Many Broadway productions are scrambling to resume ticket sales in the coming days to welcome theater-goers this fall after city and state leaders have green-lit a reopening of the Great White Way at full capacity by mid-September.”We remain cautiously optimistic about Broadway’s ability to resume performances this fall and are happy that fans can start buying tickets again,” Charlotte St. Martin, president of the Broadway League, said in a statement Wednesday. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Broadway theaters can reopen Sept. 14 and will be allowed to decide their own entry requirements, like whether people must prove they’ve been vaccinated to attend a show. Selling tickets will allow theaters to gauge interest before stages open, said Robert Mujica, Cuomo’s budget director.”Phantom of the Opera,” Broadway’s longest-running show, announced Wednesday it would resume performances on Oct. 22, with tickets going on sale Friday. More shows are expected to circle return dates in the coming weeks.Actors’ Equity Association, the national labor union representing more than 51,000 actors and stage managers in live theater, said the news meant the theater community is “one step closer to the safe reopening” of Broadway.”We look forward to continuing our conversations with the Broadway League about a safe reopening and know that soon the time will come when members can go back to doing what they do best, creating world-class theater,” said Mary McColl, executive director of Actors’ Equity. The Broadway that reopens will look different. In May, the big budget Disney musical “Frozen” decided not to reopen when Broadway theaters restart, marking the first time an established show had been felled by the coronavirus pandemic. Producers of “Mean Girls” also decided not to restart.But there will be new shows, including Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s “Pass Over” that is slated to reopen the August Wilson Theatre, the same venue “Mean Girls” has vacated. And a Shubert theater has been promised for playwright Keenan Scott II’s play “Thoughts of a Colored Man.” The lifting of all capacity restrictions has long been considered by the industry as crucial to any reopening plan since Broadway economics demand full venue capacity. Some off-Broadway shows have already reopened with limited capacity.All city theaters abruptly closed on March 12, 2020, knocking out all shows, including 16 that were still scheduled to open.Some scheduled spring 2020 shows — like a musical about Michael Jackson and a revival of Neil Simon’s “Plaza Suite” starring Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker — pushed their productions to 2021. But others abandoned their plans, including “Hangmen” and a revival of Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
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Month: May 2021
The Biden administration has agreed to support waiving intellectual property (IP) restrictions on COVID-19 vaccines at the World Trade Organization (WTO), a breakthrough in the global fight against the pandemic that can empower governments to tackle vaccine scarcity and inequity.U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced the administration’s position in a FILE – A logo is seen at the headquarters of the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, June 2, 2020.Biden agrees; now what?Now that Biden has agreed to support the waiver, it doesn’t mean U.S. pharmaceutical companies must start giving away vaccine recipes so developing countries can make their own.The WTO is a consensus-based organization and cannot move forward unless the European Union, which is against the waiver, and everyone else agrees. Once all WTO members agree, the next steps would be for countries to implement it at the national level by removing legal risks that hinder production and supply by alternative producers. To clarify these implementation options, countries must start text-based negotiations at the WTO, going through each item of the complex and multilayered IP legal requirements — a process that could take months, or even years.”I’m not going to put odds on how likely it is to find an agreement,” said WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell, summarizing the WTO closed-door General Council meeting on the TRIPS waiver Wednesday.But he said there was consensus on the need for wider access to COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.”When people begin to voice very clearly their share objectives, it makes it easier to get to ‘yes,’ ” Rockwell said.There is not a single “recipe” for a COVID-19 vaccine — the vaccines are complex in terms of ingredients, manufacturing technology, delivery vehicles, etc., and each vaccine has dozens, if not hundreds, of IPs attached, many of them under patent pending litigation, making the granting of waivers an even more complicated and lengthy process.FILE – Boxes of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine are seen at the McKesson Corp., amid the coronavirus disease outbreak, in Shepherdsville, Ky., March 1, 2021.There are many complex challenges in scaling up COVID-19 vaccine production. The waiver is just one tool and does not offer a blanket solution, said Yuanqiong Hu, a senior legal and policy