Sunday, January 23, 2022
Burkina Faso vs Gabon | 1-1 ~ (7-6)
Nigeria vs Tunisia | 0-1
Month: January 2022
It’s a key part of President Joe Biden’s plans to fight major ransomware attacks and digital espionage campaigns: creating a board of experts that would investigate major incidents to see what went wrong and try to prevent the problems from happening again — much like a transportation safety board does with plane crashes.
But eight months after Biden signed an executive order creating the Cyber Safety Review Board it still hasn’t been set up. That means critical tasks haven’t been completed, including an investigation of the massive SolarWinds espionage campaign first discovered more than a year ago. Russian hackers stole data from several federal agencies and private companies.
Some supporters of the new board say the delay could hurt national security and comes amid growing concerns of a potential conflict with Russia over Ukraine that could involve nation-state cyberattacks. The FBI and other federal agencies recently released an advisory — aimed particularly at critical infrastructure like utilities — on Russian state hackers’ methods and techniques.
“We will never get ahead of these threats if it takes us nearly a year to simply organize a group to investigate major breaches like SolarWinds,” said Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee. “Such a delay is detrimental to our national security and I urge the administration to expedite its process.”
Biden’s order, signed in May, gives the board 90 days to investigate the SolarWinds hack once it’s established. But there’s no timeline for creating the board itself, a job designated to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
In response to questions from The Associated Press, DHS said in a statement it was far along in setting it up and anticipated a “near-term announcement,” but did not address why the process has taken so long.
Scott Shackelford, the cybersecurity program chair at Indiana University and an advocate for creating a cyber review board, said having a rigorous study about what happened in a past hack like SolarWinds is a way of helping prevent similar attacks.
“It sure is taking, my goodness, quite a while to get it going,” Shackelford said. “It’s certainly past time where we could see some positive benefits from having it stood up.”
The Biden administration has made improving cybersecurity a top priority and taken steps to bolster defenses, but this is not the first time lawmakers have been unhappy with the pace of progress. Last year several lawmakers complained it took the administration too long to name a national cyber director, a new position created by Congress.
The SolarWinds hack exploited vulnerabilities in the software supply-chain system and went undetected for most of 2020 despite compromises at a broad swath of federal agencies and dozens of companies, primarily telecommunications and information technology providers. The hacking campaign is named SolarWinds after the U.S. software company whose product was exploited in the first-stage infection of that effort.
The hack highlighted the Russians’ skill at getting to high-level targets. The AP previously reported that SolarWinds hackers had gained access to emails belonging to the then-acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf.
The Biden administration has kept many of the details about the cyberespionage campaign hidden.
The Justice Department, for instance, said in July that 27 U.S. attorney offices around the country had at least one employee’s email account compromised during the hacking campaign. It did not provide details about what kind of information was taken and what impact such a hack may have had on ongoing cases.
The New York-based staff of the DOJ Antitrust Division also had files stolen by the SolarWinds hackers, according to one former senior official briefed on the hack who was not authorized to speak about it publicly and requested anonymity. That breach has not previously been reported. The Antitrust Division investigates private companies and has access to highly sensitive corporate data.
The federal government has undertaken reviews of the SolarWinds hack. The Government Accountability Office issued a report this month on the SolarWinds hack and another major hacking incident that found there was sometimes a slow and difficult process for sharing information between government agencies and the private sector, The National Security Council also conducted a review of the SolarWinds hack last year, according to the GAO report.
But having the new board conduct an independent, thorough examination of the SolarWinds hack could identify inconspicuous security gaps and issues that others may have missed, said Christopher Hart, a former National Transportation Safety Board chairman who has advocated for the creation of a cyber review board.
“Most of the crashes that the NTSB really goes after … are ones that are a surprise even to the security experts,” Hart said. “They weren’t really obvious things, they were things that really took some deep digging to figure out what went wrong.”
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Most countries have made little to no progress in bringing down corruption levels over the past decade, and authorities’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic in many places has weighed on accountability, a closely watched study by an anti-graft organization found Tuesday.
Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index, which measures the perception of public sector corruption according to experts and business people, found that “increasingly, rights and checks and balances are being undermined not only in countries with systemic corruption and weak institutions, but also among established democracies.”
