Actor-singer Kenny Rogers, the smooth, Grammy-winning balladeer who spanned jazz, folk, country and pop with such hits as “Lucille,” “Lady” and “Islands in the Stream” and embraced his persona as “The Gambler” on record and on TV died Friday night. He was 81.He died at home in Sandy Springs, Georgia, representative Keith Hagan told The Associated Press. He was under hospice care and died of natural causes, Hagan said.The Houston-born performer with the husky voice and silver beard sold tens of millions of records, won three Grammys and was the star of TV movies based on “The Gambler” and other songs, making him a superstar in the ’70s and ’80s. Rogers thrived for some 60 years before retired from touring in 2017 at age 79. Despite his crossover success, he always preferred to be thought of as a country singer. Rags to riches”You either do what everyone else is doing and you do it better, or you do what no one else is doing and you don’t invite comparison,” Rogers told The Associated Press in 2015. “And I chose that way because I could never be better than Johnny Cash or Willie or Waylon at what they did. So I found something that I could do that didn’t invite comparison to them. And I think people thought it was my desire to change country music. But that was never my issue.”A true rags-to-riches story, Rogers was raised in public housing in Houston Heights with seven siblings. As a 20-year-old, he had a gold single called “That Crazy Feeling,” under the name Kenneth Rogers, but when that early success stalled, he joined a jazz group, the Bobby Doyle Trio, as a standup bass player.But his breakthrough came when he was asked to join the New Christy Minstrels, a folk group, in 1966. The band reformed as First Edition and scored a pop hit with the psychedelic song, “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In).” Rogers and First Edition mixed country-rock and folk on songs like “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town,” a story of a Vietnam veteran begging his girlfriend to stay. After the group broke up in 1974, Rogers started his solo career and found a big hit with the sad country ballad “Lucille,” in 1977, which crossed over to the pop charts and earned Rogers his first Grammy. Suddenly the star, Rogers added hit after hit for more than a decade. ‘The Gambler'”The Gambler,” the Grammy-winning story song penned by Don Schlitz, came out in 1978 and became his signature song with a signature refrain: “You gotta know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.” The song spawned a hit TV movie of the same name and several more sequels featuring Rogers as professional gambler Brady Hawkes, and led to a lengthy side career for Rogers as a TV actor and host of several TV specials. Other hits included “You Decorated My Life,” “Every Time Two Fools Collide” with Dottie West, “Don’t Fall In Love with a Dreamer” with Kim Carnes, and “Coward of the County.” One of his biggest successes was “Lady,” written by Lionel Richie, a chart topper for six weeks straight in 1980. Richie said in a 2017 interview with the AP that he often didn’t finish songs until he had already pitched them, which was the case for “Lady.””In the beginning, the song was called, ‘Baby,'” Richie said. “And because when I first sat with him, for the first 30 minutes, all he talked about was he just got married to a real lady. A country guy like him is married to a lady. So, he said, ‘By the way, what’s the name of the song?'” Richie replies: “Lady.”Duets with DollyOver the years, Rogers worked often with female duet partners, most memorably, Dolly Parton. The two were paired at the suggestion of the Bee Gees’ Barry Gibb, who wrote “Islands in the Stream.””Barry was producing an album on me and he gave me this song,” Rogers told the AP in 2017. “And I went and learned it and went into the studio and sang it for four days. And I finally looked at him and said, ‘Barry, I don’t even like this song anymore.’ And he said, ‘You know what we need? We need Dolly Parton.’ I thought, ‘Man, that guy is a visionary.'”Coincidentally, Parton was actually in the same recording studio in Los Angeles when the idea came up.”From the moment she marched into that room, that song never sounded the same,” Rogers said. “It took on a whole new spirit.”The two singers toured together, including in Australia and New Zealand in 1984 and 1987, and were featured in a HBO concert special. Over the years the two would continue to record together, including their last duet, “You Can’t Make Old Friends,” which was released in 2013. Parton reprised “Islands in the Stream” with Rogers during his all-star retirement concert held in Nashville in October 2017.Rogers invested his time and money in a lot of other endeavors over his career, including a passion for photography that led to several books, as well as an autobiography, “Making It With Music.” He had a chain of restaurants called “Kenny Rogers Roasters,” and was a partner behind a riverboat in Branson, Missouri. He was also involved in numerous charitable causes, among them the Red Cross and MusicCares, and was part of the all-star “We are the World” recording for famine relief.A brief comebackBy the ’90s, his ability to chart hits had waned, although he still remained a popular live entertainer with regular touring. Still he was an inventive businessman and never stopped trying to find his way back onto the charts. At the age of 61, Rogers had a brief comeback on the country charts in 2000 with a hit song “Buy Me A Rose,” thanks to his other favorite medium, television. Producers of the series “Touched By An Angel” wanted him to appear in an episode, and one of his managers suggested the episode be based on his latest single. That cross-promotional event earned him his first No. 1 country song in 13 years.Rogers’ family is planning a private service “out of concern for the national COVID-19 emergency,” a statement posted early Saturday read. A public memorial will be held at a later date.
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Month: March 2020
Cuba, whose economy depends heavily on tourism, said Friday it will not allow any foreign tourists to enter the country, beginning Tuesday. The ban will be in effect for 30 days. The drastic measure is being initiated in an effort to prevent any more COVID-19 cases, President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on state television. Cuba has reported at least 19 cases of the coronavirus and one death. The South Korea Centers for Disease Control reported 147 new cases of the virus Saturday. The Asian nation has 8,799 infections and 102 deaths attributed to the virus. The coronavirus global death toll has surpassed 11,000 and infected more than 260,000 people worldwide, according to health officials. More than 10,200 new cases were reported Friday in Europe, which World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said earlier this week had become the epicenter of the outbreak after cases began to wane in China, where the outbreak began. There were at least 87,108 cases in Europe Friday and 4,084 deaths. Spain reported 235 new deaths Friday, becoming the second-hardest hit European country after Italy. Italy’s overall death toll passed 4,000 Friday. Spanish officials warned Friday that the situation could soon overcome the country’s health care system. They announced plans to turn a Madrid conference center into a makeshift hospital. Earlier this week, a four-star inn in Madrid was converted into a hospital. Germany, another hard-hit country, is trying to increase the number of intensive care beds, which now total 28,000, by establishing temporary hospitals in hotels, rehabilitation clinics and other facilities. There are nearly 20,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany. Officials there say coronavirus could strike as many as 10 million Germans unless proper precautions are taken, including social distancing. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said dining establishments, bars and other leisure businesses were ordered to close Friday night.In the United States, the Trump administration announced the effective closure of its border with Canada and Mexico and invoked a federal law to get emergency medical supplies to front-line health care workers and to the private sector mobilized to combat the pandemic. President Donald Trump said most travel to and from Canada and Mexico would be prohibited except for trade. The death toll in the U.S. from the virus is 190, with more than 16,000 people confirmed to have the virus. Illinois became the latest U.S. state in which residents have been ordered to stay at home except for essential activities. Governor J.B. Pritzker announced Friday the order will take effect Saturday evening for the 13 million residents of the state. The announcement follows similar measures taken in New York and California. The state of New York, with a population of more than 19 million, is confining almost all residents to their homes. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Friday that workers in nonessential businesses must remain homebound beginning Sunday and that gatherings of any size will be prohibited. On Thursday, California Governor Gavin Newsom ordered the 40 million residents of the West Coast state to stay home as part of the battle against the disease. The lockdown for the entire state followed a Los Angeles County order earlier Thursday that shut down all the county’s shopping malls, nonessential retail stores and playgrounds. Restrictive measures were also put in place in Florida Friday, when Governor Ron DeSantis issued an order to close sit-down restaurants, gyms and fitness centers. Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline. Embed” />CopyThe office of U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said Friday that a staffer who works in the office had tested positive for coronavirus. A spokeswoman for Pence said neither the vice president nor President Trump had close contact with the individual. The U.S. government announced Friday the tax filing deadline has been extended from April 15 to July 15, and that taxpayers will have the additional time to make payments without penalties or interest. For the second day in a row Friday, Wuhan, the Chinese city where the outbreak began in December, reported no new cases. Wuhan is the capital of China’s Hubei province. Thirty-four new cases, however, were reported elsewhere in mainland China Thursday. Authorities say people who came from other countries were infected.