adviser with Doctors Without Borders, one of the organizations that support the TRIPS waiver.But as an important enabler, Hu added, “the earlier the waiver can be adopted, the sooner its impact can be realized.”If countries are given the permission and know-how to produce vaccines, waiver proponents say, they don’t have to wait in line while pharmaceutical companies fulfill orders from rich countries who have the resources to do so.But even if a full waiver is not approved, proponents are hoping the pressure will become leverage to force vaccine producers to ramp up global manufacturing capacity via additional licensing agreements, or donate or sell doses at a reduced cost.TRIPS waiver opponentsDrug manufacturers, including Pfizer and Moderna, oppose the waiver, saying that easing patent rules FILE – Microsoft founder Bill Gates holds a vaccine for meningitis during a news conference at U.N. headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, May 17, 2011.Another big opponent is Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sponsored Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance — the driving force behind COVAX, the U.N. mechanism to improve low- and middle-income countries’ access to vaccines. Despite more than two decades of philanthropic work to immunize the world’s poor, Gates is a fierce defender of IP protection.On Wednesday, WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala spoke to representatives from developing and developed countries and again urged them to quickly agree on this issue, over which countries have been at odds for six months.The ‘third way’Opponents insist a waiver would not help accelerate vaccine access or address supply chain and logistical constraints. It would still take a long time for governments to set up factories, train staff and procure materials to make vaccines.They say the faster and better way to do it is through technology transfer partnerships and licensing agreements, such as the one between AstraZeneca and the Serum Institute of India, which produced doses for COVAX. The agreement has been halted by the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which wants to prioritize doses for its own populations as it deals with another wave of COVID-19 cases.Licensing agreements, including those between Britain’s AstraZeneca and Brazil’s Fiocruz, or the Chinese company Sinovac Biotech and the Indonesian firm Bio Farma, have shown that middle-income countries have the capacity to produce vaccine doses within months after technology transfer.These licensing agreements and other means of technology transfer have been praised by Okonjo-Iweala as the “third way,” an alternative to vaccine protectionism and waiving IP rights.However, these agreements can include restrictions — for example, geographical limitations on where, when and to whom the doses can be sold. Most bilateral agreements on COVID-19 vaccine production are contract manufacturing agreements through which the contracted entity manufactures on behalf of a licenser that maintains full control over the use of its technology, the volume of production, and where and at what prices vaccines may be supplied.The Biden administration said it would continue to ramp up efforts, working with the private sector and all possible partners to expand vaccine manufacturing and distribution, and increase the raw materials needed to produce the vaccines.VOA’s Katherine Gypson contributed to this report.
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Facebook’s oversight board on Wednesday upheld the social media company’s decision to ban former U.S. President Donald Trump from posting comments to his Facebook and Instagram accounts, a measure imposed after he posted incendiary remarks as hundreds of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6.The quasi-independent panel, however, left open the possibility that Trump could eventually return to the popular website, saying it “was not appropriate for Facebook to impose the indeterminate and standardless penalty of indefinite suspension.” The oversight group gave Facebook executives six months to re-examine the “arbitrary penalty” it imposed the day after the insurrection, when Trump urged followers to confront lawmakers as they certified Joe Biden’s election victory. The review said Facebook executives should decide on another penalty that reflects the “gravity of the violation and the prospect of future harm.” Facebook management responded by saying it “will now consider the board’s decision and determine an action that is clear and proportionate. In the meantime, Mr. Trump’s accounts remain suspended.” Trump reacted angrily at the oversight panel’s decision, saying, “Free Speech has been taken away from the President of the United States because the Radical Left Lunatics are afraid of the truth, but the truth will come out anyway, bigger and stronger than ever before.”
“The People of our Country will not stand for it!” he said. “These corrupt social media companies must pay a political price and must never again be allowed to destroy and decimate our Electoral Process.”
The 45th U.S. president contended that by banning his comments, “what Facebook, Twitter and Google have done is a total disgrace and embarrassment to Our Country.”