Among other issues over the past year, it cited the use of Pegasus software, which has been linked to snooping on human rights activists, journalists and politicians across the globe.
The report said the pandemic has “been used in many countries as an excuse to curtail basic freedoms and sidestep important checks and balances.”
In Western Europe, the best-scoring region overall, the pandemic has given countries “an excuse for complacency in anti-corruption efforts as accountability and transparency measures are neglected or even rolled back,” Transparency said. In some Asian countries, it said, COVID-19 “also has been used as an excuse to suppress criticism.” It pointed to increased digital surveillance in some nations and authoritarian approaches in others.
The report ranks countries on a scale from a “highly corrupt” 0 to a “very clean” 100. Denmark, New Zealand and Finland tied for first place with 88 points each; the first two were unchanged, while Finland gained three points. Norway, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Germany completed the top 10. The U.K. was 11th with 78.
The United States, which slipped over recent years to hit 67 points in 2020, held that score this time but slipped a couple of places to 27th. Transparency said it dropped out of the top 25 for the first time “as it faces continuous attacks on free and fair elections and an opaque campaign finance system.”
Canada, which slid three points to 74 and two places to 13th, “is seeing increased risks of bribery and corruption in business,” the group said. It added that the publication of the Pandora Papers showed Canada as “a hub for illicit financial flows, fueling transnational corruption across the region and the world.”
The index rates 180 countries and territories. South Sudan was bottom with 11 points; Somalia, with which it shared last place in 2020, tied this time with Syria for second-to-last with 13. Venezuela followed with 14 — then Yemen, North Korea and Afghanistan tied with 16 apiece.
Transparency said the control of corruption has stagnated or worsened in 86% of the countries it surveyed in the last 10 years. In that time, 23 countries — including the U.S., Canada, Hungary and Poland — have declined significantly in its index, while 25 have improved significantly. They include Estonia, the Seychelles and Armenia.
Compiled since 1995, the index is calculated using 13 different data sources that provide perceptions of public sector corruption from business people and country experts. Sources include the World Bank, the World Economic Forum and private risk and consulting companies.
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South Sudan has held a peace Olympics to help reconcile communities divided by conflict. The “Twic Olympics” this year marked its 20th anniversary in Twic County.
At this Olympics opening ceremony, a spiritual leader blesses athletes to protect them from injury while a goat represents the belief that power comes from nature.
This is not the winter Olympics in Beijing. It’s the Twic Olympics in northern South Sudan.
The annual two-weeks of games in January attracts athletes from six communities to compete in traditional Olympic and team sports. The aim: to reduce communal conflict.
Volleyball player Ring Aguek Ring knows violence firsthand.
“In May they came to raid our cattle and in the process of protecting them I was shot and at last I succeeded to get my cows back. As I am still in the games, I am an injured person but who still can play because I see it as a unifying factor,” Ring said.
More than 700 athletes participated in this year’s 20th anniversary games, which also promoted health issues such as preventing COVID, HIV, and waterborne diseases.
Twic Olympics founder Acuil Malith Banggol says the games have a mission.
“Peace does not come without agenda. You cannot tell people to remain peaceful without them being active on something that is keeping them away from bad activities. We are building an avenue for communicating and interacting with the youth,” Banggol said.
South Sudan is the world’s youngest country at 11 years of independence, but it has never been fully at peace.
Twic Olympics Association secretary Chol Ajing says involving youth in the games can help end conflicts.
“In South Sudan, the crises of 2013 and 2016 were fueled because young people responded,” Ajing said. “What about if young people didn’t engage in activities like this and do not think about joining the politicians and fuel the war?”
These South Sudanese athletes prefer ‘Tug of War,’ and are urging those still fighting real battles to drop their weapons and join them in the glory of sport.
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Several people are dead in Cameroon after football fans crammed the gates of a new stadium to watch the home country play a match in the African Cup of Nations tournament.
State broadcaster CRTV says eight people were killed as thousands of fans attempted to enter Yaounde Olembe Stadium in the capital Yaounde Monday to see Cameroon take on Comoros in a round of 16 game.