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The coronavirus global death toll has surpassed 11,000 and infected more than 260,000 people worldwide, according to health officials.More than 10,200 new cases were reported Friday in Europe, which World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said earlier this week had become the epicenter of the outbreak after cases began to wane in China, where the outbreak began.
There were at least 87,108 cases in Europe on Friday and 4,084 deaths. Spain reported 235 new deaths on Friday, becoming the second-hardest-hit European country after Italy. Italy’s overall death toll passed 4,000 Friday.Spanish officials warned Friday that the situation could soon overcome the country’s health care system. They announced plans to turn a Madrid conference center into a makeshift hospital. Earlier this week, a four-star inn in Madrid was converted into a hospital.
Germany, another hard-hit country, is trying to increase the number of intensive care beds, which now total 28,000, by establishing temporary hospitals in hotels, rehabilitation clinics and other facilities. There were nearly 20,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany. Officials there said coronavirus could strike as many as 10 million Germans unless proper precautions were taken, including social distancing.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said dining establishments, bars and other leisure businesses were ordered to close down Friday night.In the United States, the Trump administration announced the effective closure of its borders with Canada and Mexico and invoked a federal law to get emergency medical supplies to front-line health care workers and the private sector mobilized to combat the pandemic.
President Donald Trump said most travel to and from Canada and Mexico would be prohibited except for trade.
The death toll in the U.S. from the virus was 190, with more than 16,000 people confirmed to have it.
Illinois became the latest U.S. state in which residents were ordered to stay at home except for essential activities. Governor J.B. Pritzker announced Friday that the order would take effect Saturday evening for the 13 million residents of the state.
The announcement followed similar measures taken in New York and California.
The state of New York, with a population of more than 19 million, was confining almost all residents to their homes. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Friday that workers in nonessential businesses must remain homebound beginning Sunday and that gatherings of any size would be prohibited.
On Thursday, California Governor Gavin Newsom ordered the 40 million residents of the West Coast state to stay home as part of the battle against the disease. The lockdown for the entire state followed a Los Angeles County order earlier Thursday that shut down all the county’s shopping malls, nonessential retail stores and playgrounds.
Restrictive measures were also put in place in Florida Friday when Governor Ron DeSantis issued an order to close sit-down restaurants, gyms and fitness centers. Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline. Embed” />CopyThe office of U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said Friday that a staffer had tested positive for the coronavirus. A spokeswoman for Pence said neither the vice president nor Trump had close contact with the individual.
The U.S. government announced Friday that the tax filing deadline had been extended from April 15 to July 15, and that taxpayers would have the additional time to make payments without penalties or interest.
For the second day in a row Friday, Wuhan, the Chinese city where the outbreak began in December, reported no new cases. Wuhan is the capital of China’s Hubei province.
Thirty-four new cases, however, were reported elsewhere in mainland China on Thursday. Authorities said people who came from other countries were infected.
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No more rallies. No more door-knocking. And no more in-person fundraisers, raking in dollars from dozens of millionaires at once.
The coronavirus has disrupted American life, and the 2020 presidential campaign is no exception. Amid calls for social distancing to stop the pandemic’s spread, President Donald Trump and Democrats Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have had little choice but to call off large-scale public events in favor of politicking online and over the airwaves.
Gone are the rope lines, selfies with supporters and entourages of traveling press. They’re being replaced — for now — with tools of the digital world: tele-town halls, virtual fundraisers and live streamed speeches from candidates’ homes, sometimes with awkward results.
The abrupt shift has infused the contest with an added degree of uncertainty.
With control of the White House at stake, candidates have been forced to ditch well-honed strategies in favor of untested tactics. There are doubts about whether they will be able to continue raising crucial cash as unemployment soars and the economy sputters. There are also concerns that a virtual campaign could foster the spread of misinformation and maybe even force the cancellation of the major party conventions this summer.
“Nobody’s had to put together a general election strategy in the circumstances we face today,” Anita Dunn, Biden’s senior adviser, told The Associated Press. “I like to say every election is different. This election is really, really, really different.”
Digital advertising and online outreach were always going to play a major role in the election. But no one could anticipate that tactile politics would be completely put on hold.
Since events halted earlier this month, Sanders has held a virtual rally featuring rocker Neil Young and appeared via live stream for a “fireside chat.” But any momentum he’s sought to build has been sapped, as Biden, the former vice president, has won a string of contests that put the nomination within his grasp.
Sanders’ campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
The pause has provided Biden the opportunity to retool his campaign, which was running on fumes before his massive win in South Carolina last month reset the race. But he lacks the robust digital operation that Sanders and Trump have. And his early experiments in online campaigning have had mixed results.
Biden aimed to appear presidential during a live stream Tuesday night, when he won primaries in Florida, Illinois and Arizona. Standing before a podium with an austere backdrop from his home state of Delaware, he called on the nation to put politics aside to fight the coronavirus because it “doesn’t care if you’re a Democrat or a Republican.”
Yet an earlier event was marred by technical glitches. At one point, Biden wandered off-camera. The campaign later apologized for the difficulties, and Rob Flaherty, Biden’s digital director, acknowledged live stream technology is “one of the things that we’re struggling with.”
“He’s the best retail politician in the entire world, right? So how do we build systems where he can go out and meet people, still talk to people, get those one-on-one engagements, and also make people feel like they’re a part of something?” Flaherty said.
The campaign is also looking into adopting the use of Slack, a popular group communication platform, now that staffers are working from home.
Trump, too, is not immune from the effects. Though the Republican has the megaphone of the presidency, his dismissive early response to the virus and denials that a pandemic was spreading have been largely panned.
At the same time, he’s being denied the ability to hold the freewheeling rallies that are a staple of his presidency and that allow him to blow off steam, attack rivals and often shift the media narrative.
As campaign offices have emptied out and workers telecommute from home, trainings for his reelection effort are now being done virtually, as are all voter contacts.
Tim Murtaugh, the communications director for Trump’s reelection campaign, said the campaign is “best equipped” for the pivot to virtual campaigning. But no amount of technology can replicate the arena rallies that have served as mass organizing and communication events for his reelection.
Murtaugh said the campaign hopes to roll out “live and interactive” events with surrogates online in the coming days. Still, don’t expect to see Trump participating in them.
Murtaugh said that as Trump and Vice President Mike Pence hold televised briefings daily, the campaign’s role is to amplify their message.
“Americans want to see that their president and their government is on the case,” he said.
While Biden has called for the country to come together for a moment of bipartisanship to address the crisis, other Democrats are itching to use Trump’s handling of it as an election-year attack.
“Using Trump’s own words and actions to remind people of his failures while he tries to rewrite history is essential,” tweeted David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s former campaign manager.
So far, at least, a political committee affiliated with Trump’s reelection has opted against taking the same course. America First Action, a super PAC sanctioned by Trump, has postponed plans to spend millions attacking Biden in TV ads while the crisis in ongoing.
Another area of uncertainty is whether any of the contenders will still be able to rake in gobs of money, the lifeblood of any campaign.
With big-dollar events on hold, the candidates and the parties could struggle to bring in large checks. The financial uncertainty could also depress grassroots donations from those who give small amounts online.
“We have to be thoughtful about how we ask people for money,” Flaherty said. “We’re moving into a space where the economy is going to be tougher.”
Not everyone is concerned, though.