Trump, now three-plus months out of office but contemplating another run for the presidency in 2024, unveiled Tuesday morning a new website, “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” to communicate with his supporters. It looked much like a Twitter feed, with posts written by Trump that could be shared on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.During his four years in the White House, Trump broke new ground with thousands of tweets on issues of the day, endorsements of Republican candidates he favored over those who had attacked him, and acerbic comments about opposition Democrats. A letter submitted to the oversight panel on Trump’s behalf asked the board to reconsider the Facebook suspension, contending it was “inconceivable” that either of his January 6 posts “can be viewed as a threat to public safety, or an incitement to violence.” The letter also claimed all “genuine” Trump supporters at the Capitol on January 6 were law-abiding, and that “outside forces” were involved. However, more than 400 people inside the Capitol that day, including many wearing Trump-emblazoned hats and shirts and carrying pro-Trump flags and signs, have been arrested and charged with an array of criminal offenses. The oversight board found that Trump’s two posts in the midst of the chaos at the Capitol that left five people dead severely violated Facebook’s Community Standards and Instagram’s Community Guidelines. “We love you. You’re very special” in the first post, and “great patriots” and “remember this day forever,” in the second post violated Facebook’s rules prohibiting praise or support of people engaged in violence, the review panel said. The oversight group went on to say that “in maintaining an unfounded narrative of electoral fraud and persistent calls to action, Mr. Trump created an environment where a serious risk of violence was possible. At the time of Mr. Trump’s posts, there was a clear, immediate risk of harm, and his words of support for those involved in the riots legitimized their violent actions.” “As president, Mr. Trump had a high level of influence,” the panel concluded. “The reach of his posts was large, with 35 million followers on Facebook and 24 million on Instagram. “Given the seriousness of the violations and the ongoing risk of violence, Facebook was justified in suspending Mr. Trump’s accounts on January 6 and extending that suspension on January 7,” the panel said. “However, it was not appropriate for Facebook to impose an ‘indefinite’ suspension.” In one of his posts during the insurrection, Trump said, “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love in peace. Remember this day forever!” Facebook removed the post and decided the next day to extend Trump’s ban indefinitely, at least past Biden’s January 20 inauguration. “His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the U.S. and around the world,” Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a January 7 statement. “We removed these statements yesterday because we judged that their effect — and likely their intent — would be to provoke further violence.” The 20-member review panel was composed of legal scholars, human rights experts and journalists. A five-member panel prepared a decision, which had to be approved by a majority of the full board, and which Facebook was then required to implement unless the action could violate the law. The board says its mission is to “answer some of the most difficult questions around freedom of expression online: what to take down, what to leave up, and why.” The Facebook Oversight Board was created last October after the company faced criticism it was not quickly and effectively dealing with what some feel has been problematic content. The board announced its first decisions in January, supporting Facebook’s decision to remove content in one case, but overruling the company and ordering it to restore posts in four other cases.
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A senior Indian government scientific adviser warned Wednesday that a third wave of coronavirus infections would sweep the country as it struggles with the devastating effects of the current wave that officially claimed nearly 4,000 lives in the course of one day.The government’s principal scientific adviser, K. Vijay Raghavan, issued the warning as the World Health Organization said in its weekly report that India accounted for almost half the cases reported globally last week and about a quarter of all fatalities.“Phase 3 is inevitable, given the high levels of circulating virus,” Raghavan told a news briefing in New Delhi. “But it is not clear on what timescale this phase 3 will occur … We should prepare for new waves.”India’s crisis is aggravated by a critical lack of oxygen needed to treat critically ill patients, along with the raw materials needed to manufacture doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. While India is home to the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, only 2% of the country’s 1.3 billion people have been vaccinated, according to local reports. COVID-19 is the disease caused by the coronavirus.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 10 MB480p | 15 MB540p | 20 MB720p | 38 MB1080p | 81 MBOriginal | 243 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioTo help address the oxygen shortage, India’s Supreme Court ordered the government Wednesday to submit a plan to meet oxygen needs in New Dehli hospitals within one day.Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party have been roundly criticized over the last several weeks for holding massive election rallies in West Bengal. Health experts have suggested the rallies may have contributed to a record surge in the state.Other political parties also held rallies there.Award-winning author Arundhati Roy called for Modi to resign in an opinion piece that was published Tuesday by the independent news website Scroll.in.“This is a crisis of your making,” she wrote. “You cannot solve it. You can only make it worse … So please go.”In a related development, Agence France-Presse reported that India’s Reserve Bank has pledged to provide $6.7 billion in cheap financing for the country’s vaccine makers, hospitals and other health firms.