Scores of other people were injured in the stampede and taken to nearby hospitals.
The Confederation of African Football, which runs the African Cup, issued a statement saying it is “currently investigating the situation in order to obtain more details” about the stampede, and was in “constant communication” with Cameroonian authorities.
Officials had intended to cap the amount of people allowed inside the 60,000-seat stadium to around 80 percent capacity due to concerns about the COVID-19 concerns.
Monday’s tragedy comes just a day after at least 17 people were killed and eight others injured in a nightclub fire in Yaounde.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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The U.S. health regulator on Monday revised the emergency use authorizations for COVID-19 antibody treatments from Regeneron and Eli Lilly to limit their use, as the drugs are unlikely to work against the omicron variant.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said the treatments are currently not cleared for use in any U.S. states or territories but may be authorized in certain regions if they work against potential new variants.
The agency highlighted other therapies that are expected to be effective against omicron, including a rival antibody drug from GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology as well as recently authorized antiviral pills from Pfizer and Merck & Co.
The U.S. government in December had paused distribution of Regeneron and Lilly’s treatments and said the halt would continue until new data emerges on their efficacy against omicron.
The highly contagious new variant was estimated to account for more than 99% of cases in the United States as of Jan. 15.
GSK and Vir Biotech are boosting production of their drug sotrovimab to help meet soaring demand in the United States. The FDA has also expanded its approval for the use of Gilead Sciences’ antiviral COVID-19 drug remdesivir to treat non-hospitalized patients aged 12 years and above.
The Washington Post earlier in the day reported that the FDA was expected to revise authorizations for Regeneron and Lilly’s treatments.
A Regeneron spokesperson had said the regulator would provide any potential communication on the topic.
Lilly had no immediate comment but pointed to its statement from December saying its antibody candidate, bebtelovimab, maintains neutralization activity against all known variants of concern, including omicron.
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The head of the World Health Organization warned Monday that COVID-19 will be around for the foreseeable future, and everyone will have to learn to live with it. The WHO chief issued the warning at the opening of the agency’s weeklong executive board meeting.
Two years ago, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a public health emergency of international concern. Then there were fewer than 100 cases and no deaths reported outside China. Those numbers now stand at nearly 350 million cases and more than 5.5 million deaths.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it is hard to know when the pandemic will end. However, while the coronavirus is circulating, he said it will continue to mutate in unpredictable and dangerous ways.
“It is dangerous to assume that omicron will be the last variant, or that we are in the endgame. On the contrary, globally the conditions are ideal for more variants to emerge,” he said.
Tedros said countries must learn to manage this deadly disease and use the knowledge gained to prepare for future pandemics. To change the course of the pandemic, he said the conditions driving it must change.
He said the acute phase of the pandemic can be ended this year if countries use all the strategies and tools available to combat COVID-19. He adds this will work only if all countries, rich and poor alike, have equitable access to vaccines, treatments, and other tools.
“Vaccines alone are not the golden ticket out of this pandemic. But there is no path out unless we achieve our shared target of vaccinating 70 percent of the population of every country by the middle of this year. We have a long way to go,” he said.
The WHO chief notes 86 countries have not been able to reach last year’s target of vaccinating 40 percent of their populations.
He warned the emergency phase of the pandemic will not end until the gap between the have and have-not countries is bridged.
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Molly Smith, who is the artistic director of the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., has been highlighting American plays for over 20 years. Liliya Anisimova has her story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Yuriy Zakrevskiy
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The coast of Ghana is home to five of the world’s endangered sea turtles, which are threatened by fishing nets and poachers who sell their meat and eggs. To help revive the turtle populations, a group of young footballers have taken it upon themselves to guard turtle nests and rescue turtles captured by fishermen.
Empty sea turtle shells are commonly found on the beach along Ghana’s coastal Gomoa Fetteh community.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) says six out of the seven species of sea turtles are endangered.
Peter Kusaana of the Environmental Justice Foundation says five of those species used to nest in Ghana, but the numbers have reduced.
“Over the years, we are only now recording about four or three of these species nesting in Ghana, meaning that we have already lost two of these turtle species in Ghana,” he said.
