Day: January 29, 2018

Alibaba Looks to Modernize Olympics Starting in Pyeongchang

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., one of the few Olympics sponsors signed up until 2028, said it wants to upgrade the technology that keeps the Games running and will study the Pyeongchang Games to help find ways to save future host countries money.

“Pyeongchang will be a very important learning opportunity for our team to see how things are working and what’s missing,” Alibaba’s chief marketing officer Chris Tung said in an interview. Alibaba, the cloud-services and e-commerce provider for the Olympics, will take back what it has learned at the Feb. 9 to 25 Pyeongchang Winter Games and develop solutions for the next Games.

Ticketing, media and video services are among the areas that Tung said Alibaba wants to improve. It especially wants to end the inefficient practice of building from scratch local data centers and IT services for each Olympic Games.

“It will be great if a lot of the back end systems from hosting a Games can be hosted on the cloud and can be reused from Games to Games to enhance the cost efficiency,” he said.

Atos SE, the French information services company that is also a top sponsor, said on its website that all critical IT systems in Pyeongchang have already been moved to the cloud using its technology.

Alibaba will send to South Korea between 200 and 300 employees from across all its management teams, Tung said, adding that he wants the “organizers to see how the operations could be made more efficient, effective and secure.”

Alibaba’s views are in line with the Olympics Agenda 2020 reforms that also aimed to make the Games more attractive and cut the cost of hosting them. The next Winter Olympics after Pyeongchang will be in 2022 on Alibaba’s home turf in China, where the company said it wants to make the experience of going to an Olympics totally different for consumers, whether it’s how they buy tickets, use mobile technology or find related events in Beijing.

At Pyeongchang, Alibaba said on its website that it will put on a showcase at the Gangneung Olympic Park demonstrating concepts Alibaba is looking to pursue for future Games, including facial recognition technology, travel guidance, content creation and better ways to buy Olympics merchandise.

“We’re new to the Olympics games but we’ve been studying what would be solutions to the pain points that game hosting cities have been facing over the years,” Tung said.

As for the cold weather expected in Pyeongchang, there will also be a daily tea ritual at the Alibaba site to keep fans warm.

Reporting by Liana B. Baker in San Francisco.

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Native Americans Applaud Removal of ‘Racist’ Sports Mascot

Native Americans took to social media Monday to celebrate the pending “death” of Chief Wahoo, the longtime logo of the Cleveland Indians baseball team which features a garish “Indian” caricature that is offensive to America’s first peoples.

But the victory is only a small one for Twitter users, using the hashtag #NotYourMascot: The Cleveland Indians won’t be changing the team’s name; the team will still be able to sell Chief Wahoo merchandise; and fans won’t be blocked from wearing clothing bearing the logo.

In a statement released Monday, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said he told team owner Paul Dolan that the time had come to remove the caricature that has appeared on players’ caps and uniforms since 1948.

“Over the past year, we encouraged dialogue with the Indians organization about the club’s use of the Chief Wahoo logo,” Manfred said. “During our constructive conversations, Paul Dolan made clear that there are fans who have a longstanding attachment to the logo and its place in the history of the team.

“Nonetheless, the club ultimately agreed with my position that the logo is no longer appropriate for on-field use in Major League Baseball, and I appreciate Mr. Dolan’s acknowledgement that removing it from the on-field uniform by the start of the 2019 season is the right course.”

For decades, Native American activists and their supporters have protested the logo, a cartoon of a grinning red-skinned man in a feathered headband.  They have complained that the image is offensive and perpetuates racist stereotypes about America’s first peoples.

In 2014, a group called People Not Mascots filed a federal lawsuit seeking $9 billion in damages.  Two years later, a Canadian man sued the team in an attempt to prevent it from wearing the Chief Wahoo logo during games in Toronto.

In recent years, many schools and universities across the country have stopped using Native Americans in their team names or as mascots.  But according to MascotDB, a database of sports team names and mascots, many hundreds of American teams retain Indian imagery, ranging from local high schools to major teams like the Washington Redskins.

“Today’s announcement marks an important turning point for Indian Country and the harmful legacy of Indian mascots,” said Jefferson Keel, president of the National Congress of American Indians. “These mascots reduce all Native people into a single outdated stereotype that harms the way Native people, especially youth, view themselves.”