The United Nations Children’s Fund announced shipments of medical supplies to India Wednesday, including 2 million face shields and 200,000 surgical masks. UNICEF also said it is supporting other endeavors in India, such as the acquisition of 25 oxygen plants for hospitals in the northeast and in the western state of Maharashtra. India’s Health Ministry reported another 382,315 new cases of coronavirus cases on Wednesday, including 3,780 COVID-related deaths. The South Asian nation has more than 20 million total coronavirus infections, second only behind the United States, and 226,188 fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 4 MB480p | 5 MB540p | 8 MB720p | 16 MB1080p | 32 MBOriginal | 163 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioIntellectual property rights
Member nations of the World Trade Organization were wrapping up two days of talks in Geneva Wednesday on waiving intellectual property rights on new COVID-19 vaccines.
Ambassadors from the WTO’s 164 member states had been debating a proposal first floated by South Africa and India last October that would temporarily lift patent rights held by pharmaceutical companies that developed the vaccines. Supporters of the proposal say the waiver will allow for the faster manufacture of vaccines for use by developing countries, where vaccination rates have lagged behind those of wealthier nations.
But pharmaceutical companies claim that granting the waiver could hurt future innovation and will not lead to the quick production of vaccines.
Dozens of civil society groups and former heads of state, including former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Mikhail Gorbachev of the former Soviet Union, have urged U.S. President Joe Biden to support the proposed waiver. More than 100 members of the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives signed a letter to Biden, urging him to support the proposal.
The International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations also urged Biden to support the proposal, saying in a letter it would help “ensure universal and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines.”
Biden said he has not made a decision on the matter. The proposal must be agreed on by all the WTO member nations.
Global tracker
Also on Wednesday, Germany and the World Health Organization announced plans to establish a global monitoring operation to help prevent future threats like the current pandemic.
The Berlin-based “global hub for pandemic and epidemic intelligence” would track and monitor “exposed gaps in the global systems for pandemic and epidemic intelligence,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
The monitoring center will get about $36 million from Germany and search for funds from other sources.
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The head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said current projections see COVID-19 cases remaining low and dropping sharply by July, provided vaccination rates remain high and people continue to observe basic prevention practices.At a briefing, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said the projections are based on a study published Wednesday by the CDC. The study used data taken from recent trends to create models showing what could happen if current vaccination and prevention practices, such as mask use and social distancing, continue.Walensky said nationwide, U.S. COVID-19 statistics continue to trend well, with the daily average of new cases falling by 12%, to 42,494 per day, while average daily hospitalizations dropped by 9.5%. She said daily average deaths also fell by nearly 1%.But she said the wild card in the CDC models is variant coronavirus strains that cause COVID-19. Walensky said data show current vaccines are performing well against the predominant variants, so it is even more imperative to get more people vaccinated. To that end, White House COVID-19 Response Team Senior Adviser Andy Slavitt announced that anyone in the United States can simply send a mobile text message with their Zip (postal) code to GETVAXED and they will be sent three vaccination locations near them. He said people can also get information on where they might receive a preferred vaccine. Slavitt said the texts will also provide information on how people can get a free ride to a vaccine location through ride share services. He said those without access to mobile devices or the internet will be provided with telephone numbers they can call to obtain the information.Slavitt said the measures are all part of meeting goals laid out in a speech Tuesday by President Joe Biden. The president said he would like to see 70% of all Americans with at least one vaccination and 160 million Americans fully vaccinated by July 4, the U.S. Independence Day holiday. As of Tuesday, the CDC reports just less than 45% of people in the U.S. have received at least one shot while more than 106 million – 32% – of Americans are fully vaccinated.
