The founder of the Knights of Colombus, the influential U.S.-based lay Catholic organization, is moving a step closer to possible sainthood.
Pope Francis has approved a miracle attributed to the intercession of the Rev. Michael McGivney, a Connecticut priest who died at age 38 of pneumonia in 1890 during a pandemic similar to the current coronavirus outbreak.
He would be the first U.S. parish priest to be beatified, the first major step before canonization.
The Vatican said Wednesday that Francis had signed off on the miracle required. The Knights said it concerned the medically inexplicable cure of a baby with a life-threatening condition who was healed in utero in 2015 “after prayers by his family to Father McGivney.”
McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus in 1882 in New Haven, Connecticut, to encourage greater, active participation of lay Catholics in their faith and to care for families when the breadwinner died. Today the Knights are one of the biggest Catholic organizations in the world, known for their charitable efforts and counting about 2 million members in the Americas, Caribbean, Asia and Europe.
The organization is also an insurer, boasting more than $100 billion in financial protection for members and their families.
No date has been set for the beatification, which the Knights said would be held in Connecticut.
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Month: May 2020
The launch of a SpaceX rocket ship with two NASA astronauts on a history-making flight into orbit was called off with 16 minutes to go in the countdown Wednesday because of thunderclouds and the danger of lightning. Liftoff was rescheduled for Saturday afternoon.The commercially designed, built and owned spacecraft was set to blast off in the afternoon for the International Space Station, ushering in a new era in commercial spaceflight and putting NASA back in the business of launching astronauts from U.S. soil for the first time in nearly a decade. But thunderstorms for much of the day threatened to force a postponement, and the word finally came down that the atmosphere was so electrically charged that the spacecraft with NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken aboard could get hit by a bolt of lightning.”No launch for today — safety for our crew members @Astro_Doug and @AstroBehnken is our top priority,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine tweeted, using a lightning emoji.The SpaceX Falcon 9, with the Crew Dragon spacecraft on top of the rocket, sits on Launch Pad 39-A at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., May 27, 2020.The two men were scheduled to ride into orbit aboard the SpaceX’s bullet-shaped Dragon capsule on top of a Falcon 9 rocket, taking off from the same launch pad used during the Apollo moon missions a half-century ago. Both President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence had arrived to watch.The flight — the long-held dream of SpaceX founder Elon Musk — would have marked the first time a private company sent humans into orbit.It would also have been the first time in nearly a decade that the United States launched astronauts into orbit from U.S. soil. Ever since the space shuttle was retired in 2011, NASA has relied on Russian spaceships launched from Kazakhstan to take U.S. astronauts to and from the space station.During the day, thunder could be heard as the astronauts made their way to the pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, and a tornado warning was issued moments after they climbed into their capsule.The preparations took place in the shadow of the coronavirus outbreak that has killed an estimated 100,000 Americans.”We’re launching American astronauts on American rockets from American soil. We haven’t done this really since 2011, so this is a unique moment in time,” Bridenstine said.With this launch, he said, “everybody can look up and say, ‘Look, the future is so much brighter than the present.’ And I really hope that this is an inspiration to the world.”The mission would put Musk and SpaceX in the same league as only three spacefaring countries — Russia, the U.S. and China, all of which gave sent astronauts into orbit.”What today is about is reigniting the dream of space and getting people fired up about the future,” he said in a NASA interview before the flight was scrubbed.A solemn-sounding Musk said he felt his responsibilities most strongly when he saw the astronauts’ wives and sons just before launch. He said he told them: “We’ve done everything we can to make sure your dads come back OK.”President Donald Trump looks at an area on a piece of equipment to sign during tour of NASA facilities before viewing the SpaceX Demonstration Mission 2 Launch at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., May 27, 2020.NASA pushed ahead with the launch despite the viral outbreak but kept the guest list at Kennedy extremely limited and asked spectators to stay at home. Still, beaches and parks along Florida’s Space Coast are open again, and hours before the launch, cars and RVs already were lining the causeway in Cape Canaveral.The space agency also estimated 1.7 million people were watching the launch preparations online during the afternoon.Among the sightseers was Erin Gatz, who came prepared for both rain and pandemic.
Accompanied by her 14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son, she brought face masks and a small tent to protect against the elements. She said the children had faint memories of watching in person one of the last shuttle launches almost a decade ago when they were preschoolers. “I wanted them to see the flip side and get to see the next era of space travel,” said Gatz, who lives in Deltona, Florida. “It’s exciting and hopeful.”NASA hired SpaceX and Boeing in 2014 to transport astronauts to the space station in a new kind of public-private partnership. Development of SpaceX’s Dragon and Boeing’s Starliner capsules took longer than expected, however. Boeing’s ship is not expected to fly astronauts into space until early 2021.”We’re doing it differently than we’ve ever done it before,” Bridenstine said. “We’re transforming how we do spaceflight in the future.”
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— Larry Kramer, the playwright whose angry voice and pen raised theatergoers’ consciousness about AIDS and roused thousands to militant protests in the early years of the epidemic, has died at 84.
Bill Goldstein, a writer who was working on a biography of Kramer, confirmed the news to The Associated Press. Kramer’s husband, David Webster, told The New York Times that Kramer died Wednesday of pneumonia.
“We have lost a giant of a man who stood up for gay rights like a warrior. His anger was needed at a time when gay men’s deaths to AIDS were being ignored by the American government,” said Elton John in a statement.
Kramer, who wrote “The Normal Heart” and founded the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, lost his lover to acquired immune deficiency syndrome in 1984 and was himself infected with the virus. He also suffered from hepatitis B and received a liver transplant in 2001 because the virus had caused liver failure.
He was nominated for an Academy Award for his screenplay for “Women in Love,” the 1969 adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s novel. It starred Glenda Jackson, who won her first Oscar for her performance.
He also wrote the 1972 screenplay “Lost Horizon,” a novel, “Faggots,” and the plays “Sissies’ Scrapbook,” “The Furniture of Home,” “Just Say No” and “The Destiny of Me,” which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1993.
But for many years he was best known for his public fight to secure medical treatment, acceptance and civil rights for people with AIDS. He loudly told everyone that the gay community was grappling with a plague.
Tributes from the arts community flooded in Wednesday, with Lin-Manuel Miranda on Twitter saying “What an extraordinary writer, what a life.” Dan Savage wrote: “He ordered us to love ourselves and each other and to fight for our lives. He was a hero.”
