Giuliana Chenal-Minuzzo, the first female athlete to deliver the Olympic oath, in 1956, and the first woman to win a Winter Games medal for Italy four years earlier, has died at the age of 88. The Italian was hailed by her country’s alpine skiing federation as “one of the greatest post-war champions.” Chenal-Minuzzo won downhill bronze in the 1952 Oslo Olympics, going on to claim a second bronze at the 1960 Squaw Valley Games, that time in the giant slalom. FILE – Italian Alpine skier Giuliana Chenal-Minuzzo reads the Olympic oath, on behalf of all the athletes taking part, at the opening ceremony of the seventh Winter Olympic Games, at Cortina, Italy, Jan.26, 1956.At the intervening 1956 Cortina d’Ampezzo Winter Games, she broke ground by delivering the Olympic oath. First pronounced by Belgian athlete Victor Boin (water polo, swimming and fencing) at the 1920 Antwerp Summer Games, the Olympic oath of modern times was similar to that taken by the Olympic athletes of ancient times – but at the modern Olympic Games, the athletes swear on the Olympic flag, not on the entrails of a sacrificed animal. The modern Olympic oath, originally written by International Olympic Committee (IOC) president and founder Pierre de Coubertin, has been modified over time to reflect the changing nature of the sporting competition. The oath taker is from the host nation and takes the oath on behalf of all athletes participating at those Olympic Games. Oaths for officials and coaches were added in 1972 and 2010 respectively.
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Day: November 11, 2020
As election misinformation raged online, Facebook Inc. said on Wednesday its post-election ban on political ads would likely last another month, raising concerns from campaigns and groups eager to reach voters for key Georgia Senate races in January.
The ban, one of Facebook’s measures to combat misinformation and other abuses on its site, was supposed to last about a week but could be extended. Alphabet Inc.’s Google also appeared to be sticking with its post-election political ad ban.
“While multiple sources have projected a presidential winner, we still believe it’s important to help prevent confusion or abuse on our platform,” Facebook told advertisers in an email seen by Reuters. It said to expect the pause to last another month though there “may be an opportunity to resume these ads sooner.”
Facebook later confirmed the extension in a blog post.
Baseless claims about the election reverberated around social media this week as President Donald Trump challenged the validity of the outcome, even as state officials reported no significant irregularities, and legal experts cautioned he had little chance to overturn Democratic President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
In one Facebook group created on Sunday, which rapidly grew to nearly 400,000 members by Wednesday, members calling for a nationwide recount swapped unfounded accusations about alleged election fraud and shifting state vote counts every few seconds.
“The reality is right now that we are not through the danger zone,” said Vanita Gupta, chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Google declined to answer questions about the length of its ad pause, although one advertiser said the company had floated the possibility of extending it through or after December. A Google spokeswoman previously said the company would lift its ban based on factors such as the time needed for votes to be counted and whether there was civil unrest.
The extensions mean that the top two digital advertising behemoths, which together control more than half the market, are not accepting election ads ahead of the two U.S. Senate runoff races in Georgia that could decide control of that chamber.
Democratic and Republican digital strategists who spoke to Reuters railed against those decisions, saying the ad bans were overly broad and failed to combat a much bigger problem on the platforms: the organic spread of viral lies in unpaid posts.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, along with the Senate campaigns of Georgia Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, called for an exemption for the Georgia Senate run-offs so they could make voters aware of upcoming deadlines.
Ossoff faces incumbent Republican Sen. David Perdue, and Warnock faces incumbent Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler.
“It is driving us absolutely bonkers,” said Mark Jablonowski, managing partner of DSPolitical, a digital firm that works with Democratic causes.
“They’re essentially holding the rest of the political process hostage,” said Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist, who said he thought the companies’ concerns about ads on the election outcome did not require a blanket ban. “This is something that deserves a scalpel and they’re using a rusty ax,” he added.
The companies declined to say when they would lift other “break-glass” election measures introduced for unpaid posts, like Facebook’s limits on the distribution of live videos and demotions of content that its systems predict may be misinformation.
Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said those emergency measures would not be permanent, but that rollback was “not imminent.”
Google’s YouTube, which is labeling all election-related videos with information about the outcome, said it would stick with that approach “as long as it’s necessary.”
