The singer for Italy’s Eurovision Song Contest winning rockers Maneskin will take a voluntary drug test after denying speculation that he was snorting cocaine during the broadcast, organizers said Sunday. Red lederhosen-clad vocalist Damiano David will be tested after going back to Italy, following viral footage of him leaning over a table in the hospitality area of the competition in Rotterdam. “We are aware of the speculation surrounding the video clip of the Italian winners of the Eurovision Song Contest in the Green Room last night,” the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) said in a statement. “The band have strongly refuted the allegations of drug use and the singer in question will take a voluntary drug test after arriving home,” it added. “This was requested by them last night but could not be immediately organized by the EBU.” The Maneskin singer was asked about the footage during the winners’ press conference early on Sunday, and said he had been looking down because guitarist Thomas Raggi had broken a glass. “I don’t use drugs. Please, guys. Don’t say that really, no cocaine. Please, don’t say that,” David said. The band later said on their Instagram stories that they were “ready to get tested because we have nothing to hide.” “We are really shocked about what some people are saying about Damiano doing drugs. We really are AGAINST drugs and we never used cocaine,” they said. The EBU said evidence at the scene backed up David’s account about the glass smashing. “The band, their management and head of delegation have informed us that no drugs were present in the Green Room and explained that a glass was broken at their table and it was being cleared by the singer,” its statement said. “The EBU can confirm broken glass was found after an on site check. We are still looking at footage carefully and will update with further information in due course.” Maneskin fought off stiff competition from France and Switzerland, surging to victory on the back of the public vote to win with 524 points.
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Day: May 23, 2021
Italy woke up Sunday to news that a glam rock band who got their start busking on Rome’s main shopping drag had won the Eurovision Song Contest and was bringing next year’s competition back to the place where Europe’s song contests began. From the premier’s office on down, congratulations poured in Sunday from the Italian establishment for the rather anti-establishment group Maneskin, giving Italy a sorely needed boost after a dreadful year as one of the countries worst hit by the coronavirus. The band was the bookmakers’ favorite going into the Eurovision finale and sealed the win early Sunday with the highest popular vote in the enormously entertaining, and incredibly kitsch, annual song festival. “We are out of our minds!” Florence’s Uffizi Galleries tweeted, echoing Maneskin’s winning song lyrics, along with an image of a Caravaggio Medusa and the hashtag #Uffizirock. Maneskin, Danish for “moonlight” and a tribute to bass player Victoria De Angelis’ Danish ancestry, won with a total of 529 points. France was second while Switzerland, which led after national juries had voted, finished third. “Rock’n’roll never dies, tonight we made history. We love u,” the band tweeted before heading back home from Rotterdam, Netherlands, where this year’s contest was held. The band got its start performing on Via del Corso, the main commercial thoroughfare in downtown Rome. Their scrappy performances in front of a Geox store were a far cry from the over-the-top, flame-throwing extravaganza Saturday night that literally split lead singer Damiano David’s pants. David told a news conference this week that starting out on the street was embarrassing, since the group had to contend with other musicians vying for the same prized piece of sidewalk while neighbors complained about the noise. “They were always calling the police,” De Angelis said, laughing. Maneskin’s win was only Italy’s third victory in the contest and the first since Toto Cutugno took the honor in 1990. The victory means Italy will host next year’s competition, with cities bidding for the honor. Launched in 1956 to foster unity after World War II, Eurovision evolved over the years from a bland ballad-fest to a campy, feel-good extravaganza. It has grown from seven countries to include more than 40, including non-European nations such as Israel and far-away Australia. Legend has it that Eurovision got its inspiration from Italy’s Sanremo Music Festival, which began in 1951 as a post-war effort to boost Italian culture and the economy of the Ligurian coastal city that has housed it ever since. Perhaps best known for having launched the likes of Andrea Boccelli and one of Italy’s most famous songs “Nel blu, dipinto di blu” — popularly known as “Volare” — the Sanremo festival usually picks Italy’s official selection for the Eurovision contest. Maneskin won Sanremo this year with the same song, “Zitti e Buoni” (“Quiet and good”) that it performed Saturday night in Rotterdam.