In 1981, when AIDS had not yet acquired its name and only a few dozen people had been diagnosed with it, Kramer and a group of his friends in New York City founded Gay Men’s Health Crisis, one of the first groups in the country to address the epidemic.
He tried to rouse the gay community with speeches and articles such as “1,112 and Counting,” published in gay newspapers in 1983.
“Our continued existence as gay men upon the face of this earth is at stake,” he wrote. “Unless we fight for our lives, we shall die.”
The late journalist Randy Shilts, in his best selling account of the AIDS epidemic “And the Band Played On,” called that article “inarguably one of the most influential works of advocacy journalism of the decade” and credited it with “crystallizing the epidemic into a political movement for the gay community.”
Kramer lived to see gay marriage a reality — and married himself in 2013 — but never rested. “I’m married,” he told The AP. “But that’s only part of where we are. AIDS is still decimating us and we still don’t have protection under the law.”
Kramer split with GMHC in 1983 after other board members decided to concentrate on providing support services to people with AIDS. It remains one of the largest AIDS-service groups in the country.
After leaving GMHC, Kramer wrote “The Normal Heart,” in which a furious young writer — not unlike Kramer himself — battles politicians, society, the media and other gay leaders to bring attention to the crisis.
The play premiered at The Public Theater in April 1985. Associated Press drama critic Michael Kuchwara called it an “angry but compelling indictment of a society as well as a subculture for failing to respond adequately to the tragedy.”
A revival in 2011 was almost universally praised by critics and earned the best revival Tony. Two actors from it — Ellen Barkin and John Benjamin Hickey — also won Tonys. Joe Mantello played the main character of Ned Weeks, the alter ego of Kramer.
“I’m very moved that it moved so many people,” he said at the time. Kramer often stood outside the theater passing out fliers asking the world to take action against HIV/AIDS. “Please know that AIDS is a worldwide plague. Please know there is no cure,” it said.
The play was turned into a TV film for HBO in 2014 starring Mark Ruffalo, Jonathan Groff, Matt Bomer, Taylor Kitsch, Jim Parsons, Alfred Molina, Joe Mantello and Julia Roberts. It won the Emmy for best movie. Kramer stood onstage in heavy winter clothing as the statuette was presented to director Ryan Murphy.
The 1992 play “The Destiny of Me,” continues the story of Weeks from “The Normal Heart.” Weeks, in the hospital for an experimental AIDS treatment, reflects on the past, particularly his relationship with his family. His parents and brother appear to act out what happened in the past, as does the young Ned, who confronts his older self.
In 1987, Kramer founded ACT UP, the group that became famous for staging civil disobedience at places like the Food and Drug Administration, the New York Stock Exchange and Burroughs-Wellcome Corp., the maker of the chief anti-AIDS drug, AZT.
ACT UP’s protests helped persuade the FDA to speed the approval of new drugs and Burroughs-Wellcome to lower its price for AZT. He also battled — and later reconciled — with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has been leading the national response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Kramer soon relinquished a leadership role in ACT UP, and as support for AIDS research increased, he found some common ground with health officials whom ACT UP had bitterly criticized.
Kramer never softened the urgency of his demands. In 2011, he helped the American Foundation for Equal Rights mount their play “8” on Broadway about the legal battle over same-sex marriage in California.
“The one nice thing that I seem to have acquired, accidentally, is this reputation of everyone afraid of my voice,” he told The AP in 2015. “So I get heard, whether it changes anything or not.”
One of his last projects was the massive two-volume “The American People,” which chronicled the history of gay people in America and took decades to write.
“I just think it’s so important that we know our history — the history of how badly we’re treated and how hard we have to fight to get what we deserve, which is equality,” he told The AP.
At the 2013 Tonys, he was honored with the Isabelle Stevenson Award, given to a member of the theater community for philanthropic or civic efforts.
A few months later, Kramer married his longtime partner, architect David Webster, in the intensive care unit of NYU Langone Medical Center, where Kramer was recovering from surgery for a bowel obstruction.
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“Do as I say, but not as I do” was the message many British saw in the behavior of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s key aide, who traveled hundreds of miles with coronavirus symptoms during the country’s lockdown.
While Dominic Cummings has faced calls for his firing but support from his boss over his journey from London to the northern city of Durham in March, few countries seem immune to the perception that politicians and top officials are bending the rules that their own governments wrote during the pandemic.
From U.S. President Donald Trump to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, global decision-makers have frequently set bad examples, whether it’s refusing to wear masks or breaking confinement rules aimed at protecting their citizens from COVID-19.
Some are punished when they’re caught, others publicly repent, while a few just shrug off the violations during a pandemic that has claimed more than 350,000 lives worldwide.
Here are some notable examples:New Zealand Health Minister Calls Himself An “Idiot”
In April, New Zealand’s health minister was stripped of some of his responsibilities after defying the country’s strict lockdown measures. David Clark drove 19 kilometers (12 miles) to the beach to take a walk with his family as the government was asking people to make historic sacrifices by staying at home.
“I’ve been an idiot, and I understand why people will be angry with me,” Clark said. He also earlier acknowledged driving to a park near his home to go mountain biking.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said normally she would fire Clark but that the country couldn’t afford massive disruption in its health sector while it was fighting the virus. Instead, she stripped Clark of his role as associate finance minister and demoting him to the bottom of the Cabinet rankings.Mexico’s Leader Shakes Hands
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said it pained him not to embrace supporters during tours because of health risks, but he made a remarkable exception in March, shaking hands with the elderly mother of imprisoned drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán. Asked about shaking her hand when the government was urging citizens to practice social distancing, López Obrador said it would have been disrespectful not to.
“It’s very difficult humanly,” he said. “I’m not a robot.” America’s Pandemic Politics
The decision to wear a mask in public is becoming a political statement in the U.S. It’s been stoked by Trump — who didn’t wear a mask during an appearance at a facility making them — and some other Republicans, who have questioned the value of masks. This month, pandemic politics shadowed Trump’s trip to Michigan as he toured a factory making lifesaving medical devices. He did not publicly wear a face covering despite a warning from the state’s top law enforcement officer that refusing to do so might lead to a ban on his return.
Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, meanwhile, wore a mask along with his wife, Jill, as they laid a wreath Monday at a Delaware veterans’ memorial — his first public appearance since mid-March. Trump later retweeted Fox News analyst Brit Hume’s criticism of Biden for wearing a mask in public.