The video-sharing company bans “demonstrably false” claims about the election process, but has used the tool sparingly, saying hyperbolic statements about a political party “stealing” the election does not violate the policy.
However, Twitter Inc. has stopped using its most restrictive election-related warning labels, which hid and limited engagement on violating tweets. Instead, the company is now using lighter-touch labels that “provide additional context,” spokeswoman Katie Rosborough said.
Twitter placed a label reading “this claim about election fraud is disputed” on two of Trump’s tweets Tuesday morning, but each was retweeted more than 80,000 times by that evening.
Democratic strategists, including members of the Biden campaign who tweeted criticism of Facebook, said social media companies’ measures were not effectively curbing the spread of viral lies.
Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, said the ad pauses were needed but not sufficient for tackling false information.
“Clearly President Trump does not think the election is over, so I don’t think the platforms should treat it as if it is,” she said.
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As the coronavirus explodes again, the World Health Organization finds itself both under intense pressure to reform and holding out hope that U.S. President-elect Joe Biden will reverse a decision by Washington to leave the health agency.
With its annual meeting underway this week, WHO has been sharply criticized for not taking a stronger and more vocal role in handling the pandemic. For example, in private internal meetings in the early days of the virus, top scientists described some countries’ approaches as “an unfortunate laboratory to study the virus” and a “macabre” opportunity to see what worked, recordings obtained by The Associated Press show. Yet in public, the U.N. health agency lauded governments for their responses.
Biden has promised to overturn President Donald Trump’s decision in June to cut off funds to WHO and withdraw the U.S. WHO has also bowed to demands from member countries for an independent panel to review its management of the pandemic response, and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Monday that the agency welcomed “any and all attempts” to strengthen it “for the sake of the people we serve.”
One of the central dilemmas facing the WHO is that it has no enforcement powers or authority to independently investigate within countries. Instead, the health agency relies on behind-the-scenes talks and the cooperation of member states.
Critics say WHO’s traditional aversion to confronting its member countries has come at a high price. As COVID-19 spread, WHO often shied away from calling out countries, as big donors such as Japan, France and Britain made repeated mistakes, according to dozens of leaked recordings of internal WHO meetings and documents from January to April obtained by The Associated Press.
Some public health experts say WHO’s failure to exert its influence lent credence to countries adopting risky outbreak policies, possibly compromising efforts to stop the virus.
“We need WHO to be bold and to use their political power to name and shame because the consequences are so devastating,” said Sophie Harman, a professor of international politics at Queen Mary University in London. “This is their Spanish flu moment … By not speaking up when countries are doing questionable things, WHO is undermining its own authority while the planet burns.”
Others said it would be politically unwise for WHO to be too outspoken unless countries give the agency more power and the ability to censure countries — an option that Germany and France have recently proposed.
“If Tedros was to take a very aggressive stance toward member countries, there would be repercussions,” said Suerie Moon, co-director of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute of Geneva, referring to WHO’s director-general.
WHO spokeswoman Farah Dakhlallah said that since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, “WHO officials have had and continue to have, frank and open discussions with government counterparts … We are proud of an organizational culture that fosters candid discussion with the aim of reaching life-saving solutions.”
One of the scientists in the meetings, emergencies chief Dr. Michael Ryan, also laid out WHO’s approach in answer to a media question March 11 on whether the agency was willing to say which countries weren’t doing enough.
“The answer to that question is, you know who you are,” Ryan said. “The WHO doesn’t interact in public debate or criticize our member states in public. What we try to do is work with our member states constructively.”
It’s not unprecedented, however, for WHO to publicly question its member states. It threatened to close its China office when the country was hiding cases during the SARS outbreak, loudly called for Nigeria to reverse its boycott of the polio vaccine in 2003 and accused Tanzania of not sharing enough information about an Ebola epidemic last year.
The review of WHO’s role in the pandemic comes at a critical time because the agency is now tasked with helping to buy and distribute coronavirus vaccines around the world once any prove effective, especially to poorer nations. Some countries, including the U.S. and Russia, have refused to join the effort, but on Sunday, WHO chief scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan said she hoped Biden’s election would “open the door” to U.S. inclusion.