Fishermen here say about 50 turtles are killed every year along the eight-kilometer shoreline, drowned in fishing nets or poached for their meat and eggs.
Ama Akorfa, a turtle processor, explains why the locals poach turtles.
She says the meat is a delicacy. She makes stew with the turtle’s entrails and sells the remaining meat.
Saving the remaining turtles is a team effort.
The Fetteh Youngsters Football Club since 2019 has taken it upon themselves to protect the turtles.
The team’s coach, Daniel Kwesi Botchwey, says they leverage the community’s support for the team to help save the endangered sea turtles.
“There has been the need for us to educate the community about it. And since the football team is for the community, because I always say, ‘Fetteh Youngsters is a community-based team, it is for the community.’ And the chief of the town, he is the live patron of the club, so everyone in the community supports Fetteh Youngsters. So, we have taken it as a means, as a tool, to educate the community,” said coach Botchwey.
During nesting season, the football team patrols the beaches from dusk until dawn to ward off poachers and other predators that would harm nesting turtles or their eggs.
The players also engage the turtle meat sellers and fishing community to educate them on the importance of protecting marine life.
Peter Kusaana of Ghana’s Environmental Justice Foundation says their efforts are paying off.
He explains that turtle poaching reduced from 47 killed in the 2019-2020 nesting season to 26 in the last one, while more nests have been found along the coast.
“The number of nesting events recorded, meaning that the data points that have been captured by our patrollers, has increased,” he said. “In 2019-2020, we had around 50 cases that were recorded in our data sheets. In 2020-2021, we have over 145.”
They’re team numbers that the Fetteh Youngsters Football Club is proud of.
But eliminating the demand for endangered sea turtles — that’s their top goal, and one they’re playing overtime to score.
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Just as studios were resuming theatrical releases at the end of last year, the omicron variant of the coronavirus rolled in, forcing a return to streaming or a theater release-streaming hybrid. Now that the traditional way of viewing new releases has changed, the film industry faces a crucial question: In the era of COVID-19, how does one measure box office success? Penelope Poulou has more.
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The coast of Ghana is home to five of the world’s endangered sea turtles, which are threatened by fishing nets and poachers who sell their meat and eggs. To help revive the turtle populations, a young footballers have taken it upon themselves to guard turtle nests and rescue turtles captured by fishermen. Senanu Tord reports from Gomoa Fetteh, Ghana.
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In a California senior care community, very special pets are helping residents keep their spirits up, fight anxiety and feel loved. Officials say these animals are therapeutic, low-maintenance and never get moody. Angelina Bagdasaryan has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.
Camera: Vazgen Varzhabetian
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French designer Thierry Mugler, who reigned over fashion in the 1980s and died on Sunday, was as famous for his fantastical couture as for his blockbuster fashion shows. He was 73.
Mugler’s daring collections came to define the decade’s power dressing, with his clothes noted for their structured and sophisticated silhouettes, showcased by his extravagant shows.
“I always thought that fashion was not enough on its own and that it had to be shown in its musical and theatrical environment,” he once said.
In later years, he dressed Beyonce and Lady Gaga — and in 2019 came out of retirement to create Kim Kardashian’s Met Gala look.
“We are devastated to announce the passing of Mr Manfred Thierry Mugler on Sunday January 23rd 2022,” said a post on the designer’s official Facebook account.
His agent Jean-Baptiste Rougeot, who said the designer had died of “natural causes,” added he had been due to announce new collaborations early this week.
Born in Strasbourg in December 1948, as a young teen Mugler joined the Opera du Rhin’s ballet company before studying at the School of Decorative Arts.
From a young age he created his own clothes, adapting items bought at nearby flea markets. He moved to Paris aged 20, initially to work with another ballet company — but was more successful with his own wardrobe.
Mugler soon became a freelance stylist and worked for various fashion houses in Paris, London and Milan.
In 1973, he took the plunge and created his own label “Café de Paris”, before founding “Thierry Mugler” a year later.
His designs exacerbated and celebrated women’s forms: shoulders accentuated by padding, plunging necklines, constricted waists and rounded hips.
“Dancing taught me a lot about posture, the organization of clothing, the importance of the shoulders, the head carriage, the play and rhythm of the legs,” said Mugler.