Vice President Mike Pence was criticized for not wearing a mask while on a visit to the Mayo Clinic.Netanyahu’s Passover Holiday
While the rest of Israel was instructed not to gather with their extended families for traditional Passover Seder in April, Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin hosted their adult children for the festive holiday meal, drawing fierce criticism on social media. Israeli television showed a photo of Avner Netanyahu, the premier’s younger son, attending the Seder at his father’s official residence.
Benjamin Netanyahu later apologized in a televised address, saying he should have adhered more closely to the regulations. The French Exception
French President Emmanuel Macron also has been inconsistent with masks, leaving the French public confused. Although Macron has sometimes appeared in a mask for visits at hospitals and schools, it’s a different story in the Elysee presidential palace and for speeches. During a visit to a Paris hospital on May 15, Macron initially wore a mask to chat with doctors but then removed it to talk with union workers.
Interior Minister Christophe Castaner also faced criticism this month for huddling with dozens of mask-makers in a factory for a photo where everyone removed their masks.
Putin’s Different Approach
The only time Russian President Vladimir Putin wore protective gear in public was on March 24, when he visited a top coronavirus hospital in Moscow. Before donning a hazmat suit, Putin shook hands with Dr. Denis Protsenko, the head of the hospital. Neither wore masks or gloves, and a week later, Protsenko tested positive for the virus. That raised questions about Putin’s health, but the Kremlin said he was fine.
Putin has since held at least seven face-to-face meetings, according to the Kremlin website. He and others didn’t wear masks during those meetings, and Putin also didn’t cover his face for events marking Nazi Germany’s defeat in World War II.
When asked why Putin doesn’t wear a mask during public appearances, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin has a different approach to protecting the president’s health.
“When it comes to public events, we ask medical workers to test all the participants in advance,” Peskov told reporters. Puerto Rico Official’s Inconsistent Message
Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez was criticized for not always wearing a mask despite holding new conferences ordering people to cover their face outside their homes and inside businesses. A member of the opposition Popular Democratic Party also filed a police complaint last week against members of Vázquez’s New Progressive Party, alleging they violated a curfew by gathering to inaugurate the party’s new headquarters. Police are investigating the incident, which angered many Puerto Ricans. Scottish Medical Official Takes The Low Road
Scotland’s chief medical officer, Dr. Catherine Calderwood, broke her own rules and traveled to her second home during lockdown in April. She faced blowback after photos emerged of her and her family visiting Earlsferry in Fife, which is more than an hour’s drive from her main home in Edinburgh. She apologized and resigned.
“I did not follow the advice I’m giving to others,” Calderwood said. “I am truly sorry for that. I’ve seen a lot of the comments from … people calling me a hypocrite.” Japan’s Gambling Scandal
A top Japanese prosecutor was reprimanded and later resigned this month after defying a stay-at-home recommendation in a gambling scandal.
Hiromu Kurokawa, the country’s No. 2 prosecutor who headed the Tokyo High Prosecutors’ Office, acknowledged that he wasn’t social distancing when he played mahjong for money at a newspaper reporter’s home twice in May. Japan didn’t enforce a stay-at-home recommendation, but his case outraged the public because many were following social distancing measures. Italian Press Conference Criticism
At a March news conference to open a COVID-19 field hospital in Milan’s old convention center, photographers and video journalists were pushed into corners that did not allow proper spacing. Only text reporters were given seating in line with regulations. The Codacons consumer protection group announced it would file a complaint with prosecutors in Milan.
“What should have been a moment of great happiness and pride for Lombardy and Italy was transformed into a surreal event, where in violation of the anti-gathering rules, groups of crowds formed,” Codacons said. South Africa’s Rule-Breaking Dinner
In April, Communications Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams was placed on special leave for two months and forced to apologize by President Cyril Ramaphosa after she violated stay-at-home regulations. Ramaphosa directed police to investigate after a photo emerged on social media of Ndabeni-Abrahams and several others having a meal at the home of former deputy minister of higher education Mduduzi Manana.Spanish Hospital Ceremony Investigated
Madrid’s regional and city officials sparked controversy when they gathered on May 1 for a ceremony shuttering a massive field hospital at a convention center. Eager to appear in the final photo of a facility credited with treating nearly 4,000 mild COVID-19 patients, dozens of officials didn’t follow social distancing rules. Spain’s restrictions banned more than 10 people at events like the one that honored nurses and doctors. The central government opened an investigation, and Madrid regional chief Isabel Díaz Ayuso apologized. She said officials “got carried away by the uniqueness of the moment.”
Former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy also defied strict stay-at-home orders, with a television station filming him power walking around in northern Madrid. The Spanish prosecutor’s office is investigating whether Rajoy, who was premier from 2011 to 2018, should be fined.Indian Cricket Game Criticized
In India, a top leader of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party drew flak last weekend after playing a game of cricket. Manoj Tiwari, also a member of India’s parliament, said he followed social distancing rules during the game. Videos circulating on social media showed Tiwati without a mask. He was also seen taking selfies with people. Leaders Who Follow The Rules
Some leaders are setting a good example, including Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. Media jokingly called him the most relaxed politician in the world after he was photographed queuing at a supermarket this month, wearing a mask and following social distancing measures. The photo was widely shared on social media.
Another rule-follower is Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who did not visit his ill 96-year-old mother in a nursing home during the last eight weeks of her life because of coronavirus restrictions. He only came to her bedside during her final hours this month.
“The prime minister has respected all guidelines,” according to a statement read by a spokesman. “The guidelines allow for family to say goodbye to dying family members in the final stage. And as such the prime minister was with her during her last night.”