WHO’s reticence to call out countries started with China, as the AP earlier reported. Despite a January meeting between Tedros and Chinese President Xi Jinping, information on the outbreak was still sparse throughout February. Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead for COVID-19, noted that the agency lacked “enough detail to say what has worked and what hasn’t.”
Yet at a media briefing shortly afterwards, Tedros said, “China is doing many good things that are slowing the virus and the facts speak for themselves.”
Also in February, WHO scientists were concerned about Japan. On Feb. 1, a passenger who disembarked the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Hong Kong tested positive for the coronavirus. At the ship’s next stop in Yokohama, 10 more cases were found and authorities put all 3,711 people on board under lockdown.
Ryan told reporters at the time: “Let’s be careful here not to overreact.” But on Feb. 10, the case count nearly doubled overnight.
“(That’s) not surprising given the nature of the response of the investigation,” Ryan said at an internal meeting, saying only a small number of epidemiologists had been assigned to the outbreak. “If you double the number of cases in a ship in a day, something is not right.”
Dr. Thomas Grein, WHO’s chief of acute events management team, reported to his colleagues that WHO had discussed the outbreak with their Japanese counterparts, but failed to glean much useful information.
“It’s a very, very sensitive issue and we need to tread carefully,” he warned.
Although WHO was keenly aware the situation was deteriorating, scientists said the outbreak could help in understanding COVID-19 transmission patterns.
“(It’s) unfortunate, but a useful opportunity to study the natural history of the virus,” Ryan said.
Several days later, Japanese outbreak specialist Dr. Kentaro Iwata went aboard the Diamond Princess and called the response “completely chaotic.” Soon afterward, WHO announced more than half of the world’s known COVID-19 cases outside China were aboard the Diamond Princess.
“It was very obvious on that cruise ship that things were going badly wrong and WHO should have said something,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the WHO Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights at Georgetown University. “When what countries are doing is flat-out wrong, we need WHO to say so.”
While WHO wasn’t specific, Tedros said on Feb. 26: “One of the biggest challenges we face is that too many affected countries are still not sharing data with WHO.”
Throughout February and March, COVID-19 triggered outbreaks in South Korea, Singapore, Iran and elsewhere. The virus also gained a foothold in Italy, turning Europe into the epicenter of the pandemic.
At WHO, officials worried in internal meetings about the lack of information from European member states. Grein said WHO’s efforts to get more detail about the spiraling outbreaks had “spectacularly failed.”
Yet on March 8, Tedros tweeted that “the government & the people of Italy are taking bold, courageous steps aimed at slowing the spread of the #coronavirus & protecting their country & world.” Three days later, Tedros declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic, saying the announcement was made partly due to “alarming levels of inaction” by countries, which he didn’t name.
Georgetown University’s Gostin said WHO should be obligated to publicly report when countries aren’t sharing enough data.
“If a country is not providing vital epidemiological or biological information, then WHO and the world are flying blind in an outbreak and we can’t have that,” he said.
WHO also complained in private about Western countries hoarding scarce pandemic supplies.
“We had the terrible situation yesterday with (protective personal equipment) where all the supplies were requisitioned in France and we lost access,” Ryan told his colleagues. He said WHO needed to pressure countries and companies to avoid similar situations.
As countries across Europe moved to adopt social distancing measures and cancel mass gatherings in early March, Ryan noticed one country didn’t: Britain.
“There isn’t a single sports event in Europe and yet all of the Premier League matches in the U.K. are to go ahead as normal,” he said. Ryan described Britain’s pandemic strategy as “problematic” after hearing the U.K.’s chief scientific officer publicly say the country was aiming for herd immunity.
“For that to happen, hundreds of thousands and millions of older people are going to become infected and there is just going to be so much death,” Ryan said. Still, he said, the different approaches to tackling COVID-19 globally could prove to be “a massive ecological study” that would allow WHO to document what worked best.
“It’s macabre in some ways, but it’s reality,” he said.
Going forward, WHO’s role in the continued unfolding of the pandemic will depend in part on the panel review. Harman, the expert from Queen Mary University, sympathized that WHO had enormous responsibility in the early months of COVID-19, but said even greater challenges loom now.
“This is not an experiment for WHO to learn lessons for the future, the stakes are too high for that,” she said. “With the next wave of the pandemic, I think the time for quiet diplomacy has passed.”