“Any Democratic Party official who’s agonizing over what type of fundraising we do or what type of convention we’re going to have should get out of group therapy, go to JoeBiden.com and make a donation,” said Robert Zimmerman, a prominent New York donor and Democratic National Committee member who said he would be fine casting his ballot for Biden during a virtual convention. “The pandemic that we’re facing and the threat it represents puts everything in the proper perspective.”
But it’s not just the presidential candidates who will have to grapple with this new reality. Down-ballot candidates could find the shift to an all-digital campaign particularly challenging because many of them are running on much thinner budgets and have less money to spend on ads and staff to make up for the loss of in-person interaction.
“If you have no money, and you’re dependent on meeting people out in organic environments, the challenges you now face are huge,” said Kelly Dietrich, CEO of the National Democratic Training Committee, a group that trains Democrats who want to run for office or work on a campaign.
Even well-funded players in the presidential race are feeling the pinch. And the holding pattern gripping the contest is delaying on-the-ground organizing efforts that will be key to winning battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida.
“Everyone is hitting pause and thinking about how we engage in field activities and organizing. Hopefully we’ll get to a place where that can happen,” said Guy Cecil, chairman of Priorities USA, the largest outside Democratic group. “But the reality is that until we see changes, we’re just going to have to put those things on hold.”
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The global death toll for the coronavirus pandemic as it spreads around the world has surpassed 10,000 people. COVID-19 has infected more than 244,500 people. In the United States, California Governor Gavin Newsom Thursday ordered the 40 million residents of the west coast state to stay home as part of the battle against the disease. Newsom issued the mandate following the deaths of 19 people and 958 people who tested positive for the coronavirus in California. The lockdown for the entire state followed a Los Angeles County order earlier Thursday that shut down all the county’s shopping malls, nonessential retail stores and playgrounds. Newsom asked Congress Thursday for $1 billion in federal funds to pay for expected medical costs related to the disease. On Wednesday, the California governor wrote to President Donald Trump asking for the Navy’s hospital ship to be deployed to the port of Los Angeles for the expected surge in infected patients Ground zero shifts to Italy
Meanwhile, Italy is now ground zero for the coronavirus pandemic, surpassing China as the country with the most deaths. As of Thursday, Italian officials report 3,405 coronavirus deaths while China’s death toll stood at 3,248. Over the last two days, Wuhan, the Chinese city where the outbreak began in December, is reporting no new cases for the first time. Wuhan is the capital of China’s Hubei province. Italy and Hubei province imposed total lockdowns to stop the spread; however, Italy has a large elderly population and those 65 and older are highly susceptible to the coronavirus. Thirty-four new cases were reported elsewhere in mainland China Thursday. Authorities say people who came from other countries were infected. South Korea reported 152 new cases Thursday, a setback after reporting fewer than 100 new cases for four days in a row. South Korea is the hardest-hit Asian country outside China. Another hard-hit country, Germany, reported a jump of 2,800 new cases Thursday. Officials there say coronavirus could strike as many as 10 million Germans unless proper precautions are taken, including social distancing. Spain has closed all hotels and turned a four-star inn in Madrid into a makeshift hospital. In France, one of the world’s most anticipated entertainment events, the Cannes Film Festival, has been postponed from May until possibly July.
Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline. Embed” />Copy Prince Albert of Monaco tests positive
Prince Albert of Monaco is the first head of state with a confirmed case of coronavirus. New Zealand and Australia are closing their shores to all foreign visitors. In North America, Mexico reported its first coronavirus death Thursday. US Congressmen infected
Two members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Republican Mario Diaz-Balart and Democrat Ben McAdams, are the first members of Congress to test positive for coronavirus. Both are in self-quarantine. Late Thursday, a federal judge in Seattle rejected an appeal by the American Civil Liberties Union to free nine illegal migrants who the ACLU says are at risk for coronavirus because of their age and other health problems. The judge said he is fully aware of the seriousness of the outbreak but said there is no evidence of the virus at the holding center and said conditions are adequate. Opera fans will have to do without their Puccini and Wagner for a while. New York’s Metropolitan Opera is canceling the rest of its season because of the outbreak.
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Not everyone who wanted to buy the bank cards stolen from Southeast Asian owners would pay the same price: The higher the amount of money left on the card, the higher the price. That’s according to Technisanct, a cybersecurity company based in India, which said it found the data for hundreds of thousands of cards for sale online, taken from citizens in the six largest nations in Southeast Asia.The card theft comes as statistics show cybercrime is on the rise across all the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, prompting local calls for more stringent regulations and protocols to fight the trend. “The results are alarming as it seems no one is aware that such a huge volume of payment card details, including the CVV (card verification value) and PIN, are available,” said Nandakishore Harikumar, chief executive officer of Technisanct.The company said its researchers found that more than 300,000 stolen card accounts were being sold on the internet last month. It said the accounts belonged to customers in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. FILE – An interior view of the Interpol Global Complex for Innovation (IGCI) Cyber Fusion Centre, which brings together cybersecurity experts, is seen in Singapore, April 13, 2015.The leaked information is just the latest instance of a region-wide trend, and ASEAN is paying the price. IBM Security commissioned research, released in the 2019 Cost of a Data Breach Report, which assessed impacts for the global economy.Between 2018 and 2019, the ASEAN region saw a cost increase in all of the key indicators measured by the researchers, namely the average size of data breaches, the average total cost, and the average cost per piece of data that is breached. Exploiting COVID-19The leak also coincides with what security researchers say is an increase in global cyberfraud by criminals exploiting the COVID-19 virus emergency. Hackers this month went after the website of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, as well as targeting the increasing number of people now working from home with unsecured wireless internet. Southeast Asians’ increasing awareness of cyberthreats in recent years has led to increasing regulation aimed at increasing data protection. This year, Singapore criminalized “doxxing,” which refers to posting other people’s personal information online, usually to threaten or embarrass them. Indonesia has proposed its first-ever data privacy law, which includes punishment of up to seven years in jail and $5 million in fines for sharing private data without consent.Vietnam already had a cybersecurity law but has released new subsidiary regulations under that law with further guidelines. They include specifics about when websites must take down information considered to be violating the law, and which organizations must store data domestically.”Vietnam witnessed an increase in the number of cyberattacks and data leakages in 2019, and the country has been among the top targets for cyberattacks in recent years,” Pho Duc Giang, director at PwC Vietnam Cybersecurity Services Company, said. “To leverage on growing business opportunities in the digital economy’s booming period, Vietnam enterprises need to actively prepare for new challenges by adapting and complying with up-to-date” standards, he said. Security recommendationsSuch standards go beyond what is required by the law. Security researchers recommend companies and individuals think more carefully about their behavior on the internet.They can use software to manage their passwords —so they don’t have to memorize ones that are easy for hackers to crack—as well as change the passwords for devices like their wireless routers and smart plugs, rather than use the default settings set by the manufacturer.And as employees are working from home to combat the coronavirus, there are reports that hackers have been sending phishing emails posing as managers seeking employee log-in credentials, or as officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offering information. During this emergency and beyond, the recommendations for better online behavior could be useful both inside and outside Southeast Asia.
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Twenty thousand years ago, humans lived in grassy tundras near the Arctic Circle. Trees were scare in these cold, dry regions, so Ice Age hunters could not build campfires using wood. Instead, these hardy humans made campfires by burning the bones of the big animals they hunted. Few modern people know how to make a bone fire. Recently, a Colorado archeologist and some volunteers gave it a try. From Longmont, Colorado, Shelley Schlender reports.
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Massachusetts
State officials are promising a significant increase in Massachusetts’ capacity to test for the coronavirus.
Massachusetts Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders said Thursday the state aims to administer 3,500 tests a day by the beginning of next week.
Gov. Charlie Baker has said expanding coronavirus testing is among his top priorities as state-run labs can only currently process about 400 tests a day.
The top prosecutor for Boston and surrounding communities is seeking the release from custody of certain people who are particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus because of their health or age.
Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins’ office said in an emailed statement Thursday that it is working with defense attorneys to identity “individuals whose release we deem urgent and necessary for public health reasons.”
Rollins’ office said she is seeking to free from jail only those who “pose no meaningful risk to public safety.” Connecticut
A 91-year-old Connecticut man who was hospitalized with the coronavirus has died, becoming the state’s second victim of the virus, a local official announced.
The New Haven Register reports that New Canaan Councilman Steve Karl announced the death Wednesday night at a Town Council meeting.
A man in his 80s died Wednesday at Danbury Hospital, Gov. Ned Lamont announced.
For most people, the coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, or death. The vast majority of people recover.
A Maine-based independent bioresearch institution announced Thursday it will begin conducting 150 tests a day for the coronavirus at its Connecticut laboratory.
The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine will conduct the testing of samples obtained by medical organizations, including UConn Health and Hartford HealthCare.Maine
A Maine island community has rescinded its order banning visitors and seasonal residents because of the coronavirus pandemic. But the community’s leaders are still asking people to limit travel.
A new resolution from the North Haven Select Board “strongly” encourages people to stay where they are. It also says that people who live on the mainland with better access to medical care should refrain from the traveling to the island, where resources are limited.
Town Administrator Rick Lattimer said it was never the Select Board’s intention to keep summer residents away from the community with about 375 year-round residents and one medical clinic.
Two more people who live at a retirement community in Falmouth have tested positive for coronavirus, the director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.
The new diagnoses double the number of people from OceanView in Falmouth who have tested positive, Nirav Shah said.
Shah made the announcement on the same day he announced the number of positive cases in the state has surged past 50. One person has recovered and four are hospitalized, Shah said.
The state is also changing rules to allow compounding pharmacies to help alleviate the state’s hand sanitizer shortage by making and selling their own, Shah said.New Hampshire
New Hampshire’s public university system is shifting to remote teaching for the remainder of the semester.
The University of New Hampshire, Plymouth State University and Keene State College initially had taken different approaches to students returning after spring break. But university system officials announced Wednesday night that all would extend remote teaching for the rest of the semester while restricting access to the campuses. Housing will continue to be provided to students who do not have a secure place to be and have been granted exceptions.Vermont
The University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington, Vermont’s largest city, is temporarily suspending visitation at the hospital with limited exceptions. It’s restricting entrances and screening everyone who enters the hospital or clinics.Rhode Island
The U.S. Small Business Administration is offering low-interest federal disaster loans to Rhode Island small businesses suffering substantial economic injury as a result of the coronavirus outbreak.
These loans can be used to pay fixed debts, payroll, accounts payable and other bills that can’t be paid because of the outbreak’s impact, the agency said. Applicants can apply online.
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Celebrities, politicians and professional athletes faced a backlash this week as many revealed that they had been tested for the coronavirus, even when they didn’t have a fever or other tell-tale symptoms.That’s fueling a perception that the wealthy and famous have been able to jump to the head of the line to get tested while others have been turned away or met with long delays.The concerns over preferential treatment underscore a fundamental truth about inequalities baked into the American health care system — those with the financial means can often receive a different level of service.Asked about the issue Wednesday, President Donald Trump said the well-to-do and well-connected shouldn’t get priority for coronavirus tests. But the wealthy former reality star conceded that the rich and famous sometimes get perks.”Perhaps that’s been the story of life,” Trump said during a briefing at the White House. “That does happen on occasion. And I’ve noticed where some people have been tested fairly quickly.”On Wednesday, the Brooklyn Nets professional basketball team announced the entire team was tested last week upon returning from San Francisco after a game against the Golden State Warriors. The team found a private lab to do the work, and on Tuesday announced that four of its players were positive for the virus, including perennial All-Star Kevin Durant.Even though public health resources were not used, it raised the ire of many, including New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.”We wish them a speedy recovery,” the mayor wrote on Twitter. “But, with all due respect, an entire NBA team should NOT get tested for COVID-19 while there are critically ill patients waiting to be tested. Tests should not be for the wealthy, but for the sick.”Like Robin Fraser.The 30-year-old has fibromyalgia and an autoimmune disorder that put her at high risk for complications if she contracts the virus. She’s been running a fever and coughing since last week. Her doctor recommended she get tested at the emergency room, but there she was told there weren’t enough tests, so she can’t get one.”That’s just not fair,” said Fraser, who lives in Victor, New York, near Rochester.Fraser has seen celebrities and politicians getting tests, and that upsets her.”Why are they getting in front of the line? People like me, average Joes, we get pushed to the back of the line. Why can Congress get it and we can’t?” she asked.Among the powerful people who have gotten tests in recent weeks were South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz. Both Republican lawmakers were exposed to someone who tested positive, but their tests came back negative.Public frustrations over the difficulties getting tested for the new virus have been building since the first U.S. case was confirmed Jan. 20. Early missteps with test kits developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, coupled with strict government criteria about who qualified for screening, have led to widespread reports of people struggling to get tested. Even those who manage to get successfully swabbed often report long delays in getting the results back due to lengthy backlogs at government-run labs.Seeking to break the logjam, the federal Food and Drug Administration announced earlier this month it would allow major private diagnostic lab companies to begin rolling out new COVID-19 tests and relaxed regulations typically required before new tests can be brought to market.Over the last two weeks, that has led to a surge in testing available from private doctors and labs not bound by CDC’s criteria for which patients should be prioritized for testing, such as those with fever and difficulty breathing who have recently traveled to affected countries overseas, or those who have had close contact with someone confirmed to have had the virus.LabCorp, a major lab testing company, began providing COVID-19 test on March 5. Quest Diagnostics, another major national provider, followed suit on March 9.In a statement, LabCorp said its COVID-19 test is available on the order of any physician or other authorized healthcare provider anywhere in the United States. The company said it expects to be performing more than 10,000 tests per day by the end of this week, ramping up to 20,000 tests per day by the end of this month.By comparison, the CDC and other public health labs conducted about 30,000 tests in the eight weeks since the pandemic arrived in the U.S., according to data compiled by researchers at Johns Hopkins University.The NBA suspended its season on March 11 after a Utah Jazz player tested positive for the coronavirus just before a game — eventually canceled — with the Oklahoma City Thunder. Oklahoma’s state epidemiologist confirmed last week that the Jazz, their traveling party and a number of Utah beat writers — 58 people in all — were tested after the cancellation of the game in Oklahoma City once it became known that All-Star center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the virus.League officials have said that since its players have direct contact with each other and often interact very closely with fans, both physicians who work for teams and public health officials were concerned that they could accelerate the spread of the virus. NBA spokesman Mike Bass said that players getting tested — and in some cases, revealing their positive status — may have ultimately “drawn attention to the critical need for young people to follow CDC recommendations.”Hollywood actor Idris Elba said he didn’t have any symptoms when he announced his positive test on Monday, prompting questions and criticism on social media about why he got a test when he was not symptomatic.Elba later explained that he was on location, about to start a film, and got tested after a person he was in contact with had tested positive. He said he would have put a lot of people at risk if he had continued working.”Quite honestly, my job made me test immediately,” said Elba, an Englishman best known for his roles on the HBO series “The Wire” and as a detective on the BBC One series “Luther.”Elba’s work situation isn’t unusual. Businesses across the country are shutting down to prevent employees from exposing themselves to the virus at work. Several cities, including New York, San Francisco and Washington, have ordered bars, restaurants, gyms, movie theaters and other businesses to close to slow the virus’ spread.Elba told The Associated Press in an email sent through his representative Thursday that he took the test in the United States and was tested by a private doctor through his employer, whom he did not name.”Everyone should be able to be tested. Period,” he wrote to the AP.Elba said people not knowing if they are infected is a problem because they spread the virus further. He encouraged people to stay home until more tests become available.Ali Fedotowsky-Manno, former star of ABC’s “The Bachelorette,” found herself on the defensive after announcing in a post on Instagram on Sunday that she had been tested at a clinic in Los Angeles after she said she had shortness of breath and an X-ray that showed white spots on her lungs, and what she said were “all the symptoms of the virus, except for a fever.”She said she went to a clinic called Mend, which she said was “one of the only places that will do the test if you don’t have a fever.”Fedotowsky-Manno said Wednesday in an interview with The Associated Press that she had seen commentary accusing her of special treatment. She denied the accusation, saying she chose the clinic closest to her house,She checked in under her married name and only heard the clinic would give tests to people without a fever from someone else in the waiting room, after she was already there.”Nobody knew who I was at that urgent care. I went to urgent care like anybody could,” she said.The CEO of Mend did not return emails seeking comment, but the clinic’s website says it charges $195 for a home visit to collect swabs for COVID-19 tests, with Quest then billing a patient’s insurance to process the samples.”We would expect physicians to follow CDC clinical criteria,” said Wendy Bost, a spokeswoman for Quest. “Our materials about the test are clear on this point.”The company declined to provide a figure for what it charges for its COVID-19 test.Fedotowsky-Manno on Wednesday was still waiting for her results, five days after getting tested. She said she understands why people are upset over testing.”I think it’s crazy that everybody can’t get tested,” she said. “It’s absolutely absurd.”