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If you add garlic to your guacamole, we have bad news: You’re not doing it right. Do you mince the onion? That’s also a no-no. And, please, leave the avocado lumpy.So says 97-year-old Diana Kennedy, a foremost authority on traditional Mexican cuisine. Over many decades, she has mastered, documented and become fiercely protective of the culinary styles of each region. This summer, a portrait as zesty as her dishes comes in the form of the documentary ” Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy,” which marks director Elizabeth Carroll’s feature film debut.The documentary traces the unlikely rise of an Englishwoman who became one of the most respected authorities on Mexican food. She’s been called “the Julia Child of Mexico,” “the Mick Jagger of Mexican Cuisine” and even the “Indiana Jones of food.”Carroll’s camera follows Kennedy as she navigates Mexico in her trusty Nissan truck, walks through her remarkable garden, teaches professional chefs in a harrowing class in her home, and meticulously makes coffee — toasting her beans in an antique toaster.”It’s some of the best coffee I’ve ever had. I know that sounds like what I’m supposed to say, but it’s true,” said Carroll, laughing.The film includes various TV appearances by Kennedy during her career as well as interviews with notable chefs, including Alice Waters, José Andrés, Rick Bayless, Pati Jinich and Gabriela Cámara. It’s less a cooking lesson than a beautifully drawn character study.”I just felt really drawn to her and very comfortable with her, like there was some kind of unspoken understanding between us when we would look at each other,” said Carroll. “I think she’s somebody who operates a lot on instinct and I think that there was just an instinct of trust between us.”Kennedy, a culinary purist, arrived in Mexico in the late 1950s and has traveled thousands of miles throughout the country, often alone, seeking out regional foods. She’s written nine cookbooks, faithfully acknowledging where and from whom the recipes were obtained. Kennedy has received the Order of the Aztec Eagle from the Mexican government — the highest award given to foreigners for service to Mexico.”She saw a need for recording recipes that were potentially being lost by industrialization,” said Carroll. “Nobody was recording those recipes in an official way. She saw an opening there to take on a responsibility like that and she obviously devoted her life to it.”When Kennedy makes guacamole, she uses serrano peppers (“Keep your hands off the jalapeno, por favor!” she says in the film). Add salt, finely chopped tomatoes, but no lime. There is cilantro, and if some guests don’t like it she has this advice — “Don’t invite them.””She sees it as her responsibility to share and perfect the original way that things have been done. And that if other people want to deviate from that, they have to know the rules first,” said Carroll.Jinich, host and co-producer of PBS’ two-time James Beard award-winning “Pati’s Mexican Table,” said Kennedy’s outsider perspective helped as she documented the pillars of the cuisine. “It’s no coincidence that this British woman had to come and see and recognize and be fascinated with everything that for us Mexicans was just our Mexican food,” Jinich said. “I feel like the entire country of Mexico is indebted to Diana Kennedy.”Kennedy and Carroll met in a serendipitous way in 2013. The filmmaker was in Austin, Texas, and beginning to research a film about how recipes and traditions are passed down. She soon realized she’d have to talk to Kennedy.But how? Kennedy lived in the mountains of western Mexico. Carroll looked around online for an hour, gave up and went to a bookstore. She pulled into the parking lot and looked up to see the marquee: “Book signing with Diana Kennedy tomorrow.””It was confusing and exciting and wild and special all at the same time,” said Carroll. “I was like, ‘OK. There’s some divine games happening here.'” The film took more than six years to make and it captures a woman confronting her own mortality but still insistent that her work continue. “What are you going to do when I’m gone?” she asks in the film. “Who else is going to start screaming?”
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French lawmakers were set to vote Wednesday on whether to endorse a contact-tracing app designed to contain the spread of the coronavirus amid sharp debate over privacy concerns.
If approved, France’s StopCovid app will be made available to users on a voluntary basis starting Monday. The government committed to honoring the result of the non-binding parliamentary vote.
French privacy watchdog CNIL backed the app this week, stating the technology “won’t lead to creating a list of infected people but only a list of contacts using pseudonymous data. It does respect the concept of data protection.”
The app uses Bluetooth signals on mobile phones to trace individuals that people infected with the virus had contact with and informs them of potential exposure so they can self-isolate. It will store anonymous data in a government-run centralized database for 14 days before erasing it. How Contact Tracing Apps workSorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline. Embed” />CopyThe government says the app doesn’t involve location tracking and it guaranteed the privacy of users, but rights advocacy groups have raised concerns over the issue.
A public agency that monitors the respecting of human rights in France, the National Consultative Commission for Human Rights, said in a statement Tuesday that the app “affects in a disproportionate manner the rights and freedoms of all citizens.”
An advocacy group for internet users’ rights, La Quadrature du Net, said that “deploying an app whose objectives, technology and usage carry significant risks for our society and our freedoms, for likely mediocre results (possibly even counter-productive ones), is not something we can consider acceptable.”
Initially meant to accompany the lifting of restrictions starting on May 11, the app’s release was delayed due to technical issues.
The junior minister in charge of the digital economy, Cedric O, said the app was tested on 100 smartphones representing 17 brands and will be available to work with Google and Apple’s operating systems.
“It’s working well and doesn’t drain the battery,” he said.
European countries have chosen different approaches to developing their own tracing apps as part of their strategies to prevent a second wave of virus cases after national lockdowns end.
Germany, Italy, Austria, Estonia, Switzerland, and Ireland have embraced a decentralized system, widely considered by privacy experts as better because because data is kept on devices only.
France and the U.K. decided instead to send data to a central server, arguing this would help them react more quickly and aid decision-making.
The French government refused to use the technology for pandemic apps released last week by Google and Apple, saying it lacked sufficient data privacy guarantees.
“The government believes that health protection of the French is an exclusive mission for the state and not for private international actors,” it said in a statement.
France, one of the world’s hardest-hit countries, has reported at least 28,530 coronavirus-related deaths.
