Now that plans to create a European Super League comprising 12 of the continent’s elite clubs have collapsed, officials from the English, Italian and Spanish leagues are considering what to do in the aftermath.Six clubs from Britain (Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea), three from Spain (Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid) and three from Italy (AC Milan, Inter Milan and Juventus) signed up for the breakaway European Super League, whose formation was announced Monday.Hours after that announcement, however, several English teams announced they were no longer going to take part. The idea was completely dropped within 48 hours, driven largely by fan outrage.’Dirty dozen’Fans called the 12 teams in the Super League “the dirty dozen.” They were upset that teams would not have to win games to play in the league’s tournament — their places would be guaranteed. To play in the Champions League, teams must do well the year before.England’s Premier League is looking at possibly sanctioning club officials in the breakaway teams, The Associated Press reported. Officials are also looking at removing club executives from key league positions.The league could also consider expelling teams that try to break away.Tottenham fans protest the planned creation of a European Super League, outside the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium ahead of the English Premier League football match between Tottenham Hotspur and Southampton in London, April 21, 2021.Most of the British teams have apologized to fans.The Italian soccer federation said it would not punish Italian teams involved in the breakaway, saying it could not punish something that didn’t happen.The president of Spain’s LaLiga said Spanish teams would probably not be punished.”The most important thing is these clubs have been sanctioned by their own fans,” Javier Tebas said in Madrid on Thursday. “Rather than sanctions, we are looking at protective measures so that this doesn’t happen again. They haven’t abandoned LaLiga. They abandoned the idea of European competition.”European Super League organizers said the new competition would rival but not replace existing domestic leagues and European tournaments, such as the UEFA Champions League.Motivation? MoneySports finance analyst Borja Garcia of Britain’s Loughborough University said the primary motivation for the new league was money.”Football has never been a very good business for club owners until a few years ago,” Garcia told VOA. “But now, of course, comes the pandemic. Manchester United, Manchester City, Real Madrid — almost every club in Europe and around the world — are in massive debt. But the big clubs are in more debt because they have more salaries to pay. They depend more on audiences.”So, if I had to pick one [reason], I think it is indeed the level of debt that the pandemic has created in European football. But probably it is fair to say that that is not the cause of everything, but rather, an accelerator.”
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Day: April 22, 2021
NASA makes history with its flying robot on Mars, a new commander takes the helm of the International Space Station, and the European Space Agency looks for solutions to the problem of space junk. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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The Syrian government and the country’s last rebel-controlled enclave received their first doses of COVID-19 vaccines Thursday.In a joint statement, UNICEF, the World Health Organization and the GAVI vaccine alliance announced the delivery of 200,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Syria’s government and another 53,800 to the opposition-held area in the northwest.“The delivery is a ray of light for the people of Syria,” the statement said. “It will help health workers to continue delivering life-saving services in an already exhausted health system as a result of the decade-long war.”Although fighting has largely subsided since the March 2020 cease-fire, Syria’s civil war has complicated the delivery of the vaccines, forcing most of them to be shipped through Damascus for government-controlled areas while the rest are routed through the border with Turkey.Western non-governmental organizations have said that Syria’s logistical challenges of coordinating vaccinations in combat zones are worsened by the international financial sanctions that have been imposed on the country.The Middle Eastern country experienced a surge in coronavirus infections in February after being hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic last year.The Syrian government reported 51,580 cases of COVID-19 Thursday, but U.N. officials say the number is probably higher due to the limited number of testing kits.
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President Joe Biden has kicked off a two-day virtual global Summit on Climate with a pledge to substantially reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 2030 and double annual climate change funding to developing countries by 2024. Forty world leaders as well as climate activists and representatives of international organizations are attending the summit, as VOA’s White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara reports.
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Ghanaian social media users were in a state of ecstasy earlier this month when the U.S. social networking service, Twitter, announced it was setting up its first African office in Ghana. President Nana Akufo-Addo described the move as “excellent news.” A statement by Twitter said Ghana’s democratic credentials and support for free speech and online freedoms made it the company’s choice. Twitter joins Google and other IT firms with offices in Ghana. But why are top IT firms like Twitter choosing the West African country instead of other African nations? Ghana’s minister of communications and digitalization, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, says apart from good governance, the country has set high standards for doing business. “We’re the envy and the toast of many countries around the world. We hold ourselves to high standards,” she said. “The pull factor with Twitter here [is] if their business thrives, other global tec.h giants will also say Ghana is not such a bad place to locate your business on the continent after all.” According to Hootsuite’s Digital 2021 Report, there were 14.7 million internet users in Ghana in January 2020 while internet use in the country stood at 48 percent. Ghana also has six million social media users. For his part, the head of the international non-profit Hacklab Foundation, Foster Akugri, says Ghana’s attraction for tech giants is not simply about the numbers. He said the firms have taken note that the secretariat of the African Continental Free Trade Area is located in Accra. “The gateway to Africa is Ghana. So, for Twitter to have chosen Ghana, I believe it’s very strategic. As a multinational I believe you want to be closer to where the decisions are made,” he said.Meanwhile, Twitter is looking to fill jobs in Ghana, including positions in engineering and marketing. All this has spurred Ghanaians to look forward to scoring another first on the continent in hopes of bringing more opportunities and development to the country.
