Glamour was shot through with grit at the British Academy Film Awards on Sunday. Frothy musical “La La Land” took five prizes including best picture, but major awards also went to tough welfare-state drama “I, Daniel Blake” and fractured-family stories “Lion” and “Manchester by the Sea.” In keeping with an awards season that has coincided with a wrenching change of government in the United States, even “La La Land’s” prizes came with a political tinge. Accepting the best-actress trophy for playing a barista who dreams of Hollywood stardom, Emma Stone …

Hours before the Grammy Awards ceremony, the biggest night in the music industry in the United States, word came of the death of well-known jazz and rhythm and blues singer Al Jarreau. Winner of seven Grammys himself, Jarreau died at age 76 Sunday in a hospital in Los Angeles, the city where the Grammys are held each year. No cause of death was given. He was hospitalized for exhaustion last week, and while he had been “recovering slowly and steadily” according to a Friday post on his Facebook page, he …

International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde voiced optimism Sunday that U.S. President Donald Trump’s planned tax cuts and construction spending would boost the American economy, but said they could cause trouble for the economies around the globe. Lagarde, speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai, said, “From the little we know, and I will insist on the little we know, because this is really work in progress… but from the little we hear, we have reasons to be optimistic about economic growth in the United States.” Major U.S. stock …

A 36-year-old Egyptian woman, believed to be the world’s heaviest woman at 500 kilograms, has been brought to an Indian hospital to undergo surgical procedures aimed at drastically reducing her weight and giving her a chance of a normal life. For Eman Ahmed, the journey to Mumbai was her first outside her home in Alexandria in 25 years. And it involved complex logistics on many fronts: The Indian foreign minister’s intervention to get her a visa, an Airbus modified to equip it with a special bed, a truck at the …

Somalia intends to resume printing banknotes this year for the first time since the government collapsed in 1991. The governor of Somalia’s central bank, Bashir Issa Ali, told VOA in an exclusive interview Saturday that all technical preparations are complete, and his government is confident it can assemble a financial aid package within three months to fund the printing program. Further work would take another four months. Asked if Somalia will print and distribute banknotes during 2017, Ali answered: “Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely!” He pledged the new currency would include “good, …

Anti-abortion activists and supporters of a woman’s right to choose staged demonstrations in dozens of U.S. cities Saturday, with the nonprofit group Planned Parenthood at the center of the discussion. Anti-abortion activists organized rallies in more than 200 locations Saturday, according to one of the national organizers, Monica Miller of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society. The activists are calling for the federal government to stop providing funds to Planned Parenthood because it provides abortions. It is something U.S. President Donald Trump has said he wants to do. Meanwhile, pro-choice activists …

Researchers in Poland are using off-the-shelf technology to create a mini-satellite they plan to offer to scientists, companies and even individuals, for gathering useful data from space. The spacecraft, named after the ancient Slavic god of war, fertility and abundance, is meant to make space exploration available to ordinary people. VOA’s George Putic reports. … From: MeNeedIt