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As its COVID-19 lockdown eases, Spain has resumed bullfights — and reignited a fiery political debate between right-wingers who defend the tradition and leftists who condemn it as animal cruelty. Jonathan Spier narrates this report from Alfonso Beato in Barcelona.Camera: Alfonso Beato
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Facebook’s quasi-independent Oversight Board announced Wednesday that social media company was correct to indefinitely prohibit former U.S. President Donald Trump from posting to his Facebook and Instagram accounts.The board was made up of 20 members, including legal scholars, human rights experts and journalists. A panel of five members prepared a decision, which had to be approved by a majority of the full board, and which Facebook was then required to implement unless the action could violate the law.The board says its mission is to “answer some of the most difficult questions around freedom of expression online: what to take down, what to leave up, and why.”Trump’s ban dates to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters that came as members of Congress were meeting to certify the results of the November presidential election.In this Jan. 6, 2021, file photo, Trump supporters participate in a rally in Washington.He made several posts during the attack continuing his false claims that the election was “stolen.” Facebook removed two of Trump’s posts and initially banned him from posting for 24 hours.“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly unfairly treated for so long,” Trump posted about two hours before police and National Guard troops secured the Capitol. “Go home with love in peace. Remember this day forever!”Facebook decided the next day to extend Trump’s ban indefinitely, at least past the inauguration of President Joe Biden.“His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the US and around the world. We removed these statements yesterday because we judged that their effect — and likely their intent — would be to provoke further violence,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a January 7 statement.Twitter instituted a permanent ban against Trump, saying several of his posts “are likely to inspire others to replicate the violent acts that took place on January 6, 2021, and that there are multiple indicators that they are being received and understood as encouragement to do so.”The Facebook Oversight Board was created last October after the company faced criticism it was not quickly and effectively dealing with what some feel is problematic content.The board announced its first decisions in January, supporting Facebook’s decision to remove content in one case, but overruling the company and ordering it to restore posts in four other cases.
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An Olympic test event to evaluate COVID-19 safety protocols for the upcoming Tokyo Games has won praise from the head of the world governing body of track and field.
Organizers of Wednesday’s test marathon race in the northern Japanese city of Sapporo pleaded with the general public not to attend the event, even deploying staff along the route with signs that read “please refrain from watching the event from here.” The few athletes who took part in the race had to undergo strict testing protocols before and after entering Japan, and were largely restricted to their hotel rooms unless they were training.
World Athletics chief Sebastian Coe said the organizing committee demonstrated “the highest level of capability” to stage the marathon and race walk events in Sapporo. The events were originally supposed to be staged in Tokyo, but were moved to avoid the city’s hot summer temperatures.
The delayed Tokyo Olympics will be held from July 23 to August 8. Organizers postponed the games for a year when the novel coronavirus began spreading across the globe.
But with Tokyo and other parts of Japan under a state of emergency to quell a surge of new COVID-19 infections, recent public opinion polls show an overwhelming majority of Japanese believe the Olympics should be postponed again or cancelled.
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During coronavirus-mandated lockdowns, millions of people started following the so-called “cleanfluencers” — online bloggers who inspired others to clean and organize their homes while gaining useful knowledge about keeping things neat and tidy. Nina Vishneva has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Natalia Latukhina, Alexander Barash
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Member nations of the World Trade Organization are wrapping up two days of talks in Geneva Wednesday focused on waiving intellectual property rights on new COVID-19 vaccines. Ambassadors from the WTO’s 164 member states have been debating a proposal first proposed by South Africa and India back in October that would temporarily lift patent rights held by pharmaceutical companies that developed the vaccines. Supporters of the proposal say the waiver will allow for the faster manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines for use by developing countries, where vaccination rates have lagged behind those of wealthier nations. But pharmaceutical companies claim that granting the waiver could hurt future innovation and will not lead to the quick production of coronavirus vaccines. Dozens of civil society groups and former heads of state, including former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Mikhail Gorbachev of the former Soviet Union have urged U.S. President Joe Biden to support the proposed waiver. More than 100 members of the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives signed a letter to President Biden also urging him to support the proposal. Biden says he has not made a decision on the matter. The proposal must be agreed on by all 164 WTO member nations. India