A showman at heart, he organized spectacular presentations of his creations pioneering the modern spectacle of the 21st century fashion show.
“Today’s fashion shows are a continuation of what Mugler invented. The collections were pretexts for fashion shows,” recalled Didier Grumbach, former CEO of Thierry Mugler.
He had showmanship in his blood: for the 10th anniversary of his label in 1984, he organized the first public fashion show in Europe with 6,000 attending the rock concert-like show.
But nothing compared to the 20th anniversary celebration in 1995, staged at the Cirque d’Hiver.
Models including Jerry Hall, Naomi Campbell, Eva Herzigova and Kate Moss paraded alongside stars such as Tippi Hedren and Julie Newmar with the spectacle culminating in a performance from James Brown.
The 1992 launch of his company’s first perfume “Angel” — in collaboration with Clarins, which acquired a stake in the company before taking control in 1997 — was a runaway success.
Clarins shuttered Thierry Mugler ready-to-wear in 2003, a year after the designer reportedly left the brand, but continued the scent business with “Angel” rivalling Chanel’s No.5 for the top spot in sales.
Renowned for his work with celebrities, he counted Grace Jones and Hall among his muses, and had a long-running creative collaboration with David Bowie — even dressing him for his wedding to Iman.
Despite seemingly retiring from fashion’s frontlines in the early 2000s, Mugler continued to impact culture and worked with Beyonce on her “I am…” world tour.
In later years the designer suffered a series of accidents requiring facial surgery and rebuilt his body with intensive bodybuilding while engaging in meditation and yoga.
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Anti-vaccine activists are set to rally Sunday in Washington at the Lincoln Memorial.The anti-vaccine argument has taken hold among various American groups, including politicians, school officials, professional athletes and health care workers. Public health officials say about 20% of U.S. adults are unvaccinated.
COVID vaccine passport protests were held in several European capitals Saturday.
Thousands of people turned out in Stockholm to demonstrate against the vaccine passes needed to go to indoor sites where there are 50 or more people.
Protesters took to the streets of Paris to demonstrate against the new COVID pass set to go into effect Monday that will curtail the activities of the unvaccinated, restricting their ability to travel and go to entertainment sites, including bars, movie theaters and sports events.
Demonstrators in Helsinki protested the vaccination passes that can be required to enter restaurants and other events. The protesters in Finland’s capital also demonstrated against the Finnish government’s move giving local and regional authorities the ability to enact wide-ranging measures to combat the omicron variant, according to The Associated Press.
Meanwhile, in the U.S. state of Virginia, a woman has been charged with a misdemeanor after threatening to bring guns to her children’s school because of a school board’s continued school mask mandate.
Amelia King said Thursday at a school board meeting, “My children will not come to school on Monday with a mask on, all right? . . . That’s not happening, and I will bring every single gun loaded and ready . . .I’ll see you all on Monday.” School officials alerted authorities about King’s comments.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Sunday that it was recorded 349.3 million COVID infections, 5.6 million deaths. The center said nearly 10 billion COVID vaccines have been administered.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
For thousands of years, wooden sailboats allowed the peoples of Northern Europe to spread trade, influence and sometimes war across seas and continents.
In December, the U.N.’s culture agency added Nordic “clinker boats” to its list of traditions that represent the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden jointly sought the UNESCO designation.
The term “clinker” is thought to refer to the way the boat’s wooden boards were fastened together.
Supporters of the successful nomination hope it will safeguard and preserve the boat-building techniques that drove the Viking era for future generations as the number of active clinker craftsmen fades and fishermen and others opt for vessels with cheaper glass fiber hulls.
“We can see that the skills of building them, the skills of sailing the boats, the knowledge of people who are sailing … it goes down and it disappears,” said Søren Nielsen, head of boatyard at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, west of Copenhagen.
The museum not only exhibits the remains of wooden vessels built 1,000 years ago, but also works to rebuild and reconstruct other Viking boats. The process involves using experimental archaeological methods to gain a deeper, more practical understanding of the Viking Age, such as how quickly the vessels sailed and how many people they carried.