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The U.S space agency NASA says its Perseverance rover has converted carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Martian atmosphere to oxygen, a critical step toward future human exploration of Mars.
NASA on Monday said a toaster-size, experimental instrument on the rover called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE), produced about 5.4 grams of oxygen in an hour — enough to keep an astronaut healthy for about 10 minutes.
NASA says in regular operation, MOXIE is designed to produce up to 10 grams of oxygen in an hour.
The space agency says MOXIE is an “exploration technology investigation,” like the Ingenuity helicopter and other instruments taken to Mars along with the Perseverance rover. In other words, it is designed to test a certain technology that, if successful, will be applied on a larger scale in future missions on the Red Planet.
NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) administrator Jim Reuter says there are still more tests for MOXIE to pass, but the results of the initial demonstration show a lot of promise toward the goal of one day seeing humans on Mars,
Reuter said oxygen is also a key ingredient in rocket propellant and future Mars missions will have to produce it there to make the trip home.
NASA says MOXIE works by separating oxygen atoms from carbon dioxide molecules, which are made up of one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms through a process that involves heating them to 800 degrees Celsius. The Martian atmosphere is 96% carbon dioxide.
The agency says a hypothetical future mission would require creating about one ton of oxygen for four astronauts to live and work on Mars for a year. About 25 tons would be needed to create the propellant needed to get them home.
The agency says a larger, more powerful descendant of MOXIE, weighing about a ton, would be required to meet those needs.
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The Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California, Wednesday issued a statement disavowing a study being circulated online that claims face masks are “worthless” against COVID-19.
The report, “Facemasks in the COVID-19 era: A health hypothesis,” was published in November in the journal Medical Hypotheses. Its author, Baruch Vainshelboim, claims that “scientific evidence supporting facemasks’ efficacy is lacking” while “adverse physiological, psychological and health effects are established.”
Vainshelboim’s credentials are cited as “Cardiology Division, Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System/Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, United States.”
But Stanford’s statement says that description is inaccurate and has asked for a correction.
Stanford says Vainshelboim had no affiliation with the school at the time of the study’s publication and his only affiliation was a one-year term as a visiting scholar “on matters unrelated to this paper.”
The school said it strongly supports the use of masks to control the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
Vainshelboim identifies himself in his LinkedIn profile as a clinical exercise physiologist, with a doctorate from the University of Porto in Portugal.
The study has been circulating this week on right wing websites and media, including The Gateway Pundit and The California Globe, and has been shared on social media sites Facebook and Twitter by conservatives, including Ohio Republican U.S. Senate candidate Josh Mandel.
The study has also been debunked by the Associated Press news agency and Politfact, a fact-checking website affiliated with the Florida-based Poynter Institute for Media Studies.
Representatives from both the VA Palo Alto Health Care System and Stanford’s medical school told AP Vainshelboim does not work at either institution.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security senior scholar Dr. Amesh Adalja told Poltifact the study “does not provide any strong evidence for the statement,” that masks are inefficient at preventing the spread of the infection.
“There has never been a question that a mask decreases the chance a symptomatic person spreads COVID,” Adalja said.
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India reported 314,835 new COVID-19 infections Thursday, the highest one-day total posted by any nation during the yearlong global pandemic.By contrast, the United States posted 300,310 single day new cases on Jan. 2, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.India, the world’s second-most populous country, is dealing with a second wave of infections that has pushed the country’s health care system to the brink of collapse, with hospitals near capacity and facing an acute shortage of oxygen canisters. The oxygen shortage is so acute that the high court in the capital, New Delhi, ordered the national government to divert oxygen from industrial use to hospitals.“Beg, borrow or steal,” the judges said in response to a petition by a New Delhi hospital.Thursday is the eighth consecutive day India has posted more than 200,000 new coronavirus cases, pushing the country’s total number of infections to well over 15.9 million, second only behind the 31.8 million in the United States. India’s health ministry also revealed that 2,104 people died Thursday, raising the overall death toll to 184,657, as the current surge has overwhelmed cemeteries and crematories.Experts have blamed the surge on the spread of more contagious variants of the virus, as well as lifting restrictions on large crowds when the outbreak appeared to be under control earlier this year. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has come under fire for holding packed political rallies and allowing an annual Hindu religious festival that attracted millions of pilgrims.The latest figures from Johns Hopkins puts the total number of COVID-19 infections at 143,863,870, including more than 3 million deaths. In addition to the total number of confirmed cases, the U.S. leads in the number of total fatalities with 569,402.A preliminary study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine shows the two-shot vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna do not pose any serious risk during pregnancy.The study used data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s smartphone-based vaccine surveillance system, where participants complete regular surveys about their health and any side effects they may be experiencing after being inoculated. More than 35,000 pregnant women who received either vaccine between December 14, 2020 and February 28, 2021 reported the same general side effects experienced by non-pregnant women, including pain at the injection site, fatigue, headaches and muscle pain.