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Vietnam’s financial hub is setting aside land to develop what locals call a new “Silicon Valley,” a reference to the area of California where a lot of new technology is developed, but with not-so-California characteristics, such as state planning and a lack of venture capital. The Home Affairs Department of Ho Chi Minh City filed a plan this month to the city’s Communist Party committee for merging three districts into a single zone for development as a tech center, domestic media outlet VnExpress International says. The plan followed a meeting May 8 between city officials and Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, the news outlet says. City leaders had begun in 2017 planning a 22,000-hectare (54,300-acre) zone to monetize scientific and technical research, the news outlet says. More than 1 million people already live along the flat swathe of land along the Saigon River. The zone will appeal foremost to internet and software developers, including an estimated 40 financial technology firms, as well as their employees who hope to live near work, analysts on the ground say. The zone is taking shape as tech-educated Vietnamese in their 20s start companies. “Vietnamese are very entrepreneurial,” said Jack Nguyen, a partner at the business advisory firm Mazars in Ho Chi Minh City. “They see something work in other countries, or in the U.S., they’ll give it a shot here in Vietnam.” Vietnamese entrepreneurs, some educated overseas, are taking advantage of a largely “mobile” culture in the Southeast Asian country as well as low-paid local engineers to build up their bases in Ho Chi Minh City, Nguyen added. Ho Chi Minh City’s tech zone includes a slice of its financial center, modern apartment tracts and a nearby polytechnic university. Those perks should make the zone more attractive for techies, said Phuong Hong, a native of the city who lives in the zone. “These three districts have the level of living, and transportation is also very, very convenient,” she said, referring to the three administrative tracts to be merged. Tech workers are likely to take advantage of that convenience, said Frederick Burke, Ho Chi Minh City-based partner with the law firm Baker McKenzie. “The fact that they give extra incentives to locate there creates an ecosystem where some employees live in the neighborhood,” Burke said. “Therefore, an engineer can jump from one job to another more easily.” Central government leaders have tried over the past decade to steer Vietnam’s export-led economy Electricity needs are rising as Vietnam’s economy grows, adding challenges for the state power utility, EVN, as it tries to balance free markets and central planning. (Ha Nguyen/VOA)National-level and city government planning will probably lead the tech zone’s formation – a key difference compared to the more organic development of Silicon Valley of California – analysts say. “What we’ll likely see as key differences between the two is the Ho Chi Minh City project will be a cluster that heavily recruits global and regional companies and (where) entrepreneurial behaviors are likely commissioned by the government, whereas Silicon Valley is more locally grown and has been driven by industry trends and technology innovations,” said Lam Nguyen, managing director with the tech market research firm IDC Indochina in Ho Chi Minh City. State planning to date has offered internet bandwidth. Growth of the zone will require local officials to build out infrastructure, the IDC managing director said. The zone will need tax incentives, better business licensing processes and ideal locations to draw newcomers, he added. Tech investors will favor Vietnam’s relatively lower costs, Lam Nguyen said. Vietnam’s tech zone will face a lack of venture capital, buyouts and failures followed by restarts, country observers say. A lot of startup founders have ideas but lack capital, Jack Nguyen said. They look overseas for funding, he said. The area south of San Francisco known as “Silicon Valley” first became a hub of technology development in the 1950s, when a dean of Stanford University’s engineering school encouraged faculty members to start their own companies. Silicon Valley output has been estimated at an unusually high $275 billion per year and it’s one of the most expensive parts of the United States.
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When NASA’s Space Shuttle program ended in 2011, few thought it would take more than eight years for U.S. astronauts to launch back into orbit from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But as VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports, hopes ride high on a new “space race” of privately developed launch systems ushering in a new era of U.S. space exploration.Camera: Kane Farabaugh, Elizabeth Lee
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NASA and SpaceX are set to launch a crewed mission Wednesday to the International Space Station from U.S. soil for the first time since 2011. Two NASA astronauts will be on board the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft in what is the final part of the testing phase of NASA’s work with private companies to return to launching Americans into space. Since the retirement of the space shuttle program, NASA has relied on partnering with the Russian space agency in order to send U.S. astronauts to the ISS. U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence are expected to be at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for Wednesday’s launch. There were concerns earlier this week that weather could interfere, but the U.S. Air Force 45th Weather Squadron said Tuesday that prospects seemed to be improving, and that there was a 60% chance of favorable conditions. If the launch is unable to go forward Wednesday, NASA and SpaceX would try again Saturday. A Wednesday launch would put the spacecraft on schedule for a Thursday docking at the International Space Station around noon Washington time. The crew includes Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley. NASA’s aim is to have a cost-effective and safe system to send crews to space. Boeing also has a spacecraft in the testing phase for crewed missions. For cargo deliveries, both SpaceX and Northrop Grumman have sent multiple spacecraft to the ISS in recent years. NASA said the mission “will provide critical data on the performance of the Falcon 9 rocket, Crew Dragon spacecraft, and ground systems, as well as in-orbit, docking, and landing operations.”
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A U.S. judge has dealt another blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to increase domestic oil and gas output from public lands, saying officials failed to protect habitat for a declining bird species when it issued energy leases on hundreds of square miles. Judge Brian Morris said the Interior Department did not do enough to encourage development outside of areas with greater sage grouse, a ground-dwelling bird whose numbers have dropped dramatically in recent decades. The judge canceled energy leases on more than 470 square miles (1,200 square kilometers) of public land in the western states of Montana and Wyoming. That means officials will have to return millions of dollars in sales proceeds to companies that purchased the leases. The leases at issue already had been invalidated in previous cases that went through other federal courts. But the latest ruling, handed down Friday, appears to go further and strike at a key component of the administration’s broader energy policy. “The errors here occurred at the beginning of the oil and gas lease sale process, infecting everything that followed,” Morris wrote. Megan Crandall, a spokesperson for Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, said Tuesday that the agency stands behind the leasing guidelines it issued in 2018. “We assert that all of our lease sales are on sound legal footing and in full compliance” with federal environmental law, she said. FILE – Workers drill an oil well within sight of houses against a Rocky Mountain backdrop near Longmont, Colorado, October 14, 2014.Sage grouse range across about 270,000 square miles (700,000 square kilometers) in parts of 11 Western U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. Their numbers have plummeted due to energy development, disease and other factors. The birds are known for an elaborate mating ritual in which males fan their tails and puff out yellow air sacs in their chests as they strut around breeding grounds known as leks. Under former President Barack Obama, the Interior Department delayed lease sales on millions of acres of public land largely because of worries that intensive development could harm sage grouse. In 2015, it adopted a set of wide-ranging plans meant to protect the best grouse habitat and keep the bird off the threatened and endangered species list. After President Donald Trump took office in 2017, the agency modified those plans to ease restrictions on development, which meant officials no longer had to prioritize development outside grouse habitat. The changes prompted a 2018 lawsuit from Montana Audubon, the National Wildlife Federation and other environmental groups. Mike Freeman, an attorney for the environmental groups, said the case has exposed a flaw in the Trump administration’s policies that could affect more than a million acres of leases in addition to those covered by the ruling, including in Utah, Colorado, Nevada, Wyoming and Montana. “We’re challenging the entire national policy,” Freeman said. “There were many other lease sales where it’s been applied, and those lease sales have the exact same legal flaws.” The states of Wyoming and Montana and the Western Energy Alliance, an energy industry group, had intervened in the case on the side of the Trump administration. Western Energy Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma noted that some of the cancelled leases had been sold before the Trump administration’s policies went into full effect. She predicted the judge’s ruling would be overturned on appeal. “I like our chances of success,” Sgamma said. “The bottom line is a new administration has the ability to change policies as long as they do it properly, and the Trump administration has done it properly.”
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Amazon.com Inc is in advanced talks to buy self-driving startup Zoox Inc, in a move that would expand the e-commerce giant’s reach in autonomous-vehicle technology, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.The deal will value Zoox at less than the $3.2 billion it achieved in a funding round in 2018, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.An agreement may be weeks away and the discussions could still fall apart, the report added.Amazon has stepped up its investment in the car sector, participating in a $530 million funding round early last year in self-driving car startup Aurora Innovation Inc.Both Amazon and Zoox declined a Reuters request for comment.