In a related development, Agence France-Presse is reporting that India’s Reserve Bank has pledged to provide $6.7 billion in cheap financing for the country’s vaccine makers, hospitals and other health firms as the world’s second-most populous country is mired in a catastrophic surge of the virus. Workers load empty oxygen cylinders onto a supply truck for refilling, at the Medical College and Hospital, amid the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Kolkata, India, May 5, 2021.”The devastating speed with which the virus affects different regions of the country has to be matched by swift and wide-ranging actions,” said Reserve Bank of India governor Shaktikanta Das in making the announcement. India’s Health Ministry reported another 382,315 new cases of coronavirus cases on Wednesday, including 3,780 COVID-related deaths. The South Asian nation has more than 20 million total coronavirus infections, second only behind the United States, and 226,188 fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
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Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven wealthy democracies turn their attention to issues of global interest including coronavirus vaccines, climate change and education for girls on Wednesday as they close three days of talks in London. “I think COVAX and the ability to fund it, get vaccines to the most vulnerable countries, what we do about the surplus domestic supply, all of those issues again, really good opportunity with the G-7, together with our Indo-Pacific partners, to talk all of that through and come up with positive answers,” British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Tuesday. With Britain hosting the ministerial talks, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose office highlighted the importance of global access to COVID-19 vaccines. “The Prime Minister and Secretary Blinken agreed that the global roll out of vaccines will be key to defeating the coronavirus pandemic. They underlined the importance of G-7 work in this area, including efforts to increase international manufacturing capability,” a Downing Street spokesman said.Trilateral meeting with Japan and South Korea on the sidelines of the G7 foreign ministers meeting in London, May 5, 2021.Tuesday’s G-7 meetings included a focus on China. A senior U.S. State Department official told reporters there was broad agreement among the ministers, “both the fact that we all want China to be an integral member of the international order, but to do that, it has to play by the rules of that international order.” The official cited concern about China’s human rights record and its “threatening and aggressive behavior in the South China Sea and other areas around its border.” Blinken also said Tuesday the G-7 nations want to end the 10-year civil war in Syria. “My @G7 counterparts and I reaffirmed our commitment to a political resolution for ending the conflict in Syria and support to the reauthorization of the U.N. cross-border aid mechanism,” Blinken tweeted.My @G7 counterparts and I reaffirmed our commitment to a political resolution for ending the conflict in Syria and support to the reauthorization of the UN cross-border aid mechanism. We’ll continue working to advance all aspects of UNSCR 2254 and end the suffering of Syrians.— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) May 4, 2021He said the group would work to advance all parts of a 2015 U.N. Security Council resolution that calls for a cease-fire in Syria, along with a Syrian-led political process with a new constitution and elections. The G-7 ministerial talks are laying the foundation for a summit of leaders from those countries in June, also in Britain. In addition to Britain and the United States, the G-7 includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. Australia, India, South Africa, South Korea and Brunei are also taking part in this week’s talks. After the G-7 meetings, Blinken is scheduled to travel to Ukraine to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and other senior government officials. State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement that Blinken will “reaffirm unwavering U.S. support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia’s ongoing aggression.”
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Facebook’s quasi-independent Oversight Board is set to announce Wednesday whether the social media company was correct to indefinitely prohibit former U.S. President Donald Trump from posting to his Facebook and Instagram accounts.The board is made up of 20 members, including legal scholars, human rights experts and journalists. A panel of five members prepares a decision, which must be approved by a majority of the full board, and which Facebook is then required to implement unless the action could violate the law.The board says its mission is to “answer some of the most difficult questions around freedom of expression online: what to take down, what to leave up, and why.”Trump’s ban dates to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters that came as members of Congress were meeting to certify the results of the November presidential election.In this Jan. 6, 2021, file photo, Trump supporters participate in a rally in Washington.He made several posts during the attack continuing his false claims that the election was “stolen.” Facebook removed two of Trump’s posts and initially banned him from posting for 24 hours.“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly unfairly treated for so long,” Trump posted about two hours before police and National Guard troops secured the Capitol. “Go home with love in peace. Remember this day forever!”Facebook decided the next day to extend Trump’s ban indefinitely, at least past the inauguration of President Joe Biden.“His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the US and around the world. We removed these statements yesterday because we judged that their effect — and likely their intent — would be to provoke further violence,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a January 7 statement.Twitter instituted a permanent ban against Trump, saying several of his posts “are likely to inspire others to replicate the violent acts that took place on January 6, 2021, and that there are multiple indicators that they are being received and understood as encouragement to do so.”The Facebook Oversight Board was created last October after the company faced criticism it was not quickly and effectively dealing with what some feel is problematic content.The board announced its first decisions in January, supporting Facebook’s decision to remove content in one case, but overruling the company and ordering it to restore posts in four other cases.