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A vaccine for the coronavirus has proved 90% effective after early trials, according to its joint developers Pfizer and BioNTech. It’s raised hopes that the global coronavirus pandemic can be brought under control in the coming months – but as Henry Ridgwell reports, the nature of the vaccine means less developed health systems face major challenges in rolling out any inoculation programs.Camera: Henry Ridgwell
Producer: Henry Ridgwell, Mary Cieslak
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For the first time, the United States Army has its own museum. The National Museum of the United States Army opens on Veterans Day Wednesday in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. The Army is the only U.S. military service that did not have a national museum. Located 32 kilometers from Washington, D.C., the museum traces the history of the country’s oldest military service, which began 245 years ago in 1775.The exterior of the National Museum of the United States Army at twilight. The simplicity and sharpness of the exterior allows reflections to be cast on the façade transforming the character of the building through every season and time of day.The large five-story complex features interactive and dramatic historical exhibits, along with thousands of documents, images, artwork and artifacts, big and small. They include an iconic Sherman tank used in World War II, a helicopter from the Vietnam War, an armored personnel carrier from the Iraq War in 2003, and a saddle for horseback riding by Army special forces in the mountains of Afghanistan in 2001. A life-size exhibit illustrates American forces storming the beaches of Normandy on D-Day during World War II. Helmets, swords and medals are also featured, and even a watch that was found in a damaged section of the Pentagon after the 9/11 attacks.Cast figures, lighting effects, imagery, and sounds of distant battle recreate a setting based on a famous photograph of the Meuse-Argonne Allied Offensive during World War I.Although many exhibits focus on wartime activities, the museum also highlights peacekeeping operations and humanitarian missions around the world, Tammy Call, director of the museum, told VOA. A major exhibit called Soldier Stories tells “the individual soldier story” as part of the comprehensive history, explained Call, a civilian who is an Army veteran, “and so it allows us to get very personal and reflective,” she added. Jack Querfeld, director of internal affairs at the American Legion headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana, was impressed that the various battles shown in the exhibits “put a human face on it, instead of just saying we fought here.” “The National Army Museum will be a place for members of the total Army family to gather and share their stories,” said Ryan D. McCarthy, secretary of the Army. That means a lot to B.J. Lawrence, executive director for the Washington, D.C., office of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Lawrence was an Army sergeant in South Korea in the early 1980s.The “Huey” was the iconic helicopter of the Vietnam War. The helicopters arrived in Vietnam in 1962 as aerial ambulances.He said the museum is “phenomenal,” and as he toured the complex, he found “the exhibits that pertain to the Korean War had an especially touching effect on me.” “I continue to advocate to bring the soldiers home that were missing in action,” Lawrence said. Querfeld said, “I think the museum will help children now and those from generations to come understand what their military forefathers experienced.” The museum “tells us how important military service is to our nation,” Lawrence said. “And it helps to explain and put into perspective why the American people enjoy the freedoms they do today.”
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ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of video-sharing app TikTok, filed a petition late Tuesday with a U.S. Appeals Court challenging a Trump administration order set to take effect Thursday requiring it to divest TikTok. President Donald Trump in an Aug. 14 order directed ByteDance to divest the app within 90 days, which falls on Thursday. “Facing continual new requests and no clarity on whether our proposed solutions would be accepted, we requested the 30-day extension that is expressly permitted in the August 14 order,” TikTok said in a statement. “Without an extension in hand, we have no choice but to file a petition in court to defend our rights,” the company said. FILE – Women wearing masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus chat as they pass by the headquarters of ByteDance, owners of TikTok, in Beijing, China, Aug. 7, 2020.The White House and Treasury declined to comment. The Justice Department did not immediately comment. The Trump administration contends TikTok poses national security concerns as the personal data of U.S. users could be obtained by China’s government. TikTok, which has over 100 million U.S. users, denies the allegations. The petition names Trump, Attorney General William Barr, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), the inter-agency panel that reviews certain transactions involving foreign investment on national security concerns. It says the CFIUS action and Trump order “seek to compel the wholesale divestment of TikTok, a multibillion-dollar business built on technology developed by” ByteDance “based on the government’s purported national security review of a three-year-old transaction that involved a different business.” That order was based on a government review of ByteDance’s 2017 acquisition of U.S. social media app Musical.ly, which ByteDance merged into TikTok. Separate restrictions on TikTok from the U.S. Commerce Department have been blocked by federal courts, including restrictions on transactions that were scheduled to take effect Thursday that TikTok warned could effectively ban the app’s use in the United States. Talks have been ongoing to finalize a preliminary deal for Walmart Inc and Oracle Corp to take stakes in a new company to oversee U.S. operations. Trump has said the deal had his “blessing.”