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At Long Last: Beckham’s MLS Team in Miami Is Born

David Beckham finally has his Major League Soccer team in Miami.

Beckham and MLS announced Monday that the long-awaited franchise is now born. It took Beckham nearly four years to bring the team to Miami.

The Miami area had an MLS team from 1998 through 2001. It folded because of poor attendance.

MLS Commissioner Don Garber says “great things come to those that wait.” He says Miami fans have been emailing him for 10 years with hopes of MLS coming back to South Florida.

It has been a long road just to get to this point. In the beginning of his Beckham-Miami plan, some people involved in the talks predicted that the team would begin play in 2017.

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Grammy Awards TV Audience Drops Sharply, Nears Record Low

The U.S. television audience for Sunday’s Grammy Awards show on CBS Corp. fell by more than eight million viewers and could be one of the lowest audiences on record, early Nielsen ratings data showed Monday.

Variety and TVLine.com reported that 17.6 million Americans tuned in for the three-and-a-half-hour broadcast, a more than 30 percent drop from 2017 when some 26.1 million television viewers watched.

If the early figures are confirmed when final data comes out later Monday, it will be the least-watched Grammy Awards show since 2008, when 17.2 million people saw the television broadcast.

The lowest audience for any Grammy Awards show came in 2006, which drew an audience of 17 million.

Sunday’s 60th anniversary Grammy Awards, staged in New York, saw R&B singer Bruno Mars win six statuettes, while rapper Kendrick Lamar won five. Jay-Z, who had gone into the show with eight nominations, won nothing.

Audiences for the Grammys had risen in 2016 and 2017.

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North Korea Cancels Joint Cultural Performance with South Korea

North Korea has cancelled a joint cultural performance with the South planned ahead of the winter Olympic Games, South Korea’s unification ministry said Monday.

Pyongyang blamed South Korean media for encouraging “insulting” public sentiment regarding the North and cancelled the February 4th event to be held in the North to celebrate the upcoming games in PyeongChang, South Korea. Seoul called the decision “very regrettable” and urged its neighbor to uphold all agreements made between the two countries, Reuters reported.

Last week, twelve North Korean female ice hockey players crossed the border to join their counterparts in the South to form the first-ever unified Korean Olympic team since the two sides split in the 1950s civil war.

The surprise offer by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to send a delegation to the PyeongChang Games during his New Year’s Day speech paved the way for restored dialogue between Pyongyang and Seoul, which had been frozen due to North Korea’s development of its nuclear and ballistic missile weapons programs in defiance of international sanctions.

The talks led to an agreement for both sides to march in the February 9 opening ceremonies under a unified flag, as well as the formation of the joint women’s hockey squad.

But South Koreans have grown increasingly angry over the combined team, believing their compatriots will lose playing time to the North Koreans and that President Moon Jae-in gave up too much to the North in his eagerness to have Pyongyang participated in the Games.

 

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EU Ready to Hit Back if Trump Imposes Anti-EU Trade Measures

The European Union says that if U.S. President Donald Trump initiates unfair trade measures against the 28-nation bloc, it would stand ready “to react swiftly and appropriately.”

 

In a weekend interview, Trump said he was annoyed with EU trade policy since he claims the U.S. cannot sufficiently export to the EU. He said his problems with the EU “may morph into something very big” from a trade standpoint.

 

EU spokesman Margaritis Schinas retorted Monday that “while trade has to be open and fair it also has to be rules-based.”

 

Schinas said: “The EU stands ready to react swiftly and appropriately in case our exports are affected by any restrictive trade measure from the United States.”

 

 

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North, South Korea Hit by Flu Outbreaks Ahead of Olympics

North and South Korea are reporting outbreaks of different strains of influenza, less than two weeks before thousands of visitors from around the world arrive for the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics in the South.

North Korea’s Ministry of Public Health reported over 80,000 confirmed cases of the influenza strain H1N1 that is endemic in pigs, known as swine flu, between December 1, 2017 and January 16, 2018, according to a bulletin issued by the International Foundation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Aid and sanctions

The Red Cross cited North Korean health ministry officials saying that three children and one adult have died so far in the outbreak and that there are over 120,000 suspected swine flu cases in the country, and that the outbreak is nationwide with 28 percent of the cases reported in the capital of Pyongyang.