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A father in quarantine on a Marine base in California was able to attend his daughter’s wedding hundreds of kilometers away in Arizona. He did so through a “telepresence robot,” directing its movements, mingling with guests and watching from the sidelines as his daughter danced at the wedding party.
With more people worldwide severely curtailing their movements to fight the coronavirus, they are also getting creative about how to still be part of big moments in their lives. Among the thousands of people stuck on the Grand Princess cruise ship when it faced the coronavirus quarantine was Joel Young, a lighting contractor. He passed the time in his small cabin playing video games. He hoped to be home in Arizona for one thing — his daughter’s wedding. Then he was quarantined in San Diego. “When I called her and talked to her, and told her that I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be able to make it, there were a lot of tears there,” he said.Friends and colleagues rallied and found Young a way to be there by using a robot telepresence that is controlled remotely by the user. It was shipped to his mother’s house in Phoenix. They called it the “Papabot,” and put a tie on it.
“With this device, it allows me to control what I’m looking at, where I’m going,” he said. The outdoor wedding went beautifully. Young didn’t get to walk his daughter down the aisle as planned, but he was there mingling with guests, watching her happiness from the sidelines. “You meet a challenge, you find the best solution you can. And you accept what it is, and you move on,” he said.
As the world struggles with the new normal of living through a pandemic, technology helped one father be where he was needed.
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With the coronavirus pandemic alarming the global community, South Sudan is grappling with another potentially fatal viral infection: measles. Last year, more than 4,700 people were affected due to low immunization coverage. Chika Oduah reports from the South Sudan capital, Juba.
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The European Union is calling on video streaming services to limit providing programs in high-definition to avert an internet crash that could be triggered by extremely heavy usage because of the coronavirus pandemic.
European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton tweeted late Wednesday that he had spoken with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings about the matter. Breton also urged Netflix, other streaming companies and customers to switch to standard definition “when HD is not necessary.”Important phone conversation with @ReedHastings, CEO of @NetflixTo beat #COVID19, we #StayAtHomeTeleworking & streaming help a lot but infrastructures might be in strain. To secure Internet access for all, let’s #SwitchToStandard definition when HD is not necessary.— Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) March 18, 2020
Countries throughout the world have imposed restrictions on gatherings and travel in response to the pandemic, forcing hundreds of millions of workers and students to remain in their homes.
Being homebound has led to unprecedented usage of streaming services, causing concern among EU officials that it could strain internet bandwidth beyond capacity and trigger a crash.
A Netflix spokesperson told CNN that Breton and Hastings will discuss the matter again on Thursday.
Netflix said it already makes adjustments to the image quality of its programming to ensure enough network capacity is available.
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Phones have been ringing off the hook lately for Brian Edwards, a sales manager of a small medical supply company in California. And he has to say “No” to all the people who called.Edwards used to buy tens of thousands of facemasks from China. But not in the past three months.His company, the First Choice Industrial Supply Company, has not been able to get any masks from China since the outbreak of coronavirus in late December while the demand is soaring in the U.S.”You can’t get a product. You are not going to get a product for months. ” said Edwards, whose company advertises itself as “If it’s something you use, it’s something we stock”.Edwards said in the interview with Voice of America last Friday that he gets about 50 calls and 50 emails every day from all over the country trying to find masks. But now in the U.S. “no body can get anything”. “The worst you could possibly have.” said Edwards.ShortagesEdwards is at the center of a major problem that the nation faces now: There aren’t enough critical medical supplies, such as facemasks, because China has stopped shipping them to the world.In the fight against the coronavirus, facemasks have become the most visible symbol of the deadly pandemic, worn by millions of people around the globe every day. Various N95 respiration masks at a laboratory of 3M, that has been contracted by the U.S. government to produce extra marks in response to the country’s novel coronavirus outbreak, in Maplewood, Minnesota, U.S., March 4, 2020.In the U.S., officials project the country has just one percent of the 3.5 billion surgical masks and respirators needed to fight the outbreak for a year.Hospitals across the country are now “conserving supplies and allocating with oversight”, said Arika Trim, Associate Director of Media Relation at the American Hospital Association.She said in an email to VOA that hospitals are “grouping patients accordingly as means of preserving personal protective equipment.”Doctors, nurses and other medical staff caring for the growing number of novel coronavirus cases are reportedly making DIY (do-it-yourself) face shields to help deal with the shortage. U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday he will be invoking a federal law called “Defense Production Act” to marshal the private sector for the supply shortage. In addition, the White House has asked construction companies to donate their stocks of N95 respirator masks to their local hospitals. The shortage has also prompted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to loosen its recommendations on the face protection that healthcare workers should use. Instead of recommending using specialized masks known as N95 respirators, which filter out about 95 percent of airborne particles, the CDC now says that looser fitting surgical facemasks “are an acceptable alternative.”“The supply chain of respirators cannot meet demand.” the CDC said Tuesday.A Broken Supply ChainThousands of miles away, among millions of manufacturers on the other end of the supply chain, Cai Mingxian, the owner of a mask factory based in China’s virus epicenter in Hubei province, is trying to get his business restarted.Like many small businesses in China, his factory was devastated during the lockdown and not able to produce anything.Cai’s 150 employees are now back at work making 200,000 masks per day. But he said all of them are being sold to China’s government and none for export. “We previously exported to the U.S., Spain and other parts of Asia,” Cai said. “But at the moment we can’t export anything.”Chinese officials deny they are banning exports. Li Xingqian, director of the foreign trade department at the Ministry of Commerce, said at a press conference last week that it would abide by free trade and market principles. “Masks are freely traded products …companies can trade them in line with market principles.” However, another Chinese official, Chen Hongyan, secretary-general of the Medical Devices Branch of the China Pharmaceutical Materials Association, admitted “key medical supplies such as masks are uniformly managed and allocated by the government”, according to a report published last Wednesday by the official Xinhua news agency.As the virus’s spread escalates all over the world, the government is under growing pressure to share and meet the world’s needs. There are signs recently that China may now be willing to share some of what it has. “China pledges continuous support for its export enterprises in providing face masks and medical supplies to foreign countries, said foreign trade director Li last Thursday.Li’s claim was confirmed by mask factory owner Cai who said he has heard that the regulation prohibiting mask exports is lifted. “Mask export was authorized yesterday” Cai said in the telephone interview last Saturday. “I am following the situation every day.” As part of goodwill packages, the Chinese government has begun some shipments to Iran, South Korea, Japan and Italy. Last week, it said it would send five million masks to South Korea and export two million surgical masks to Italy. FILE – An Indian laborer works at a surgical mask production unit in Ahmadabad, India, Feb. 1, 2020.Production Ramp-UpChina made half the world’s masks before the coronavirus emerged there. The government has been undertaking a massive mobilization of wartime proportions to expand its output since then. Daily production soared from about 10 million before the crisis to 116 million now, according to the latest number released late last month by China’s National Development and Reform Commission.More than 2,500 companies in China have reportedly started making