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A Malian woman gave birth to nonuplets in Morocco on Tuesday, and all nine babies are “doing well,” her government said, although Moroccan authorities had yet to confirm what would be an extremely rare case. Mali’s government flew 25-year-old Halima Cisse, a woman from the northern part of the West African state, to Morocco for better care on March 30. She was initially believed to have been carrying septuplets. Cases of women successfully carrying septuplets to term are rare; nonuplets, even rarer. Moroccan health ministry spokesman Rachid Koudhari said he had no knowledge of such a multiple birth having taken place in one of the country’s hospitals. But Mali’s health ministry said in a statement that Cisse had given birth to five girls and four boys by cesarean section. “The mother and babies are doing well so far,” Mali’s Health Minister Fanta Siby told AFP, adding that she had been kept informed by the Malian doctor who accompanied Cisse to Morocco. They are due to return home in several weeks’ time, she added. Doctors had been concerned about Cisse’s health, according to local press reports, as well as her babies’ chances of survival. Mali’s health ministry said in a statement that ultrasound examinations conducted in both Mali and Morocco had suggested that Cisse was carrying seven babies. Siby offered her congratulations to “the medical teams of Mali and Morocco, whose professionalism is at the origin of the happy outcome of this pregnancy.”
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President Biden set a goal of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030. His pledge to a virtual summit of world leaders in April is welcomed by those hit hardest by climate change and looking for as much quick action as possible. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more. Camera: AP/REUTERS/NASA/SKYPE/NATIONAL AUTONOMOUS UNIVERSITYProduced by: Arash Arabasadi
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Dozens of Taiwanese Star Wars fans gathered on the top floor of the nation’s tallest building Tuesday to salute their favorite movie, while stressing the importance of wearing face masks to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.Fans dressed in full Star Wars costumes held mock lightsaber battles and posed for pictures on the 89th floor of the Taipei 101 financial building for what has become an annual observance of what has become known as international Star Wars Day.Organizer of the event Makoto Tsai told reporters he also wanted the “opportunity to introduce interesting places of Taiwan to the world,” because International Star Wars Day, “is an event watched by all the Star Wars fans in the world.”Tsai said their annual event was cancelled last year because the pandemic was at its worst in Taiwan. He said while COVID-19 is largely contained in Taiwan, he is aware that much of the world is continuing to struggle with it.He said he wanted to use his Taiwan gathering to show the world the importance of wearing a mask to fight COVID.“Every character today, including those who wear a helmet, is wearing a mask. I hope to show Star Wars fans of the world that even in Taiwan, we all have to wear the mask. And I hope the pandemic goes away soon.”May the 4th has become the unofficial international “Star Wars Day” over the years, as a play on the famous catch phrase of the movie, “May the force be with you.” Media reports trace the international origins of the day to 1979, when Britain’s Conservative Party won elections there and then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher first assumed her office.The party reportedly took out a newspaper advertisement congratulating the day she took office — May the 4th — saying “May the Fourth Be With You, Maggie. Congratulations!”Reports say a copy of the original advertisement has yet to be found, so the story has not been officially verified.
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Turkey was recently heralded as one of the most successful nations in containing the spread of COVID 19, prompting the government to ease controls. But a surge in infections coupled with vaccine shortages has forced a U-turn, with the country now under its most severe lockdown, as Dorian Jones reports for VOA from Istanbul.
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The star power is back. When the Met Gala returns in September, it will feature a heavy-hitting contingent of celebrity co-chairs: Actor Timothée Chalamet, musician Billie Eilish, poet Amanda Gorman and tennis star Naomi Osaka.