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Ending the COVID-19 pandemic and preventing future pandemics is expected to dominate discussions during this week’s 74th World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization. The session will also address other pressing global health issues.The 2021 World Health Assembly will be held virtually, from tomorrow (May 24) through June 1. This in and of itself is aimed at sending a strong message that it still is not safe for large groups of people to gather physically. More than 2,750 people so far have registered to attend the virtual event. WHO declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic and a global International public health emergency on March 11, 2020. Since then, COVID-19 cases have increased fortyfold to 162 million, including more than 3.3 million deaths. Discussions on a so-called pandemic treaty to better prepare for and prevent global infectious outbreaks is expected to take center stage at the global assembly. WHO chief legal officer Steven Solomon says drafting a treaty would be a long process. He says delegates have not decided whether negotiations on a treaty should be started. He says a legally binding pandemic convention would cover both substantive issues, which include equitable sharing of materials such as vaccines and diagnoses, and structural ones. “Structurally, the elements that often come up are issues of enforcement mechanisms, compliance mechanisms, monitoring mechanisms, incentives and disincentives. There are clearly issues of governance and how that would work under treaty institutions, and financing,” he said.The assembly will face the largest agenda ever over the coming eight days, with more than 72 global health issues under examination. Questions of vaccine equity will be central to these discussions — wealthy countries are making great strides in vaccinating their populations and returning to a semblance of normal life but poor countries are not. WHO warns vaccine inequity threatens ending the pandemic and global recovery from the pandemic. As in previous years, the issue of granting Taiwan observer status at the WHA will come up for debate at the opening session. China claims Taiwan as one of its provinces and has blocked Taiwan’s participation since 2016. Under Beijing’s “One China Policy,” the Chinese Communist Party asserts sovereignty over Taiwan. This year, 13 WHO member states, including the United States, have called for Taiwan to be allowed to take part in proceedings. They say Taiwan has great insight on tackling the pandemic and would have a lot to contribute. Other significant issues to be addressed include the eradication of polio, speeding action on antimicrobial resistance, and considering WHO’s global strategy on health, environment and climate change.
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it is investigating reports that young people have developed myocarditis, or heart inflammation, after being inoculated with a COVID-19 vaccine.The agency’s vaccine safety group said in a recent report that there have been “relatively few reports“ of the heart inflammation, but most tended to occur in male teenagers and young adults, usually after a second vaccine dose.“Most cases appear to be mild, and follow-up of cases is ongoing,” the safety group said.In another development, two doses of the COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech or AstraZeneca are about as effective against the coronavirus variant first found in India as they are against the variant first found in England, according to a study by Public Health England announced Saturday.The study found that Pfizer’s vaccine is 88% effective against B.1.617.2, or the Indian variant, and 93% effective against B.1.1.7, now known as the Kent variant. AstraZeneca’s vaccine is 60% against the Indian variant and 66% effective against the English variant.In both cases, the effectiveness was measured two weeks after the second shot and against symptomatic disease. The Kent variant is the dominant strain in England but health officials fear the Indian strain may outpace it.In England, health authorities have stretched the time between the two doses to as much as three months in order to get more people vaccinated and stop the coronavirus in its tracks. Against the variants, though, two shots are better than one, so for clinically vulnerable people or those older than 50, the period between the two shots will be cut to eight weeks.“I’m increasingly confident that we’re on track for the road map [to reopening], because this data shows that the vaccine, after two doses, works just as effectively [against the Indian variant],” Health Secretary Matt Hancock told broadcasters.Kaiser Health News reported that during the pandemic many older people have become “physically and cognitively debilitated and less able to take care of themselves.”While no large-scale study has recorded the extent of the problem, Kaiser said doctors and physical therapists are reporting that seniors are losing muscle mass and strength, resulting in problems with mobility and balance.“What I’d love to see is a national effort, maybe by the CDC, focused on helping older people overcome these kinds of impairments,” Linda Teodosio, a physical therapist and division rehabilitation manager in Bayada Home Healthcare’s Towson, Maryland, office told Kaiser.India casesOn Sunday, India’s health ministry reported 240,842 new COVID infections and nearly 4,000 deaths from the virus in the previous 24-hour period.The Indian government said Saturday that while COVID-19 infections remain high as they spread to overburdened rural areas, the infections are stabilizing in some parts of the country.As India struggles with a faltering health care system and vaccine shortages, experts have warned of a third wave of infections in coming months.Johns Hopkins University said early Sunday there are 166.7 million global COVID-19 infections. The U.S. has 33.1 million, followed by India with 26 million. Brazil is ranked third with 16 million.