Nielsen, who oversees the construction and repair of wooden boats built in the clinker tradition, said there are only about 20 practicing clinker boat craftsmen in Denmark, perhaps 200 across all of northern Europe.
“We think it’s a tradition we have to show off, and we have to tell people this was a part of our background,” he told The Associated Press.
Wooden clinker boats are characterized by the use of overlapping longitudinal wooden hull planks that are sewn or riveted together.
Builders strengthen the boats internally by additional wooden components, mainly tall oak trees, which constitute the ribs of the vessel. They stuff the gaps in between with tar or tallow mixed with animal hair, wool and moss.
“When you build it with these overlaps within it, you get a hull that’s quite flexible but at the same time, incredibly strong,” explained Triona Sørensen, curator at Roskilde’s Viking Ship Museum, which is home to the remains of five 11th-century Viking boats built with clinker methods.
Nielsen said there is evidence the clinker technique first appeared thousands of years ago, during the Bronze Age.
But it was during the Viking Age that clinker boats had their zenith, according to Sørensen. The era, from 793 to 1066, is when Norsemen, or Vikings, undertook large-scale raiding, colonizing, conquest and trading voyages throughout Europe. They also reached North America.
Their light, strong and swift ships were unsurpassed in their time and provided the foundations for kingdoms in Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
If “you hadn’t had any ships, you wouldn’t have had any Viking Age,” said Sørensen. “It just literally made it possible for them to expand that kind of horizon to become a more global people.”
While the clinker boat tradition in Northern Europe remains to this day, the ships are used by hobbyists, for festivities, regattas and sporting events, rather than raiding and conquest seen 1,000 years ago.
The UNESCO nomination was signed by around 200 communities and cultural bearers in the field of construction and traditional clinker boat craftsmanship, including Sami communities.
The inscription on the Intangible Cultural Heritage list obliges the Nordic countries to try to preserve what remains of the fading tradition.
“You cannot read how to build a boat in a book, so if you want to be a good boat builder, you have to build a lot of boats,” the Viking Ship Museum’s Nielsen said. “If you want to keep these skills alive, you have to keep them going.”
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George Chen’s high-end China Live restaurant in San Francisco’s Chinatown has lost 90% of its Lunar New Year bookings made by company parties and big families fearing the spread of COVID-19 as the omicron variant rampages across the United States. Three of his 100 employees have gotten the disease since the omicron surge began.
But his three-floor restaurant is not turning away dine-in customers like a year ago. No state or local government has ordered shutdowns. Smaller parties can still come in for informal, private meals, and Chen hopes to see more of those gatherings ahead of the global Chinese population’s major annual holiday, which falls on February 1 this year.
“Last year I think we were in the middle of a shutdown – during that time we couldn’t even [be] allowed to do outdoor seating, forget indoors,” Chen told VOA on Tuesday. “This year is tough. … We’ll keep our fingers crossed and hopefully people will feel more comfortable, get vaccinated and come out and enjoy themselves.”
The 64-year-old career restaurateur’s story serves as a microcosm for San Francisco, keeper of the best-known Chinatown in the United States, as the Year of the Tiger approaches.
Countless individuals have decided on their own to stay home, auguring thin crowds, but San Francisco’s signature Chinese New Year Festival and Parade are scheduled to roll floats and feature lion dances in densely populated hilly streets lined with red-festooned Chinese-owned shops. The city’s annual Chinese New Year street fairs are on, as well.
“This year because of the vaccinations, because we have a better understanding of the variants and the pandemic, we are cautiously optimistic to proceed forward with a live parade,” parade organizer spokesperson William Gee said. “We’re hoping to bring back a lot of the iconic memories and performances that people remember by just coming out and watching the parade.”
Event organizers ask that everyone there be vaccinated or come with proof of a negative COVID-19 test a few days ahead.
Locals told VOA say they’ve had enough of staying indoors.
Lin Wei, 50, for example, says he plans to go out. The sanitation worker came from Guangdong province 11 years ago for work and misses the energy of a live Lunar New Year celebration. Lunar New Year in China involves large, extended family reunions, weeks of fireworks and the equivalent of a formal spring cleaning for each household.