The North Korean government has requested medication to vaccinate high-risk individuals from the World Health Organization and the U.N. International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), as well as training and equipment for prevention, detection, and treatment to limit the impact of the influenza outbreak. The WHO and UNICEF have not publicly commented on the request.

The Red Cross is planning for $270,000 in emergency aid that includes sending volunteers with masks and protective clothing to conduct training in at risk areas in North Korea.

“The majority of the component of what we are gong to do is hygiene promotion and health education,” said Gwendolyn Pang, acting head of the Red Cross office in Pyongyang.

In September, the South Korean government reportedly delayed sending an $8 million humanitarian aid package to North Korea after Pyongyang conducted its sixth nuclear test earlier that month. The planned donation included $3.5 million going to UNICEF for medicine and nutrition to help children and pregnant women, and $4.5 million to the World Food Program for food aid to North Korean hospital South Korea suspended all humanitarian aid to the North in 2016 following Pyongyang’s fourth nuclear test.

Last year’s delay of aid by the administration of South Korean President Moon Jae-in was seen as a show of support for U.S. President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” strategy that emphasizes strong economic sanctions along with the threat of military action to force the Kim Jong Un government in Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.

Cross border exposure

This year, Pyongyang has taken a seemingly more conciliatory approach to Seoul by agreeing to participate in the Olympics in South Korea, and has so far refrained from conducting any further provocative missile or nuclear tests. Washington has also supported this Olympic truce by agreeing to postpone joint military exercises with South Korea, until after both the Olympic and Paralympic games end in late March.

However increased Olympic related inter-Korean travel, with South Korean athletes training for skiing events at Kumgang Mountain in North Korea, and a large delegation of North Korean athletes, artists and cheering squads poised to compete and perform across the South, has raised concerns of the virus spreading across borders.

“We are continuing to monitor trends in the North Korean flu. And I will do my best to be more thorough about quarantine (contingencies) in relation to the North Korean people ’s visitation and our visit to North Korea,” said Ministry of Unification spokesperson Baek Tae-hyun on Monday.

The majority of human infections of the highly contagious H1N1 flu virus come from direct contact with infected animals or contaminated environments, according to WHO, and the virus can be be transmitted through human to human contact.

Once transmitted to humans, the influenza virus may cause a mild upper respiratory tract infection (fever and cough), and in some cases a rapid progression to severe pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome and even death.

South Korean outbreak

This weekend a highly pathogenic strain of H5N6 avian influenza was also found on a chicken farm in South Korea near Seoul. Provincial authorities have reportedly ordered that over 500,000 chickens be culled and more than 450,000 eggs destroyed in farms where the virus was detected. . The government is also conducting inspections and disinfections at all poultry farms in the area, quarantining workers at infected poultry farms for a week, and imposing a regional ban on poultry distribution to urban areas.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs there have been a total of 15 cases of bird flu in South Korea since last November, which has forced the authorities to cull nearly 2 million birds.

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Some Optimism, But Much Work Left as Latest NAFTA Talks End

Top trade representatives from Canada, Mexico and the United States are set to give an update Monday on the process of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, while people familiar with the process say a final deal could be pushed far beyond a March target date.

The three nations had tried to complete the talks by the end of 2017, but delayed the informal deadline as they worked to find common ground on several contentious issues.

The latest round of talks in Montreal included work on a dispute resolution mechanism and rules for the auto industry.

The United States wants to largely eliminate the dispute settlement panels and increase the percentage of U.S. content required to be in a vehicle. It has also proposed a clause that would end the trade agreement after five years unless all three countries agree to keep it going.

U.S. Representative Dave Reichert expressed optimism Sunday after he and a group of other lawmakers met with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. He said Lighthizer is “hopeful” while also recognizing “there’s a great deal of work to be done.”

Canada’s chief negotiator Steve Verheul said Saturday, “We’re moving in a slightly more positive direction.”

Lighthizer is meeting Monday with Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo to review the progress made by their teams and to make an announcement about the state of the negotiations.

One reason the countries were targeting a March end date is the looming July presidential election in Mexico. 

Another round of negotiations is expected to start in Mexico City in about a month. A lack of an agreement by the end of March could push the process deep into 2018 with a potential break for the Mexican election and similar considerations surrounding the November U.S. congressional elections.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to withdraw from the trade agreement if changes favorable to the United Sates are not made.

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Music and Politics Mixed at Grammys

Politics took the stage at the 60th annual Grammy awards this year, along with some great music. 

