Arts & Entertainment
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U2 Make Their First US Festival Show a Bono-Roo

U2 turned their first headlining appearance at a U.S. music festival into Bono-roo.

 

The Irish rockers performed a two-hour set Friday night at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee, as part of their world tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of their Grammy-winning The Joshua Tree album.

 

They played the full album, as well as some of their other hits, including New Year’s Day and Beautiful Day, to tens of thousands of music fans.

 

Toward the end of the performance, lead singer Bono asked if they had made a mistake in not coming to the festival sooner, and later added, “Thanks for naming it after me.”

 

The band kicked off their tour last month in Canada, which hits the United Kingdom, Europe and Central America through Oct. 19.

 

The band has previously played the Glastonbury Festival, but their appearance on the Bonnaroo lineup this year was a huge get for the 16-year-old music festival.

Before their set, U2 guitarist The Edge received the Les Paul Spirit Award in a presentation from the Les Paul Foundation on the festival grounds. The Edge, whose name is David Evans, called Paul an inventor and innovator who pioneered advances in electric guitars and recording.

 

“I owe him a great debt of gratitude not only for the contributions he made to music, but in terms of his contributions to the technology,” Evans said.

 

The political nature of the album, which was inspired by the band’s fascination with America, was reflected on the giant screens behind the band. The screens showed images of female activists, scenes of the American desert and poems from American writers. Often Bono would stop singing to let the chorus of voices from fans complete the song.

 

As he ended the performance with their hit, One, he called it “a night we will never forget.”
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Arts & Entertainment
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Tel Aviv Gay Pride Festival Draws Thousands; One of Many Marches This Weekend

Thousands of people from around the world packed Israel’s streets of Tel Aviv for the city’s annual Gay Pride march, one of many festivals for gay rights taking place this weekend.

The festival is billed as the largest event of its kind in the deeply conservative Middle East.

Israeli police estimated that more than 100,000 people participated Friday with many coming from other countries.

The annual parade featured floats and dancers with this year’s theme being “Bisexuality Visibility.”

The festival is sponsored by the city of Tel Aviv, which has promoted gay tourism in recent years, becoming one of the world’s most gay-friendly travel destinations.

While Tel Aviv is seen as liberal and welcoming of gays, Jerusalem is seen as more conservative with the population’s views varying on gay rights. A gay pride parade there in 2015 ended in tragedy when an extremist ultra-Orthodox Jew stabbed a 16-year-old girl to death.

Across the rest of the Middle East, gay and lesbian relationships are largely taboo.

Watch: From a Jail Term to Legal Marriage in US

Gay pride festivals are taking place this weekend in dozens of cities around the world, including Los Angeles, Athens, Sydney and Rome.

A large-scale “Equality March” is planned for Sunday in Washington, with organizers saying they want to combat anti-LGBT rhetoric in the country.

Many more gay pride events are scheduled around the world later in June, the month gay pride is traditionally celebrated, chosen because of New York’s 1969 Stonewall riots in Manhattan, which is regarded as a catalyst for the gay rights movement.

Next week, Shanghai, China, will host its ninth gay pride event, but without a parade that accompanies most events in other cities around the world. Organizers say they expect around 6,000 people to attend. For the 10th anniversary next year, they said, they hope to expand to other cities including Beijing.
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Arts & Entertainment
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Prom Still an Iconic Dance for Teens in the US

Every springtime in the United States, boys don tuxedos or suits and girls wear elegant gowns on one special night. For decades, the high school prom has been a major moment in the teenage experience. While movies portray the evening as a night of magic and romance, the reality can be quite different. Jesusemen Oni followed a couple of high school students to their prom for an inside look at this decades-old tradition.
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Science & Health
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In India, Fighting Ocean Trash One Net at a Time

World Ocean Day, earlier this month, is an annual focus on the threats to our watery planet. It’s a long list: overfishing, climate change, algae blooms and plastic. Plastic is everywhere, on the surface, in the deep and along the shorelines. But, in India, a dedicated group of fishermen turned conservationists is doing its part to help solve that problem. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Silicon Valley & Technology
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New Google Project Digitizes World’s Top Fashion Archives

Anyone who has waited on a long, snaking line to get into a fashion exhibit at a top museum knows just how popular they’ve become — and more broadly, how fashion is increasingly seen as a form of artistic and cultural expression.