Honorary chairs for the evening will be designer Tom Ford, sponsor Instagram’s Adam Mosseri, and Vogue’s Anna Wintour. FILE – Vogue editor Anna Wintour attends The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute benefit gala celebrating the opening of the “Camp: Notes on Fashion” exhibition in New York.The museum made the announcement Monday on the traditional day of the Met Gala — the first Monday in May. Those plans, of course, were upended by the pandemic. The September 13 gala will be a more intimate affair, to be followed by a larger one on May 2, 2022. Both will launch a two-part exhibition, a survey of American fashion to be on view for almost a year.
“In America: A Lexicon of Fashion,” opening Sept. 18, will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the museum’s Costume Institute and “explore a modern vocabulary of American fashion,” the museum has said. Part two, “In America: An Anthology of Fashion,” will open in the museum’s popular American Wing period rooms on May 5, 2022, and will explore American fashion, with collaborations with film directors, by “presenting narratives that relate to the complex and layered histories of those spaces.” Both parts will close on Sept. 5, 2022.
Filmmaker Melina Matsoukas (“Queen & Slim”) has been commissioned to create an open-ended film to project in the galleries, with content changing during the course of the exhibition.
The gala, which was canceled last year, is a major fundraiser, providing the Costume Institute with its primary source of funding.
As always, the exhibits will be the work of star curator Andrew Bolton. In a video preview Monday, Bolton noted how challenging the past year had been for the fashion community.
“It’s been incredibly inspiring to see how designers have responded to the ongoing challenges of the pandemic, how they’ve found new outlets to express their creativity and new ways to present their collections,” he said.
Bolton added that many designers had been at the vanguard of the discussion about diversity and inclusion: “The social justice movements of last summer reinforced their commitment to these issues and also consolidated their leadership in advancing the conversation.”
In addition to Matsoukas, other confirmed collaborators from the film world include cinematographer Bradford Young, whose projects have included “Selma” and “When They See Us;” production designers Nathan Crowley and Shane Valentino; and Franklin Leonard, film executive and founder of The Black List, a listing of top unproduced screenplays.
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With COVID-19 restrictions easing as new infections decrease in Italy, the Vatican has reopened the majestic doors of its art-filled museums this week to the public. The relaxation of restrictions in place since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy last year has brought good news to the museums and to art lovers who are now able to return after a two-month lockdown.But the museums will not be seeing the crowds of the past for some time.For now, all access to the museums will strictly require booking a specific time slot. Limited numbers will be allowed in for all time slots available and all those who enter the museums will have their temperature checked at the entrance. All staff working at the Vatican Museums have been vaccinated. A maximum number of 400 visitors will be allowed into the museums every 30 minutes so as to maintain social distancing. Masks are mandatory both inside and in the Vatican gardens.Barbara Jatta, Director of the Vatican Museums, is enthusiastic about the re-opening and eager to welcome visitors back to enjoy the masterpieces that have found a home here. She said that museums are a way to nourish people’s souls.She said this is the time to come to the Vatican Museums, because they are totally safe to visit and without that flow of people that existed in previous years.Gianni Crea, the museum “clavigero”, shows keys to the Vatican Museums following its reopening after weeks of closure, as COVID-19 restrictions ease, at the Vatican, May 3, 2021.With limited foreign travel still and few tourists in the Eternal City, it is mainly Italians at this time who are booking to visit.Antonio, a Rome resident, said he has been wanting to come for a long time and so immediately seized the opportunity. He added that he is delighted and looks forward to the visit.During the closures caused by the pandemic, the only way to see the works in the museums was through free virtual online tours on the museums’ website. During the closure, staff used the opportunity to carry out maintenance work and improve both its digital services and security.As Italy this year marks 700 years of the death of its famous 14-th century poet, the museums are featuring a special exhibit on Dante Alighieri titled “Dante in the Vatican Museums.”Pre-pandemic, close to an estimated seven million visitors a year visit the Vatican Museums with their magnificent frescoed ceiling of “The Last Judgement” by Renaissance artist Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, its passageway and galleries and the Vatican Gardens.
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