Hillary Clinton, who ran against Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign, made a surprise appearance in a pre-taped skit about people auditioning to be the voice for the spoken word recording of Michael Wolff’s best-seller “Fire and Fury” about Trump’s first unconventional year in office. 

Clinton followed John Legend, Cher, Snoop Dogg, Cardi B and DJ Khaled who also “auditioned.” Grammys host James Corden told Clinton that she beat out the competition to win. 

“The Grammys in the bag,” Clinton said at the end. Political observers say Clinton thought her presidential win was “in the bag.”

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley did not see the humor. “I have always loved the Grammys, but to have artists read the Fire and Fury book killed it,” she tweeted. “Don’t ruin great music with trash. Some of us love music without the politics thrown in it.

Neil Portnow, head of the recording academy, told the Associated Press that he thought Clinton’s appearance was more satirical than political. 

The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., tweeted: “Getting to read a #fakenews book excerpt at the Grammys seems like a great consolation prize for losing the presidency.” 

Singer/actor Janelle Monae, meanwhile, reminded the audience that the music industry needed to face its sexual harassment and gender discrimination issues. “To those who would dare try and silence us, we offer you two words: Time’s Up,” 

Monae introduced singer Kesha who has long sought to break her deal with her producer whom she says raped her. 

Kesha’s song “Praying” included the lyrics, “After everything you’ve done, I can thank you for how strong I have become.” 

Cuban American singer Camila Cabello spoke out for legal protection for “dreamers,” the immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children and do not have legal status. “This country was built by dreamers for dreamers,” she said. 

Cabello introduced a pre-recorded performance by the band U2, who sang their song “Get Out of Your Own Way” on a barge in the New York harbor with the State of Liberty, the beacon that welcomed millions of immigrants to their new lives in the U.S. in the background. 

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Korean Women’s Ice Hockey Teams Unite Before 2018 Winter Olympics

The North Korean women’s ice hockey team is in South Korea to prepare for the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. The two governments reached an agreement to play together wearing the same jerseys and marching under a unified peninsula flag. Arash Arabasadi reports.

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Delivery Robots Find Work in Hotels, Hospitals and Beyond

Coming to a hotel or hospital near you may be a robot that makes deliveries.  Companies are creating robots to help with the workload and make human workers more efficient. One such company is Silicon Valley-based Savioke. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee met a couple of its robots at a hotel in Las Vegas.

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Algorithm Based Sensors Provide Round the Clock Patient Monitoring

Researchers say that 20 percent of abdominal surgery patients will experience some kind of complication. And those complications can go unnoticed for hours between visits by an attending nurse. A new learning algorithm is being developed in Denmark to spot those complications in real time. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.

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Bruno Mars Is Top Winner at the 60th Annual Grammys

Bruno Mars was the big winner Sunday night at the 60th annual Grammy Awards in New York, winning album, record, and song of the year. Mars also won Grammys for best R&B album, best R&B performance and best R&B song. 

In accepting the top prize of album of the year for “24K Magic,” Mars said the album’s songs were “written with love” and he just “wanted everybody to dance” to the album’s tunes. 

Mars also joined flamboyant rapper Cardi B on the stage Sunday to perform their hit Finesse. 

In contrast to Cardi B., Pink stood alone on the stage, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, to sing her new song “Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken.” 

Pink was nominated Sunday for pop solo performance for “What About Us,” but that prize went to Ed Sheeran for “Shape of You.” 

This year’s show was hosted by late night talk show host and musician James Corden. 

Rapper Kendrick Lamar took home Grammys for best rap album, rap song and rap performance.

Crooner Tony Bennett’s album “Tony Bennett Celebrates 90” won the Grammy for best traditional pop vocal album.

Comedian Dave Chappelle beat out Jerry Seinfeld, Kevin Hart, Sarah Silverman and Jim Gaffigan, to win the best comedy album prize for the double album of his two Netflix specials – “The Age of Spin” and “Deep in the Heart of Texas.” 

Alessia Cara won the best new artist Grammy. She said she had dreamed of winning a Grammy since she was a child, but she didn’t have a speech prepared. 

She said, “I’ve been like pretend winning Grammys since I was a kid like in the shower, so you’d think I have the speech thing down, but I absolutely don’t.”