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Even by using the tools at his disposal at the Adler Planetarium situated along the shore of Lake Michigan in Chicago, Director of Astronomy Geza Gyuk acknowledges there is a limit to what he can see and do in understanding the cosmos.“We’ve got a 24-inch telescope in the back of the Adler. It’s not a great place to do observing because of all the light pollution from Chicago,” he explained to VOA in an interview via Skype.Gyuk said he and many other astronomers around the world depend on experiments and equipment — like the Hubble Telescope — deployed by astronauts above Earth’s atmosphere to help them not only “see” the cosmos in new and different ways, but also to see the Earth from above.The independent ability to launch crews into space to perform work and experiments is an important job that has been limited since the space shuttle era ended. Gyuk said he will be glued to his computer monitor this week when astronauts once again launch from the U.S. Space Coast in Florida.“I will look at one of the livestreams and enjoy the spectacle,” he said.When space shuttle Atlantis touched down at Cape Canaveral July 21, 2011, few thought it would take more than eight years for astronauts to launch back into orbit from U.S. soil. The only way to the International Space Station (ISS) and back since that time has been via Russian rockets and capsules launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.Now, when astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley lift off, reach orbit and rendezvous with the ISS, they mark an historic milestone in the U.S. space program in a system partially funded — but not produced — by Jim Bridenstine’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Commercial Crew Program. The SpaceX Falcon 9, with Dragon crew capsule, is serviced on Launch Pad 39-A, May 26, 2020, at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.“NASA is not going to purchase, own or operate the hardware,” Bridenstine explained at a news conference at Kennedy Space Center several weeks ahead of the launch. “In fact, we’re going to be a customer. We’re going to buy a service.” That service and hardware for this mission — a Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft — is supplied by Space X, the first of several private companies in the new “space race” to regularly launch passengers commercially into Earth orbit. To date, Space X has launched 22 Crew Dragon missions without a crew, 21 of them as tests or supply runs to the ISS. But the mission dubbed “Space X Demo-2” is the first with passengers and comes while the world is coping with the spread of the coronavirus. The U.S. currently has the highest number of infections. “We’ve been in, for intents and purposes now, a quarantine since about March 15,” Hurley said to reporters in a preflight news conference. “We’ve been in quarantine probably longer than any other space crew has been in the history of the space program.” While Hurley and Behnken begin a mission that ushers in a new era of space flight, astronomer Gyuk points out it is also cheaper. “A shuttle launch was about half a billion dollars,” he explained to VOA. While the space shuttle could carry up to eight astronauts, it usually carried five to seven crew members. “A partially reusable Space X is expected to be around 50 million” per crew member, with the Dragon capsule eventually able to support up to seven passengers. “The cheaper access is to space, the better. Cheaper launches mean more opportunity for us,” Gyuk said. Retired space shuttle astronaut Nicole Stott, who is participating in National Geographic’s “Launch America” live global coverage of the Demo-2 blastoff, says it won’t just be astronauts like her using the up-and-coming commercial systems, which also include Boeing’s Starliner. “I think the business model for any of these companies that are working right now in partnership with NASA, the business model is going to depend on them having business outside of just NASA astronauts flying on these spacecraft,” Stott explained to VOA during a recent Skype interview. “That partnership allows NASA to facilitate new companies getting into the space business and will allow NASA to continue to do the work that will take us even further off the planet.” “That’s really exciting, because that means the company — Space X — can also sell the seats to other people, like, maybe someday, me, if I want to go into space,” Guyk said. “I just find that really exciting, because it’s going to open up space to everyone eventually.” While commercial companies focus on transporting space travelers into Earth orbit and to the ISS, NASA has not abandoned developing its own space launch and crew system. The agency is currently testing a next-generation rocket and “Orion” capsule as part of its “Artemis” program that will return astronauts — including the first woman — to the moon by 2024, with the ultimate goal of reaching Mars. Elizabeth Lee contributed to this report.
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It may have been plagued with controversy after Oprah Winfrey pulled out as executive producer, but “On the Record” has moved on. The the new #MeToo documentary about rape accusations against hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons is a powerful look at one woman’s agonizing decision to go public, and an exploration of misogyny and sexual harassment in the music industry. Most importantly, though, it shines a light on the unique burden faced by women of color, who are often not believed or accused of being traitors to their own community if they come forward with accusations. The film premieres Wednesday on the new streaming service HBO Max. There’s an elegant, almost poetic silence to one of the most compelling scenes of “On the Record,” a powerful new documentary about sexual violence that knows just when to dial down to a hushed quiet.In the early morning darkness of Dec. 13, 2017, former music executive Drew Dixon walks to a coffee shop and buys the New York Times. On the front page is the story in which she and two others accuse the powerful hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, her former boss, of rape. Dixon examines the article, carefully folds the paper back up, puts on a wool cap as if for protection — and crumples into silent tears.They are tears of fear, surely, about the ramifications of going public — but also, clearly, relief. It feels as if the poison of a decades-old toxic secret is literally seeping out of her. “It saved my life,” she now says of that decision.”On the Record,” by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, provides a searingly intimate portrayal of the agonizing process of calculating whether to go public. Beyond that, it shines an overdue light on the music industry, where sexual harassment is “just baked into the culture,” in the words of Sil Lai Abrams, another Simmons accuser featured in the film.Most importantly, it puts a spotlight on women of color, and the unique and painful burden they often face in coming forward.The project also has been associated with controversy, of course, due to Oprah Winfrey’s well-documented withdrawal as executive producer just before the Sundance Film Festival, scuttling a distribution deal with Apple. Winfrey later acknowledged Simmons had called her and waged a pressure campaign, but said that wasn’t why she bailed.But the film has moved on. It opened at Sundance anyway to cheers and two emotional standing ovations, and was soon picked up by HBO Max, where it premieres Wednesday.For Dixon, vindication at Sundance was sweet.”Just standing there, on our own, and realizing that we were enough,” she said in an interview last week along with Abrams and accuser Sherri Hines, of the premiere. “That our courage was enough. That none of us waffled. None of us buckled. That we were strong enough to defend ourselves and each other.”Less than two years earlier, Dixon had been plagued by doubt. She’d expected that the film, which began shooting before she decided to go public, would be a general look at #MeToo and the music industry. But then the directors wanted to focus more on her journey.”The idea of being blackballed by the black community was really scary,” she says. “But I also felt this pressure, this responsibility to be brave, to highlight the experience of black women as survivors. The opportunity might