 

Google is acknowledging this reality by expanding its Google Art Project — launched in 2011 to link users with art collections around the world, online — to include fashion.

The new initiative, “We Wear Culture,” which launched Thursday, uses Google’s technology to connect fashion lovers to collections and exhibits at museums and other institutions, giving them the ability to not only view a garment, but to zoom in on the hem of a dress, examine a sleeve or a bit of embroidery on a gown up close, wander around an atelier, or sit down with Metropolitan Museum of Art costume restorers.

 

The project partners with more 180 cultural institutions, including the Met’s Costume Institute, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Japan’s Kyoto Costume Institute, and the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. It comprises over 30,000 garments.

The site also offers specially curated exhibits. You can click your way to, for example, a curated photo exhibit on Tokyo Street Style, or an exploration of women’s gowns in the 18th century. You can search by designer, or by their muse — examining, say, Marilyn Monroe’s love of Ferragamo stiletto heels, via the Museo Salvatore Ferragamo in Florence, Italy.

 

At a preview demonstration this week, Amit Sood, director of the Google Cultural Institute and designer of the Google Art Project (now called Google Arts & Culture) explained that he wasn’t initially clued into the possibilities for fashion, because at the tech giant, “we all wear hoodies.”

 

But, he said, collaborating with an institution like the Met showed him that

“art and fashion have a long history together.” The idea behind the new project, he said, is to tell the story — or rather, the multiple stories — behind fashion.

 

There are several virtual reality films included in the project. A 360-degree video displays the Met’s conservation studio, with conservators explaining how they keep delicate clothing strong enough for display — one of them explaining, for example, how the team uses needles designed for eye surgeons.

It is the ultimate fragility of clothes, though, that makes the project appealing to museum curators, explained Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute’s head curator — whereas many garments are too delicate to be permanently displayed, digitizing a collection makes it viewable forever. The Costume Institute has provided 500 of the objects on display, noted Loic Tallon, the Met’s chief digital officer.

 

Making a pitch to young users, the site also features YouTube personality Ingrid Nilsen in short videos, in which she explains the evolution of the hoodie, the choker, or colorful Japanese “Sukajan” jackets.
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Science & Health
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US Backs Call to Save Oceans, but Notes Plan to Quit Climate Deal

The United States supported a global call to action at the United Nations on Friday to conserve and sustainably use oceans, seas and marine resources, even as it noted President Donald Trump’s plan to withdraw from a pact to fight climate change.

The first U.N. Ocean Conference ended on Friday with the adoption of a Call to Action, which said: “We are particularly alarmed by the adverse impacts of climate change on the ocean.”

“We recognize, in this regard, the particular importance of the Paris Agreement, adopted under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,” it read.

After the consensus adoption, David Balton, deputy U.S. assistant secretary for oceans and fisheries, reminded the summit “that on June 1 our president announced that the United States will withdraw from or renegotiate U.S. participation in the Paris agreement or another international climate deal.”

Trump’s decision to pull the United States from the landmark 2015 Paris agreement drew anger and condemnation from world leaders and heads of industry.

Speaking after the United States, French Ambassador for the Oceans Serge Segura received applause from delegates in the U.N. General Assembly after stating climate change was real.

“France is committed to upholding all of our obligations under the Paris agreement both for our welfare, but also for the welfare of the international community as a whole,” he said.

The week-long ocean summit promoted partnerships, such as between governments and businesses, to address issues such as marine pollution, ocean acidification, and marine research. More than 1,300 voluntary commitments to save the ocean were made.

UNGA Chief: ‘Climate Change, Ocean Acidification: Two Sides of the Same Coin’

Safeguarding the ocean was one of 17 goals adopted in 2015 by the 193 U.N. member states as part of an agenda for the world’s sustainable development up to 2030. Another goal calls for “urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.”
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