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As teenage pregnancies soared during coronavirus lockdowns in Africa’s largest urban slum, Kibera, teachers and parents looked for a way to reduce the problem. Their idea was to form a women’s football (soccer) club, to direct their energy in a healthy way, and they became so good they are about to join Kenya’s professional women’s soccer league. Brenda Mulinya reports from Nairobi.
Camera: Robert Lutta
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Greta Thunberg turned 18 in January, but she’s already made peace with her future: While most college students will change their concentrations multiple times, the Swedish high school student says climate change activism will be her life’s mission.”In a perfect world, there wouldn’t need to be a climate activist, but unfortunately, there will probably still be a need for climate activists for quite some time,” she said. “I think I will be doing this for as long as there is a need for people to do this.”Thunberg’s activism and message is brought to life in a new docuseries, Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World. The three-part series, a co-production between PBS and BBC Studios premiering Thursday on Earth Day, follows the then-16-year-old as she took a gap year from school in 2019 to meet with scientists around the world and spearhead awareness about climate change.The docuseries shows her visiting people and places that have been distinctly affected by the heating of the Earth, such as Canada’s Athabasca Glacier, a town in California burned by wildfires and the indigenous Sami herders in Sweden where reindeer face starvation. She even sails across the North Atlantic during the ocean’s busiest season to experience how carbon dioxide emissions from ships have altered the chemistry of the ocean.A Year to Change the World also gives a behind-the-scenes look at her speaking at massive rallies, and also reveals how her momentum was significantly slowed by the worldwide coronavirus pandemic. Thunberg, a 2020 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, said while she grew even more knowledgeable about climate change, there were moments that surprised her, like meeting with Polish coal miners.”I had expected them to not be willing to change, but they were willing to change. They wanted to live in a more sustainable world… as long as they were not left behind,” said Thunberg. “I’ve met with world leaders who are less eager to change.”FILE – Swedish teenage environmental activist Greta Thunberg appears on a postal stamp in her native Sweden that is part of a series focusing on the environment, in Stockholm, Jan. 13, 2021.And it’s many of those heads of government that have positioned Thunberg as a political lighting rod and inadvertently raised her global profile. Brazil’s conservative president Jair Bolsonaro has called her a “brat,” Russian President Vladimir Putin has said she doesn’t understand that the “modern world is complex,” and former president Donald Trump mentioned her at rallies, which resulted in cascades of boos. He even famously tweeted, “Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill, Greta, Chill!”Thunberg, the youngest person ever to receive Time’s Person of the Year honor in 2019, said she doesn’t fully understand why she’s on the radar of government officials, but it shows that the message of climate change is reaching far and wide.”When people like that do these kinds of things and say these kinds of things, of course, it’s very hilarious,” said Thunberg. “It’s a sign that we are doing something good, that we are having an impact, so that we take it as a compliment.”ButFILE – A mural on the side of a building depicting Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is shown in San Francisco, March 4, 2021.says she believes what’s most intriguing about the new project is what the filmmakers weren’t able to include. “I think maybe the most interesting thing about the documentary series is what didn’t get into the series. I don’t know how many fashion companies like H&M, car companies like Volkswagen, oil companies like Shell and airlines and so on that we asked for interviews, but they all refused consistently. And that, I think is very interesting — it says a lot about them.”While U.S. PBS stations and BBC Earth in Canada air the docuseries Thursday, Thunberg will be at her school in Sweden, which re-opened in-person classes to one day a week. She’ll also use Earth Day to testify virtually to the U.S. Congress, along with scientists, about fossil fuel subsidies.Thunberg says she understands that changing the world — or even getting her fellow global citizens to care about how’s it’s changing — will not happen overnight, but she wants everyone to be aware about how their daily actions can affect future generations.”I’m not telling anyone to care,” said Thunberg. “But if you want yourself and your children and grandchildren to be able to live in a prosperous world and in a world where they can enjoy all the things in life that you have gotten to enjoy, then you should care.But of course, that’s up to you. I’m not telling you to do something — saving the world is voluntary.”
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