never come again.”Dixon was in her 20s when she got her dream job at Simmons’ Def Jam Recordings. The daughter of two Washington, D.C. politicians — her mother, Sharon Pratt, was mayor — she attended Stanford University, then moved to New York to join the exciting world of hip-hop.As her star rose at Def Jam, she assumed that would immunize her from what she describes as Simmons’ constant harassment. He would come into her office, lock the door and expose himself. But he wasn’t violent. Until the night in 1995 when, she says, he lured her to his apartment with the excuse of a demo CD she needed to hear. He told her to get it from the bedroom, she says, and then came in wearing only a condom, and raped her.Simmons has denied all allegations of nonconsensual sex.The film weaves together Dixon’s and multiple other accusations against Simmons with key voices of women of color like Tarana Burke, who founded the #MeToo movement, and law professor Kimberle Williams Crenshaw.”A lot of black women felt disconnected from #MeToo initially,” Burke says. “They felt, ‘that’s great that this sister is out there and we support her, but this movement is not for US.'”When black women do seek to come forward, they risk not only not being believed, but being called traitors to their community, both Burke and Dixon explain.”There’s this added layer in the black community that we have to contend with, like, ‘Oh you’re gonna put THIS before race?'” says Burke. “You let this thing happen to you, now we have to pay for it as a race? And we’re silenced even more.’Dick and Ziering, who’ve made several films about sexual assault, say they saw it as essential to go beyond the current #MeToo discussion and focus on the experience of black women.”Now you can come forward — but what about women of color? What do they face?” asks Ziering. “There are so many impediments.”For Dixon, coming forward was clearly worth it. It’s more complicated for Abrams. Even as the audience was applauding at Sundance, Abrams, who attempted suicide after her alleged rape by Simmons, was weeping next to her young adult son, worrying about him as he learned the full details for the first time, she says. Abrams also says that “as a result of coming forward, my career has stalled. Everything just dried up.”Dixon says it remains to be seen whether she will be punished within the music industry. She says she recently was up for a job, things were going well, and suddenly all went quiet. “They must have Googled me,” she says.But she feels, most importantly, like she rescued a part of herself: her creativity, her drive, her very sense of who she is.For more than 20 years, she says, “I had banished the young woman who came to New York City prepared to work really hard in a man’s game, to prove she could do it, but not expecting that she would be raped.””In order to banish the pain I banished part of her light,” she says. “When I said it out loud, those parts of me lit up again.”Her message to any other survivors out there — and she hopes they will come forward: “Facing it frees parts of yourself that you don’t even know you’ve missed.”
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J.K. Rowling is publishing a new story called The Ickabog, which will be free to read online to help entertain children and families stuck at home during the coronavirus pandemic. The Harry Potter author said Tuesday she wrote the fairy tale for her children as a bedtime story over a decade ago. Set in an imaginary land, it is a stand-alone story “about truth and the abuse of power” for children from 7 to 9 years old and is unrelated to Rowling’s other books. Rowling said the draft of the story had stayed in her attic while she focused on writing books for adults. She said her children, now teenagers, were “touchingly enthusiastic” when she recently suggested retrieving the story and publishing it for free. “For the last few weeks I’ve been immersed in a fictional world I thought I’d never enter again. As I worked to finish the book, I started reading chapters nightly to the family again,” she said. “‘The Ickabog’s first two readers told me what they remember from when they were tiny and demanded the reinstatement of bits they’d particularly liked (I obeyed).”The first two chapters were posted online Tuesday, with daily installments to follow until July 10.The book will be published in print later this year, and Rowling said she will pledge royalties from its sales to projects helping those particularly affected by the pandemic.
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Officials with the U.S. space agency say the weather is looking favorable for the scheduled launch Wednesday of the first manned space craft from U.S. soil in nine years. During a briefing from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said the forecast is currently at 60% favorable for launch, an improvement from Monday when the probability for liftoff was at 40%. The launch will be history making also because it will be the first manned space flight from a commercially made rocket and spacecraft. Bridenstine said the United States is transforming the way it does space flight by commercializing low earth orbit. He said commercially made unmanned cargo craft have been resupplying the International Space Station (ISS) for years. Wednesday’s launch will take the next step with commercially produced spacecraft carrying crew, and next they will be flying crew to commercially made and operated space stations. Bridenstine, along with other NASA officials and the two NASA astronauts scheduled to be launched into space, retired Marine Col. Doug Hurley and Air Force Col. Bob Behnken, held the briefing remotely, with no members of the media present, and each participant sitting at least 2 meters apart, as precautions against the coronavirus. NASA said they said have taken extraordinary measures during the COVID-19 pandemic to keep all members of the staff and crew safe. The disease is caused by the coronavirus. The SpaceX Falcon 9 with crew capsule Dragon is scheduled to be launched from the space center Wednesday and dock with the ISS on Thursday.
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Italy’s new contact tracing app for the coronavirus is about to be launched in a number of pilot regions. It will be available to everyone in the country on a voluntary basis and will guarantee the privacy of users, officials who commissioned its development say.
Italians will be able to download the contact tracing app on their mobile phones that will help combat the spread of the coronavirus, starting May 29. “Immuni” was developed at the request of Italy’s Ministry of Innovation Technology and Digital Transformation. Paolo de Rosa, its chief technology officer, says the app can speed up the process of finding people who have had contact with the coronavirus.
“The app is able to do that in a privacy-preserving way so it is not like the traditional approach where you need to identify people. In this case there is only an alerting of people that have been in contact with someone that result positive,” de Rosa said.
How contract tracing apps work
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Those alerted they have come close to someone that has tested positive for the coronavirus can quickly take action and contact health authorities or their personal physician.
De Rosa stressed that privacy is guaranteed as special measures have been taken and it would be extremely difficult to identify anyone using the app. The only data that a user must provide is the territorial province to which he or she belongs.
For the app to be fully effective, de Rosa said, there needs to be a significant amount of people using it, up to 60 percent, but that is only if one does not take into consideration other factors like social distancing. In any case, de Rosa is convinced that it will be a useful tool to have on one’s phone. “This is a very bleeding edge technology, very few countries in the world have used it,” he said.
Creating the app was no easy matter, de Rosa said, adding trade-offs had to be made between the requirements of health authorities and privacy. Knowledge was shared with many other countries as well, but no one really knew what the best app needed to look like. With such a highly infectious virus, the need for a tool that would help speed up contact tracing was considered essential to break the chain of the contagion.