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Yuan Longping, a Chinese scientist who developed higher-yield rice varieties that helped feed people around the world, died Saturday at a hospital in the southern city of Changsha, the Xinhua News agency reported. He was 91.Yuan spent his life researching rice and was a household name in China, known by the nickname “Father of Hybrid Rice.” Worldwide, a fifth of all rice now comes from species created by hybrid rice following Yuan’s breakthrough discoveries, according to the website of the World Food Prize, which he won in 2004.On Saturday afternoon, large crowds honored the scientist by marching past the hospital in Hunan province where he died, local media reported, calling out phrases such as: “Grandpa Ye, have a good journey!”In the 1970s, Yuan achieved the breakthroughs that would make him famous. He developed a hybrid strain of rice that recorded an annual yield 20% higher than existing varieties — meaning it could feed an extra 70 million people a year, according to Xinhua.His work helped transform China from “food deficiency to food security” within three decades, according to the World Food Prize, which was created by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman Borlaug in 1986 to recognize scientists and others who have improved the quality and availability of food.Yuan and his team worked with dozens of countries around the world to address issues of food security as well as malnutrition.In his later years, Yuan did not stop researching. In 2017, working with a Hunan agricultural school, he helped create a strain of low-cadmium indica rice for areas suffering from heavy metal pollution, reducing the amount of cadmium in rice by more than 90%.
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Move over sequins, disco beats and power ballads. A four-piece band of Italian rockers won the Eurovision Song Contest in the early hours of Sunday.Maneskin’s win was only the third victory for Italy in the immensely popular contest and the first since Toto Cutugno took the honor in 1990.Italy, the bookmakers’ favorite, trailed Switzerland, France and Malta after the national juries delivered their votes but were propelled to victory by votes from the viewing public.Ahead of the show, crowds gathered outside the Ahoy arena in the Dutch city of Rotterdam. Drag queens mingled with families as a man in a gold suit waited to get into the venue.The hugely popular music festival that oozes flamboyance is seen as a significant step toward a post-pandemic return to live entertainment, but not everybody managed to avoid the virus.The popular Icelandic band Dadi og Gagnamagnid, known for its kitsch dance moves and green leisurewear costumes, is in the final, but can’t perform live because one member tested positive for the virus earlier in the week. Instead, viewers will see a recording of one of the band’s dress rehearsals.”The point was to go and actually experience how it was to compete in Eurovision, and that’s just really not happening,” lead singer Dadi Freyr said from isolation in Rotterdam.While the entertainment world has changed in the pandemic, the Eurovision final formula familiar to its worldwide legion of fans has not. The event is being hosted as usual by the last winner, the Netherlands, except that it won in 2019.After acts from 26 countries perform their songs Saturday night, they are awarded points by panels of music industry experts and by members of the public voting by phone, text message or via the contest’s app. The winner takes home a glass microphone trophy and a potential career boost.For the fans, there is still plenty of the over-the-top spectacle that has become Eurovision’s trademark.Norwegian singer Andreas Haukeland, whose stage name TIX is a reference to growing up with Tourette syndrome, sings his song “Fallen Angel” in a pair of giant white wings while chained to four prancing devils.Cyprus’ Elena Tsagrinou is flanked by four dancers in skintight red costumes as she performs “El Diablo,” a song that ignited protests among Orthodox Christians in the Mediterranean island nation who claim it glorifies satanic worship. Tsagrinou says it’s about an abusive relationship.San Marino has enlisted the help of U.S. rapper Flo Rida to join performer Senhit in her bid to win the title for the first time for the tiny city-state surrounded by Italy.
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