facemasks, among them are some of the country’s powerful state-owned enterprises and technology companies, including iPhone assembler Foxconn.The maker of China’s new J-20 stealth fighter jet, Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group, repurposed part of its factory to design a mask production line, according to local media, The Sichuan Daily’s recent report.BYD Co., a leading Chinese electric-carmaker backed by American investor Warren Buffett is now the world’s biggest facemask maker with the capacity of making 5 million masks a day.The Limits China facesEven with the daily output of masks in China now 116 million, given the sheer size of its population, the country is likely to continue facing shortages.In many parts of China, facemasks are required by local governments to protect against infection in public spaces. A recent report by a leading Chinese financial services firm, Huachuang Securities, says China has 38 million people working in healthcare, transportation, and manufacturing industries. If one person uses one mask per day, China would need 238 million masks every day.Yuan Fajun, the secretary general of the medical materials committee at the China Medical Pharmaceutical Material Association, estimates manufacturers still needed to produce about 230 million surgical masks for its domestic market.In addition, there are some technical limits. The production of sophisticated facemasks like the N95 model requires nonwoven polypropylene, a special fabric that is in short supply. As a result, N95 respirator masks, which help keep health workers safe from contracting the virus through particles released by mucus and cough sputum when they are around infected individuals, has barely increased.The investment in a new production line for such material will cost millions of dollars, and will take two to three months to complete, local media reported.The other bottleneck the country faces is with its mask-making machines. Demand for such machines skyrocketed as hundreds of companies altered their business and have started making masks. For the big companies that are unable to obtain the equipment rapidly enough, they are making their own. A General Motors joint venture in southwestern China and BYD have already built dozens of the machines and are beginning bulk production.But the majority of mask makers, which are small and mid-sized businesses, can only wait. Mask maker Cai said he has placed a back order and machines would come in a month. “I will be making 400,000 masks per day after the machines arrive” Cai said.As for the U.S., the Trump administration is invoking special powers to quickly expand domestic manufacturing of protective masks. But in order to ramp up the production, “They have to build the machine, and that is going to take 6 months.” said Edwards.
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Shejirina Moni sits beside her children in front of their makeshift home in a shanty community in South Sudan’s capital Juba. Six of her children have died of various illnesses. She’s got three left.“The first one died at nine months. Another one died at the age of 10 months. Another one died when he was crawling, about three months,” she tells VOA.Moni’s story highlights a sad fact: Millions of children in South Sudan do not get routine vaccinations. They are vulnerable to preventable illnesses.UNICEF health specialist Dr. Patti Samuel (R) explains the importance of childhood immunizations to a young mother. (Chika Oduah/VOA)While South Sudan is currently free of the coronavirus pandemic alarming the global community, the country is battling a severe measles outbreak, with over 4,700 confirmed cases and 26 deaths since January 2019.
The government of South Sudan has partnered with the World Health Organization, UNICEF, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and ONE, the anti-poverty campaign co-founded by Irish musician and celebrity-activist Bono, to carry out a nationwide measles vaccination drive that aims to reach 2.5 million children by April.
The campaign launched in February at the only pediatric medical facility in the entire country – Al-Shabbah Children’s Hospital. Situated in the heart of Juba, it provides healthcare to more than 5,000 people monthly, reaching some of the poorest people in the city.Agnes Anjack Alphonse, a UNICEF community health volunteer, tells a little girl that she needs to get vaccinated against measles. (Chika Oduah/VOA)“We need to boost the vaccination coverage to protect children against measles outbreaks,” says Dr. Makur Matur Kariom, the Ministry of Health’s undersecretary. “Unfortunately, in South Sudan routine vaccination coverage against measles remains low at only 59 percent.”Public health specialists recommend coverage not to fall below 90 percent. It’s crucial to maintain that standard for measles, which is highly infectious. With poor coverage, outbreaks reoccur.“[Measles] can cause rashes, eye infection, respiratory infections, diarrhea and even death,” says Dr. Olushayo Olu, the WHO’s South Sudan country representative.One reason why childhood immunization coverage against measles is low in the country is due to the logistical challenges involved in keeping vaccines at near-freezing temperatures. It’s not easy to do in South Sudan – the least electrified country in the world, where temperatures often soar above 40 degrees Celsius.Al-Shabbah Children’s Hospital, the only pediatric medical facility in South Sudan, uses a solar-powdered fridge provided by UNICEF to store vaccines. (Chika Oduah/VOA)Al-Shabbah Hospital uses a solar-powered fridge provided by UNICEF.“We are able to keep these things at the correct temperature in the hospital here. That is the most important thing,” says Dr. Felix Nyungura, the hospital’s executive director. “The public electricity has not yet arrived in our place here. Although in some places it is there. But now we are depending on solar power and electricity from generator. “UNICEF is helping to restore what is known in healthcare terms as the cold-chain system, which was severely disrupted during the civil war that broke out in 2013.“With the conflict, more than 50 percent of the cold chain equipment installed in the country were vandalized and some of them looted,” Dr. Patti Samuel, a UNICEF health specialist, tells VOA. She says UNICEF has installed refrigerators, freezers and generators to run them in about 55 percent of health facilities across the country.Shejirina Moni shows her measles vaccination immunization card for one of her children. Her children were vaccinated against measles in February as part of a nationwide campaign. (Chika Oduah/VOA)South Sudan faces huge developmental challenges as a young nation mired in historic conflict, economic crisis and grappling with rapid population growth.Only one percent of the government’s 2019-2020 fiscal budget has been allocated to healthcare. In 2018, it was two percent.“South Sudan – what are the priorities right now? When your house is on fire, you just want to put out the fire and unfortunately in South Sudan the fire has been burning for so long and some of the basics of development have just not been prioritized,” says Edwin Ikhuoria, ONE’s Africa executive director.He says governments in Africa do not adequately fund healthcare because politicians don’t see it as a “sexy campaign,” compared to other areas like infrastructure.“But If health care is not well invested in, you’re going to lose a lot in human capital,” he says.Eduardo Martins (R) oversees quality assurance operations in South Sudan for Continental Medical Supplies. (Chika Oduah/VOA)ONE tries to convince governments to increase domestic financing for primary health care and pushes for investments that help to end preventable childhood deaths.Another reason immunization coverage is low is because people aren’t informed. That’s where community mobilizers like Agnes Anjack Alphonse come in. Volunteering for UNICEF, she’s on the frontline in the effort to get the word out.“Sometimes I knock on the doors,” she says. “If they did not come and I know that this house has kids, and they did not come, I’ll go knock on the door. ‘Hi, we are doing vaccine, why are you not coming?’ They’ll say, ‘I’m busy.’ I’ll say, ‘can I have your kids and I’ll return them back?’ They’ll say it’s OK.”Making the rounds in her neighborhood, she meets a mother whose daughter has not been vaccinated and gently persuades her to go to a medical facility.The efforts are paying off. So far, the vaccination campaign has reached more than a million children, including Shejirina Mon’s.“I have discovered the importance of vaccination,” she says.She hopes her daughters, Madelina Padi and Maria Yangi, and son Yoanna, will live long, healthy lives.
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Faced with a lengthy shutdown due the coronavirus pandemic, movie theaters are requesting relief from the U.S. government.
The National Association of Theater Owners, the trade group that represents most of the industry’s cinemas, said Wednesday that it’s asking for immediate federal help for its chains and its 150,000 employees. The theaters are requesting loan guarantees for exhibitors, tax benefits for employees and funds to compensate for lost ticket sales and concessions.