“The last two years (the celebrations) stopped, so this year there might be a bit more, and if I’ve got time I’ll show up,” Lin said. On the chance of catching COVID-19, he said, “I’ve grown numb to that over the past two years.”
But Lin said he would avoid taking his family to the festivities as a health precaution.
Sherwin Won, 69, a retired university clinical lab scientist, plans to shun the traditional large family reunion and focus on spring cleaning. As a family, the San Francisco native said, “we talked about it and discussed it and said, ‘we’re going to celebrate it six months later.’”
Like Chen’s restaurant, open events and spaces in San Francisco’s Chinatown generally are expected to draw thin crowds as people decide to stay home and avoid the risk of contagion. Chen estimates that 50% of the district’s stores have closed during the pandemic, possibly for good.
Paper goods and variety stores in San Francisco did only sporadic business this week as supplies of holiday decorations became sparse. Holidaymakers normally buy Lunar New Year paper scrolls to hang on their front doors and red envelopes for cash that will be gifted to children in the family.
The Buddha Exquisite Corp. paper goods shop has turned to airmail to import most of its made-in-China 2022 supplies because normal marine shipping takes “a lot longer than usual,” store operator Rebecca Cheung said, adding that prices on such goods have risen.
COVID-19 restrictions and rising consumer demand have snarled marine shipping in much of the world.
Elsewhere in the United States, Chicago’s Chinatown is ready for an annual Lunar New Year parade and lion dances. The Seattle Chinatown International District has postponed its Lunar New Year celebration event until April 30.
Events in Los Angeles and Houston are expected as well, while Washington, D.C., canceled its 2022 program.
Michelle Quinn, Matt Dibble, Michael O’Sullivan contributed to this report.
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Comoros, the surprise package of the Africa Cup of Nations, is struggling to put a team together for their last-16 game against host nation Cameroon after 12 players and management tested positive for COVID-19, their federation announced Saturday.
The 12 positive tests include both of the Coelacanths’ fit goalkeepers, with the third goalkeeper, Salim Ben Boina already injured. Comoros is due to face Cameroon on Monday.
“The Coelacanths affected by COVID … include coach Amir Abdou, our only two goalkeepers, Moyadh Ousseini and Ali Ahamada,” the federation tweeted two days before a historic match for the Comoros who qualified for the last 16 in their first appearance at the tournament.
In a video posted on the account, general manager El Hadad Hamidi also named five outfield players who have tested positive: midfielders Nakibou Aboubakari, Yacine Bourhane, striker Mohamed M’Changama and defenders Kassim Abdallah and Alexis Souahy.
With no goalkeepers currently available for the game, the Comoros are in serious trouble.
Confederation of African Football rules for the tournament dictate that teams must play games as long as at least 11 players test negative for the coronavirus.
If no goalkeeper is available, an outfield player must stand in.
“We are trying to do everything in our power to find alternative solutions” but “without the coach, without major players and especially without our only two goalkeepers who remained, the situation is quite complicated,” admitted Hamidi.
The Comoros, representing a tiny island nation off the southeast coast of Africa, snatched their qualification to everyone’s surprise by beating Ghana 3-2 and advancing as one of the best third-placed sides.
The United Arab Emirates has banned the flying of drones in the country for recreation after Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed a fatal drone attack on an oil facility and major airport in the country.
As of Saturday, drone hobbyists and other operators of light electric sports aircraft face “legal liabilities” if caught flying the objects, the Interior Ministry said, adding it may grant exemptions to businesses seeking to film.
A rare drone and missile strike on the capital of Abu Dhabi blew up several fuel tankers and killed three people last week.
The Houthis, who hold Yemen’s capital and have fought a bloody, yearslong war with a Saudi-led military coalition that includes the UAE, claimed the assault. While the UAE has largely withdrawn troops from the stalemated conflict, the country continues to be a major player and support local militias on the ground.
The UAE said the Houthis targeted the country with bomb-laden drones and cruise and ballistic missiles, adding the country had intercepted some of the projectiles. In response to the strike, the Saudi-led coalition has escalated attacks on the rebel-held parts of Yemen in the last week.
Government regulations in the UAE already restrict flying drones in residential areas as well as near, around and over airports. Drone users typically must obtain a certificate from the civil aviation authorities.