAWLESS Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — Sci-fi epic “Dune” won five prizes and brooding Western “The Power of the Dog” was named best picture as the British Academy Film Awards returned Sunday with a live, black-tie ceremony after a pandemic-curtailed event in 2021.

New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion was named best director for “The Power of the Dog,” becoming only the third woman to win the prize in the awards’ seven-decade history.

Lead acting trophies went to Hollywood star Will Smith and British performer Joanna Scanlan, as an event that has worked to overcome a historic lack of diversity recognized a wide range of talents — including its first deaf acting winner in Troy Kotsur for “CODA.” Continue reading

Read time : 2 mins

Level : Intermediate

By BERNAT ARMANGUÉ Associated Press

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — The director of Ukraine’s largest art museum walked its hallways, supervising as staff packed away its collections to protect their national heritage in case the Russian invasion advances west.

In one partially empty gallery of the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum, employees placed carefully wrapped baroque pieces into cardboard boxes. A few meters away, a group walked down the majestic main staircase carrying a giant piece of sacred art, the 18th century Bohorodchany iconostasis.
Continue reading

Read time : 3 mins

Level : Advanced

By NOMAAN MERCHANT and VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — For two decades, Vladimir Putin has struck rivals as reckless, impulsive. But his behavior in ordering an invasion of Ukraine — and now putting Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert — has some in the West questioning whether the Russian president has become dangerously unstable.

In recent days, Putin has rambled on television about Ukraine, repeated conspiracy theories about neo-Nazism and Western aggression, berated his own foreign intelligence chief on camera from the other side of a high-domed Kremlin hall where he sat alone. Now, with the West’s sanctions threatening to cripple Russia’s already hobbled economy, Putin has ordered the higher state of readiness for nuclear weapons, blaming the sanctions and what he called “aggressive statements against our country.”
Continue reading

Read time : 2 mins

Level : Intermediate

BEIJING (AP) — Police are punishing Chinese traders for cashing in by reselling scarce dolls of Olympics mascot Bing Dwen Dwen at up to 10 times retail price.

Buyers stood in line overnight in freezing weather and emptied store shelves after the Winter Games opened Feb. 4. News reports say factory employees were called back from their Lunar New Year holiday to make more panda mascots.

Three people in Beijing were sentenced to unspecified “administrative penalties” for reselling souvenirs at prices deemed too high, police announced. Punishment can include detention, fines and confiscation of goods.
Continue reading

Read time : 3 mins

Level : Advanced

By MALLIKA SEN Associated Press

BEIJING (AP) — U.S.-born athletes have taken center stage at the Winter Olympics in Beijing — for the host country, that is, generating scrutiny of nationality-switching.

Eileen Gu, the prodigious — and, depending on who you ask, prodigal — freestyle skier who chose to compete for her mother’s native China over her native U.S., has drawn critical coverage that has at times veered into plain racism and misogyny.

But the likes of Gu and Jieruimi Shimisi — the Team China hockey goaltender (with no known Chinese heritage) formerly known as Jeremy Smith — are not the first to don the colors of a country where they were not born. Mutable nationality has a long history at the Olympics and, more generally, in the field of sports.
Continue reading

Read time : 3 mins

Level : Intermediate

By NICK PERRY Associated Press

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Thick ash on an airport runway was delaying aid deliveries to the Pacific island nation of Tonga, where significant damage was being reported days after a huge undersea volcanic eruption and tsunami.

New Zealand’s military is sending much-needed drinking water and other supplies, but said the ash on the runway will delay the flight at least a day. A towering ash cloud since Saturday’s eruption had prevented earlier flights. New Zealand also sent a navy ship to Tonga Tuesday with another planned to leave later in the day and pledged an initial 1 million New Zealand dollars ($680,000) toward recovery efforts.

Australia sent a navy ship from Sydney to Brisbane to prepare for a support mission if needed.
Continue reading