The organization said the movie theater industry is “uniquely vulnerable” to the crisis, and needs assistance to weather a near total shutdown of two to three months.
“This is an unprecedented challenge to the business,” said John Fithian, president and chief executive of NATO. “We’re looking to Congress and White House to understand this is a cultural institution where people gather.”
Fithian didn’t give a specific dollar amount for what the industry is seeking but said theaters could be saved for a fraction of what the airline industry is requesting (The White House has proposed $50 billion for the airlines). For less than the cost of one airline company, Fithian said, movie theaters could be kept afloat.
“We want our policy makers to know that at the end of this thing, when people have been cooped up in their house for several months, they’ll need a break to go out and do something collectively that’s affordable and fun and away from what they’ve just been through,” he said. “But we still need to be viable.”
NATO also said it will supply $1 million in aid for out-of-work movie theater employees. The majority of the industry’s workers are paid hourly. “Starting tomorrow, most of them won’t be paid anything,” said Fithian.
Earlier this week, U.S. movie theaters closed nationwide, shuttering nearly all of the country’s cinemas including its largest chains, AMC Theaters and Regal Cinemas. The closures followed federal guidelines against gatherings of more than 10 people. Hollywood has postponed nearly all March and April releases, and many May ones, too.
In the meantime, some studios have moved their new releases to on-demand platforms, a rare breaking of the traditional 90-day theatrical window. Universal earlier announced that “The Hunt,” “Invisible Man” and “Emma” will be released for home viewing on Friday. On Wednesday, Sony Pictures said the Vin Diesel sci-fi thriller “Bloodshot,” which opened in theaters last Friday, will be available for digital purchase Tuesday.
“Sony Pictures is firmly committed to theatrical exhibition and we support windowing,” Sony Pictures chairman Tom Rothman said in a statement. “This is a unique and exceedingly rare circumstance where theaters have been required to close nationwide for the greater good.”
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School closures caused by the coronavirus pandemic are creating stress for many parents trying to teach and entertain their children at home. While many online educational options provide help, some parents worry about too much screen time while their kids are away from school. General view of a sign outside the Parkside Community Primary School in Borehamwood as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in Borehamwood, Britain, March 18, 2020.“If you’re wasting your time on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, that’s the bad kind of screen time that we want to eliminate,” said David Drobik, co-founder of Vividbooks, an application that uses augmented reality to make physics concepts come to life. His app is among those that aim to combine the real and digital worlds to help children stay mentally active and engaged. Augmented reality physicsTraditional physics textbooks, Drobik said, contain illustrations, diagrams and lots of text to describe concepts that might be easier to understand if explained through a more visual medium.“Physics has a lot of caveats and a lot of concepts that are very visual in the sense that if you apply a digital layer with an animation that explains different concepts, it’s much easier to explain rather than having to read a lot of text,” Drobik said. Through a desktop or mobile device, a user first prints out Vividbooks pages. Once in the app, holding the mobile device over a Vividbooks page will animate what is on the page on the screen of the device.“The device recognizes the image on the worksheet, and that’s how it knows that it should play a certain type of animation,” Drobik said.Certain pages include sound when explaining concepts such as how a steam engine works or the mechanical properties of gases with the sound of blowing up a balloon. Other topics include energy, optics, Newton’s law and friction. An empty classroom is seen at a closed school in Paris, March 16, 2020. The app is currently available only for Apple mobile devices. Web and Android versions are expected in June. During the pandemic, parents can access Vividbooks pages for free. The target age range for the product is 10 to 12 years old. The company plans to add chemistry and biology content and to expand the material for a wider age range.Creativity and imagination Another app attempts to avoid the passivity that causes many children and young adults to be glued to screens.“Technology is great. It’s all around us and there’s so many fantastic things out there,” Martin Horstman, founder of Tink Digital, the company that created the app DoodleMatic, said. But, he added, the way children use it can be passive.Horstman considers social media and video games to be passive because the user is consuming other people’s ideas.He developed DoodleMatic so that users 6 years old and older could express their own ideas by combining real-world skills with technology.With the software, a user designs and draws a game on paper, using specific colors that tell the app whether something is an avatar, a goal, a hazard, or is something that can make an object move. The user then takes a photo of the picture with a mobile device through the app, and what was on paper becomes a video game.Through trial and error, young game developers learn how to avoid past mistakes and develop more complex games, which Horstman said can teach important life skills.“We believe strongly that creativity and imagination is such an important skill for every career path that you might end up taking,” Horstman said.Kids can design and animate two games for free. A package costs $29.99, which includes markers, design ideas and a code providing access to create 1,000 additional animated games.
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One of the few Americans to see the moon close up has died. Astronaut Al Worden, who flew around the moon as part of the Apollo 15 mission in 1971, died in his sleep, his family said Wednesday. He was 88. Worden was a U.S. Air Force colonel when he joined NASA in 1966, getting his chance to fly to the moon five years later. Worden circled the moon in the command module while fellow astronauts Jim Irwin and David Scott explored the surface. The highlight of the mission for Worden was when he performed the first deep-space spacewalk 322,000 kilometers above the Earth, inspecting the spacecraft’s scientific instrument bay. “Al was an American hero whose achievements in space and on Earth will never be forgotten,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Wednesday. Worden once described flying to the moon as like driving a car, only with some analytical ability. He wrote two books about his moon mission, including one for children. Worden retired from NASA in 1975 and worked in the aerospace industry, but he never lost his enthusiasm for space. In 2019, he told VOA’s Kane Farabaugh that he was “very optimistic” about the U.S. space program, saying whether it takes 100 years or 10,000 years, the U.S. will do all the things it wants to do in space.
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School closures caused by the coronavirus pandemic mean many parents are trying to come up with ways to educate and entertain their children at home. While there are many online options, some parents worry about too much screen time. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details on a couple of applications that combine the physical and digital so students learning at home get the best of both worlds.
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Technology and spirituality normally don’t go together. But at a recent conference in San Francisco there were tips on how to use technology to achieve more inner peace. Deana Mitchell went to see if it was possible.
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Dharam Singh Rajput can’t afford to buy hand sanitizer, which could help ward off transmission of the coronavirus in his community.
The Rajput family could opt for something more basic — soap and water — to achieve hand hygiene. But sometimes there is no clean running water in their neighborhood, which sits next to open sewage canals and mounds of garbage in the heart of New Delhi, India’s capital. “The kind of water we have access to has the potential to cause more diseases instead of warding off the virus if we use it to wash our hands,” Rajput said.
Experts say keeping hands clean is one of the easiest and best ways to prevent transmission of the new coronavirus, in addition to social distancing. But for India’s homeless and urban poor who live in thousands of slums across major cities and towns, maintaining good hygiene can be nearly impossible.
About 160 million — more than the population of Russia — of India’s 1.3 billion people don’t have access to clean water.
That could leave impoverished Indians like Rajput and his family at risk during the virus outbreak.
“It could prove disastrous for people who don’t have access to clean water,” said Samrat Basak, the director of the World Resource Institute’s Urban Water Program in India. With India being the world’s second-most populous country, and having weak health care facilities and growing concerns that there may be an undetected communal spread of the virus, the risks associated with the lack of clean water aren’t being overstated. UNICEF said last week that almost 20% of urban Indians do not have facilities with water and soap at home. What could make things worse, experts say, is that social distancing is nearly impossible in many Indian cities that are among the world’s most densely populated areas. So far, the government has apparently been able to keep a lid on community transmission of the virus. Authorities have confirmed 147 cases and three deaths, all linked to foreign travel or direct contact with someone who caught the disease abroad.
While the coronavirus can be deadly, particularly for the elderly and people with other health problems, for most people it causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. Some feel no symptoms at all and the vast majority of people recover.
India’s government has made fervent appeals to the public to practice social distancing and good hand hygiene. India also was one of the first countries to essentially shut its borders and deny entry to all but a select few foreigners. But in a country as big as India, community transmission is all but inevitable, experts say.