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The United States on Monday reported more than 1 million new cases of COVID-19 in just the first 10 days of November.The U.S. has recorded over 10 million cases of COVID-19 — the highest of any country in the world — according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.Midwestern states are being hit the hardest, with hospitalization rates in the region reaching record highs. The COVID-19 Tracking Project said more than 59,000 people were hospitalized nationwide on Monday.On the same day that the U.S. recorded this spike, two U.S. drug companies announced developments in the fight against the virus.Pfizer announced that its experimental vaccine was 90% effective in preventing the virus in participants without evidence of prior infection.U.S.-based drugmaker Eli Lilly and Canadian-based biotech firm AbCellera announced a new antibody drug known as bamlanivimab. It is part of a class of treatments known as monoclonal antibodies, which are made to act as immune cells that scientists hope can fight off the virus. The antibody therapy is similar to one given to U.S. President Donald Trump after he tested positive for COVID-19 early last month.The FDA has approved the antibody drug for people 12 and older who are at risk of developing a serious form of COVID-19.FILE – A man holds a mock syringe as demonstrators protest against Sao Paulo state governor Joao Doria and China’s Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Nov. 1, 2020.Just hours after news of a breakthrough in the effort to develop a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine, Brazil halted late-stage clinical trials of another potential vaccine.The country’s health regulator, Anvisa, announced Monday that it was pausing tests of CoronaVac, developed by Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac, after an “adverse, serious event” with a volunteer participant. The event occurred on October 29, but the statement did not go into any other details.The clinical trials in Brazil are being conducted by Sao Paulo-based research institute Butantan. Dimas Covas, the head of the state-run institute, told a local television station that a volunteer had died but that the death was not due to the vaccine.The Sinovac vaccine is the third to be put on hold after a volunteer became ill after being inoculated. U.S. pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson put a hold on its late-stage clinical trials of its COVID-19 vaccine last month, while another U.S.-based drugmaker, AstraZeneca, halted its late-stage trial of a vaccine developed with the University of Oxford in September after a volunteer in Britain was diagnosed with transverse myelitis, an inflammatory syndrome that affects the spinal cord and is often sparked by viral infections.It is not uncommon for clinical trials to be suspended if a volunteer falls ill so that organizers can determine whether the illness is due to the vaccine. But Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who has often expressed mistrust of China, has openly doubted the effectiveness of the Sinovac vaccine and has insisted that his government will not purchase the drug.People wait next to their cars outside the Cotugno hospital as the battle with the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) intensifies, in Naples, Italy, Nov. 9, 2020.Cases spike in EuropeCOVID-19 infections have spiked in other parts of the world, including in Europe, where some governments have instituted lockdown measures to slow the spread of the virus. Globally the number of confirmed cases is more than 50 million, with 1.2 million deaths and 33 million people recovered.According to The Associated Press, intensive care units in France, Italy and Spain are low on hospital beds and staff as case numbers continue to increase.The situation is worsening in Italy, where five more regions have been placed in the government’s so-called “orange” zone of its new three-tiered system that imposes various degrees of restrictions.The system splits Italy’s 20 regions into three zones — red, orange and yellow — with red indicating the most restricted areas and yellow the least restricted.Abruzzo, Umbria, Tuscany, Liguria and Basilicata will join the southern regions of Puglia and Sicily in the orange, or medium, zone; under this zone, residents can move freely within their towns or cities, but cannot leave them, while bars and restaurants are limited to delivery and takeout service.The northern province of Bolzano has been placed in the red zone, joining its sister regions of Lombardy, Piedmont, Valle d’Aosta and the southern region of Calabria. Residents in these zones will not be allowed to leave their homes except for work or medical reasons.All of Italy is under a curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., while museums and shopping centers are closed on the weekends and high school classes switch from in-person to online.Italy has 960,373 confirmed novel coronavirus cases, including 41,750 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
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