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Map of GPS Fitness Activity Sparks Military Security Concerns

The U.S. military says it is evaluating its policies after a global map of fitness activity drew attention to possible security concerns regarding locations of overseas bases and soldier movements.

Strava published its so-called heat map of user activity in November showing the routes millions of users walked, ran and biked, with the most frequent routes showing up in brighter colors. The company says it excluded activities that users marked as private or ones that took place in areas people did not want to make public.

The activities were tracked using GPS-enabled devices from manufacturers like Fitbit, Garmin and Polar, and even with the exclusions, Strava said its map included 1 billion activities between 2015 and September 2017.

The Washington Post reported on the heat map and its implications, highlighting a Twitter post by Australian student Nathan Ruser who shared the link to the Strava site Saturday.

“It looks very pretty, but not amazing for Op-Sec [operational security]. US Bases are clearly identifiable and mappable,” Ruser wrote.

The map shows the most activity in places like the United States, Western Europe, Japan and Brazil. In Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, activities show up bright against otherwise dark terrain, including in multiple places where the U.S. military is known to have bases or be active.

The devices that transmit the data can be used in several ways, including for example a short run or keeping track of the steps a person takes throughout the day. The result can be lines on the heat map showing loops around the perimeter of a military installation where people exercise or showing where they move from place to place throughout the facility, or elsewhere.

“DoD takes matter like these very seriously and is reviewing the situation to determine if any additional training or guidance is required, and if any additional policy must be developed to ensure the continued safety of DoD personnel at home and abroad,” Department of Defense spokeswoman Maj. Audricia Harris said.

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New York to Probe Firms that Sells Fake Social Media Followers

New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has launched an investigation of a firm that allegedly sold millions of fake followers to social media users.

The company, Devumi, sold more than 200 million fake followers, or bots, to celebrities, sports stars, and politicians, The New York Times reported.

“Impersonation and deception are illegal under New York law,” Schneiderman tweeted. “We are opening an investigation into Devumi and its apparent sale of bots using stolen identities.”

The Times reported that at least 55,000 of the bot accounts names, pictures, hometowns and other details taken from people on Twitter. The information was stolen from people in every U.S. state as well as dozens of countries, The Times said.

“The growing prevalence of bots means that real voices are too often drowned out in public conversation,” Schneiderman said. “Those who can pay the most for followers can buy their way to apparent influence.”

On social media, high follower numbers means greater influence and visibility, which can impact public opinion and offer lucrative financial deals for the account holders.

On its website, Devumi offers customers the chance to buy up to 500,000 followers for social media sites including Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Vimeo, with prices starting at as little as $12.

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Gaga, Cardi B. Among Stars Wearing White Roses for Grammys

Stars, including Lady Gaga and Kelly Clarkson, turned out on the Grammys red carpet Sunday displaying white roses in solidarity with the Time’s Up and #MeToo movements against sexual misconduct on music’s biggest night for what is usually the wildest display of fashion during awards season.

Gaga was in a black lace top and leggings with a full skirt and train, white rose in place and her hair swept into a fishtail braid with black pins. Her signature towering platform shoes – black boots this time around- were on her feet. Rita Ora also wowed in black, a gown with a silver embellished lining open on one side to the hip. She, too, had a white rose pinned on.

There was lots of black, perhaps spillover from the anti-sexual misconduct message of the recent Golden Globes, but there was also plenty of color.

Elton John didn’t disappoint on that score in a geometric-pattern, blue, gold and red sparkler of a jacket from Gucci, encrusted sunglasses to match. Country’s trio Midland – Mark Wystrach, Cameron Duddy and Jess Carson – went big in the cowboy hat department, including a topper with a rainbow feather to match a similarly adorned jacket for one.

Multiple-nominee Sza was accompanied by her grandmother and donned embellished white, her hair loose and natural. Cardi B made a big statement in white with a short tiered dress and train.

“It was an interesting choice for her,” Cosmopolitan’s senior fashion editor said of Cardi. “I loved it. It was very playful and fun.”

Sam Smith was in a green suit – yes he wore the rose – and a red scoop-neck shirt underneath, while Ne-Yo wore a yellow jacket. In a red tuxedo look, including red bow tie, was DJ Khaled and his adorable, mini-me 1-year-old son, who got a matching red suit.

Khaled called Asahd: “My partner in crime, my best friend, my biggest blessing. … When he smiles it’s like God smiling on me.”