“Clean water is the first line of defense,” said V.K. Madhavan, India chief executive at WaterAid, a global advocacy group for water and sanitation. “If there is no access to clean water, the situation could worsen.”
India’s clean water problem isn’t new.
Hundreds of thousands of people wait in line every day to fill buckets from government water trucks. Hospitals and schools struggle with clean water supplies. People are forced to wash utensils and clothes in dirty water.
About 600 million Indians face acute water shortages, according to government think tank NITI Aayog.
The water crisis hits the poor particularly hard since wealthy people can pay for water from private sources that those living in slums can’t afford.
The mortality rate due to inadequate or unsafe water is also high. About 200,000 people die each year in India from diseases related to unclean water. Insufficient water also leads to food insecurity.
“When clean drinking water runs out, people will have no choice but to rely on unsafe water,” said Dr. Anant Bhan, a global health researcher. “It could expose India’s huge population to extreme vulnerability.”
Government promises to provide clean water to many Indians have so far failed despite efforts by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that have been internationally lauded.
“Access to clean water is a basic human right,” said Madhavan. “No one should fear losing their life because they couldn’t practice the first line of defense, which is hand washing.
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Social distancing could qualify as an oxymoron in Italy, where walking arm-in-arm with friends, kissing neighbors in greeting and patting the heads of babies are part of the demonstrative culture.But a new virus has rapidly redefined the concept of respecting personal space for tactile Italians, as well as for South Koreans, Filipinos, Americans, Spaniards and citizens of many other crowded parts of the world. Whether acting under government orders or following basic public health advice, people are putting distance between themselves to keep the coronavirus away. The new rules of engagement call for maintaining a gap of one to two meters (or three to six feet) to prevent possible exposure when an infected individual coughs or speaks. The COVID-19 illness causes mild or moderate symptoms in most of those infected, but severe symptoms are more likely in the elderly or people with existing health problems. The vast majority of those infected recover. The reset norm for an acceptable degree of separation became visible evidence of the pandemic’s reach as schools, shopping malls and sports venues closed and opportunities for public encounters dwindled. Outside a gun shop in California, a post office in Hungary and a supermarket in Manila, lines lengthened as customers queued up at more or less proper intervals.Residents step on measured tape placed outside a supermarket to practice social distancing as a precautionary measure against the spread of the new coronavirus in Manila, Philippines, early Tuesday, March 17, 2020.Practicing social distancing at first created confusion among shoppers waiting at a supermarket in Madrid. Some harsh exchanges ensued. But customers soon learned that if they wanted their groceries, they needed to fall into line. The safe space standards also reveal how closely humans positioned themselves before. Pastors at a church in Seoul had room to spread out in empty pews after deciding to conduct Sunday services online. Journalists at a news conference in Berlin sat in chairs spaced away from one another.A nationwide decree that took effect in Italy last week obliges people to stay at least one meter (about three feet) apart. Overnight, habits of a lifetime and of an entire society were turned upside down. In a country where waiting your turn often equates to elbowing your way to the front of an undisciplined pack, Italians dutifully lined up with breaks in between — one meter, two meters, sometimes standing across the street from each other to keep stores uncrowded and themselves from getting COVID-19. Shopkeepers whipped out measuring tapes. “I have seen a lot of discipline, solidarity and collaboration, and everybody understands that the first that falls will pull the others with him,” said Piero Emilio Vincenzi, owner of an appliance store near the Vatican.
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Chinese social video app TikTok named the initial members of a U.S.-focused content moderation committee to advise on its policies on Wednesday, as it faces U.S. scrutiny over data-sharing and censorship concerns.The council, which it announced in October, will meet every few months to give “unvarnished views” and advice on content moderation policies and evaluate the company’s actions.TikTok, owned by Beijing-based tech giant ByteDance, has made a series of bids to boost transparency as it faces scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers over its data security practices and concerns it engages in censorship at the behest of the Chinese government.The company, which has been criticized after former guidelines to suppress users’ content based on their physical appearance were leaked to media outlets, has also come under pressure to curb misinformation ahead of the U.S. presidential election and during the coronavirus pandemic.A Reuters search found TikTok videos repeating debunked false claims, including that the coronavirus might have come from a bioweapons ‘super laboratory.’The company has said U.S. user data is stored in the United States and that China does not have jurisdiction over content outside China.TikTok said its ‘Content Advisory Council,’ will grow to about a dozen members.The council’s first meeting at the end of March will focus on topics around “platform integrity, including policies against misinformation and election interference.”The group will be chaired by Dawn Nunziato, a professor at George Washington University Law School and co-director of the Global Internet Freedom Project.The other six founding members include Hany Farid, an expert on deepfakes and digital image forensics, tech ethicist David Ryan Polgar, and experts on issues from child safety to voter information.Last week, TikTok announced it had set up a “transparency center” in Los Angeles to show regulators and the public how it how it reviews content.In November, the U.S. government launched a national security review of TikTok owner Beijing ByteDance Technology Co’s $1 billion acquisition of U.S. social media app Musical.ly. Two senators have also introduced a bill to ban federal employees from using TikTok on government-issued phones.Facebook Inc is currently in the process of creating an independent oversight board to review appealed content decisions. In 2016, Twitter Inc formed a ‘Trust and Safety Council’ of groups and experts to provide advice.
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Technology and spirituality normally don’t go together. But at a recent conference in San Francisco there were tips on how to use technology to achieve more inner peace. Deana Mitchell went to see if it was possible.
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After months of bickering over new competitions, talks of closed super leagues and complaints of greed by elite clubs, football’s leaders have buried their differences to tackle the effects of the coronavirus outbreak.
On Tuesday, UEFA agreed to delay its flagship Euro 2020 competition for one year to allow domestic leagues to complete their seasons, once football resumes, and FIFA in turn recommended postponing its new Club World Cup from 2021.
“It was a relatively short call, probably the most united front of opinion I have seen in European football so far,” said Jonas Baer-Hoffmann, general secretary of the global players’ union FIFPRO, after a video conference with UEFA and representatives of clubs and leagues.
“It was a very cordial conversation — not at all tense or contentious.”
That could not be said of recent encounters involving football’s various stakeholders.
Only two weeks ago, UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin told his organization’s annual congress that “no football administrator, no matter the size of the ego, should think we are the stars of the game. We are only the guardians of the game.”
He didn’t mention any names but FIFA president Gianni Infantino, whose efforts to create the Club World Cup have not gone down well with UEFA, was sitting in the front row.
Last year, UEFA and the European Club Association (ECA), proposed a reform of the Champions League which would have turned it into semi-closed competition from 2024 onwards.
The proposal was eventually dropped amid widespread opposition led by Europe’s domestic leagues.
In December, the Financial Times and New York Times reported that discussions led by Real Madrid president Florentino Perez had taken place over the possibility of setting up a super league featuring the world’s richest clubs split into two divisions. Ceferin said the idea was “far-fetched” and “insane.”
Such reports of breakaways have become commonplace over the years as the financial gap grows between a handful of elite clubs and the rest.
Only two weeks ago, Andrea Agnelli, president of Serie A champions Juventus, questioned the right of smaller rivals Atalanta to take part in the Champions League because the club lacked “international history.”
FIFA’s ambitions for a 24-team Club World Cup have themselves been seen as an attempt to muscle in the lucrative club game and reduce financial dependency on the World Cup.
But the tone was very different on Tuesday.
“It is at times like these, that the football community needs to show responsibility, unity, solidarity and altruism,” said Ceferin, while Baer-Hoffmann recognized that UEFA had taken a “significant hit” with its decision to postpone Euro 2020.
“Finding appropriate and fair solutions at global level is imperative,” added Infantino, who also proposed a fund to help those in football affected by the pandemic. “We need to think of all those around the world potentially impacted by our decisions.”
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