Khaled’s red was a win for Reid as well: “I thought it was very whimsical and he did it well.”

Maren Morris was in a chain-link silver sparkler that brought the wow in a barely there design. Also in silver: A pregnant Chrissie Teigen as she posed with husband John Legend.

“My favorite is definitely Chrissie Teigen in her all-silver sequin look. I think she’s taking maternity style to the next level.”

Lana Del Rey, meanwhile, joined Sir Elton in Gucci, an angelic gown in cream with a high slit and crystal star theme, including a star head piece. Ashanti was a princess in long-sleeved gold.

Rapper K. Flay, in a black tuxedo jacket, chose a Time’s Up button instead of the flower but noted all such symbols are important expressions of solidarity for women. Songwriter Diane Warren, a 15-time Grammy nominee, wore black and white and went her own way on symbols. She wore white gloves with “Girl” on one hand and “Power” on the other, explaining: “I didn’t want to wear the rose. I’m a rebel.”

Nominees The Secret Sisters won for largest white roses, noting it’s time for the music industry to step up and better acknowledge sexual misconduct.

Perhaps the New York vibe – the Grammys hadn’t been held here in 15 years – added to the parade of music men and women opting for black, including traditional tuxedos and suits. Women in black went for both edgy and chic.

Country star Reba McEntire, the latest pitch person as Col. Sanders for KFC, was among them in a Jovani sleeveless studded gown in black with silver embellishment, white rose in place as a reminder to everybody to “treat each other like we want to be treated. It’s the golden rule.”

Clarkson’s black gown was embellished in silver and gold. Her white rose was long stemmed and she carried it as opposed to pinning it on. Miley Cyrus also opted for the long-stem rose option to go with her black, skinny-legged trouser look.

Newcomer Julia Michaels was in lavender, her arm tattoos on display in an open-sided long gown. The deep V-neck with a butterfly motif was by Paolo Sebastian.

Veteran performer Andra Day, nominated for one Grammy, popped in pink trimmed with red, her hair up in a beehive. It was a long tuxedo-style dress with a high side slit. Why did she carry a white rose?

“For me, Time’s Up means time’s up on being silent about it,” she said. “I think it also means understanding when we’ve been taken advantage of and when we’ve been abused.”

Joy Villa, ever provocative on the red carpet, made a statement last year in a pro-President Donald Trump dress. This year, she wore a white gown with a rainbow uterus with fetus on one side and carried a “Choose Life” handbag. Oh, and a huge crown topped her head.

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Investigative Journalist Robert Parry Dies at 68

Robert Parry, a longtime investigative journalist who was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1985 for his Associated Press exclusives about the CIA’s production of an assassination manual for Nicaraguan rebels, has died. He was 68.

Parry died Saturday in hospice care after a series of strokes brought on by undiagnosed pancreatic cancer, said his wife, Diane Duston.

Parry joined the AP in 1974 and went on to work in the Washington bureau, where he covered the Iran-Contra scandal as it rocked the Reagan administration. His work on the scandal also brought a George Polk Award in 1984.

After leaving the AP in 1987, Parry worked for Newsweek until 1990 and then became an investigative reporter for the PBS series “Frontline.”

In 1995, frustrated with what he saw as dwindling venues for serious investigative reporting, Parry founded the Consortium for Independent Journalism. Its website, Consortiumnews.com, sought to provide a home for such reporting in the early days of the internet, though it struggled financially and relied on contributions.

In a tribute posted on the site, son Nat Parry said, “With my dad, professional work has always been deeply personal, and his career as a journalist was thoroughly intertwined with his family life.”

Parry was born on June 24, 1949, in Hartford, Connecticut. He graduated from Colby College with a degree in English in 1971. He worked in Massachusetts journalism before joining the AP.

The author of six books, Parry received the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence from the Nieman Foundation in 2015 and the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2017. In his remarks in London at the presentation of the Gellhorn Prize, Britain-based journalist John Pilger said, “Bob Parry’s career has been devoted to finding out, lifting rocks – and supporting others who do the same.”

Survivors include his wife, a former Associated Press newswoman; sons Sam Parry and Jeff Parry of Arlington and Nat Parry of Copenhagen, Denmark; daughter Elizabeth Parry of Alexandria, Virginia; and six grandchildren.

A memorial service is planned for later in the year.

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