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Merck & Co Inc, which has largely kept to the sidelines of the race for COVID-19 treatments, said it was buying Austrian vaccine maker Themis Bioscience and would collaborate with research nonprofit IAVI to develop two separate vaccines.
It also announced a partnership with privately held Ridgeback Biotherapeutics to develop an experimental oral antiviral drug against COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
It did not disclose the terms of the acquisition of Themis, a privately held company.
Merck shares rose more than 3% in premarket trading.
Most big pharmaceutical companies have already placed their bets on COVID-19 treatments, but Merck has been waiting for opportunities with proven track records, Chief Executive Ken Frazier said.
“We wanted to be in a position where we could choose things that have the right kind of characteristics to make a contribution for a virus that’s likely to be with us for some time,” he told Reuters in an interview.
Both vaccines are designed to be delivered in a single dose.
The Themis vaccine, developed in collaboration with the Institut Pasteur in Paris, is based on a modified measles virus that delivers bits of the SARS-CoV-2 virus into the body to prevent COVID-19.
It was developed in part through funding from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).
Merck said it moving quickly with this candidate and expects to start vaccinating volunteers “within weeks.”
The IAVI vaccine uses the same technology as Merck’s Ebola vaccine ERVEBO, recently approved by the European Commission and the U.S. Food & Drug Administration.
That candidate, which Merck is developing jointly with IAVI, is expected to start human trials some time this year, Frazier said.
The U.S. Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) is backing the effort.
Both vaccines are made using technologies that have resulted in licensed products, unlike some frontrunners, such as the rapidly developed vaccine from Moderna Inc, which is expected to start large, late-stage clinical trials in July.
Last week, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said Merck’s vaccine, and those from Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi, were a month or two behind Moderna’s, but may get added to large efficacy trials this summer as they wrap up early-stage studies.
“I think we’ll be in a position to participate,” Frazier said.
Merck intends to shoulder the cost of scaling up production of the vaccines before either has been proven to work, although it has not yet determined where they will be manufactured commercially, he said.
Doses of the Themis vaccine are already being made in France for clinical trials. Merck also plans to begin early production of the vaccine it is developing with IAVI at its plant in Pennsylvania.
Frazier said Merck had not signed any pacts with the U.S. government to deliver doses of either vaccine to Americans first, adding it was committed to making its vaccines accessible globally and affordably.
Ridgeback’s pill, EIDD-2801, is designed to block virus reproduction, and has shown promise in animal studies of multiple coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2. It has also been shown to be safe and well tolerated in early stage trials.
Frazier compared it to Gilead Sciences’ remdesivir, but it would be a pill, rather than an intravenous infusion. Efficacy trials will start later this year.
“If the drug works, we would be able to produce billions of doses,” Frazier added.
The United States has recorded more than 1.6 million new coronavirus infections and over 97,000 deaths, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Monday.
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Stanley Ho, the man credited with transforming Macau from a sleepy former Portuguese colony into one of the world’s gambling meccas, has died at the age of 98. His daughter, Pansy, said Ho died Tuesday at a hospital in his native Hong Kong. The son of a once-influential and wealthy Hong Kong family who lost their fortune in the Great Depression of the 1930s, Stanley Ho escaped to Macau during World War Two when Japanese forces captured Hong Kong. He built his fortune smuggling luxury goods from Macau to China, turning that into a successful trading company. Ho’s gambling empire began when he successfully bid for a casino monopoly from Portuguese authorities in 1962. He built a harbor to ferry high-stakes gamblers from Hong Kong to his casino, and also had stakes in numerous businesses in the enclave, including department stores, luxury hotels and horse racing tracks. By the time China gained control of Macau and opened it to foreign competition in 2002, Ho had become notorious not only for his wealth but his flamboyant lifestyle, his love of ballroom dancing and the 17 children he fathered with four wives. He was forced to restructure his business in 2012 after a legal battle broke out within the family. Ho was also dogged by allegations that he had ties to Chinese criminal gangs known as triads, which he denied.
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Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit failed Monday on its first attempt to launch a test satellite into space aboard a rocket carried aloft by a Boeing 747 and released over the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California. The inaugural launch had appeared to be going well until moments after the rocket was dropped from beneath the left wing of the jumbo jet dubbed Cosmic Girl. “We’ve confirmed a clean release from the aircraft. However, the mission terminated shortly into the flight. Cosmic Girl and our flight crew are safe and returning to base,” Virgin Orbit said in its official Twitter commentary on the launch. There was no immediate word on what went wrong. The highly modified jumbo jet took off from Mojave Air and Space Port in the desert north of Los Angeles and flew out just beyond the Channel Islands, where the drop occurred. The rocket was supposed to fall for a few seconds before the first of its two stages ignited and hurtled it down the coast toward the South Pole for insertion of its demonstration payload into a low Earth orbit. The purpose of the flight was to gather data on every step of the launch process rather than to have a useful satellite in orbit; the demonstration payload was described as an inert mass and the intended orbit was very low to avoid contributing to the problem of space junk. The launch attempt followed five years of development of the 21.3-meter-long LauncherOne rocket. Virgin Orbit, headquartered in Long Beach, California, is a sister company of Virgin Galactic, the company Branson founded to carry passengers on suborbital flights into the lower reaches of space. Virgin Galactic is preparing to begin operations in southern New Mexico.
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Longtime broadcast news executive William J. Small, who led CBS News’ Washington coverage during the civil rights movement, Vietnam War and Watergate and was later president of NBC News and United Press International, died Sunday, CBS News said. He was 93. Small, whose career spanned from overseeing the news operation at a small radio station to testifying in Congress about press freedom, died in a New York hospital after a brief illness unrelated to the coronavirus, the network said. During a six-decade career, Small supervised, guided and in some cases hired generations of some of the best-known reporters and anchors in television news, among them: Dan Rather, Eric Sevareid, Daniel Schorr, Connie Chung, Diane Sawyer, “60 Minutes” correspondents Ed Bradley and Lesley Stahl and “Face the Nation” anchor Bob Schieffer. “He was heroic and steadfast, especially during Watergate, when it seemed we were getting angry calls from the White House every night,” Stahl said in a statement. “He made us want to be better — and nobody wanted to disappoint him.” Small hired the current CBS News president, Susan Zirinsky, to her first job at the network when she was 20. She remembered Small as a “hero to journalism” and said, “every one of us carries Bill Small’s legacy with us — it’s the core to who we are as journalists.” Picture showing the logo of the NBC Television in front of the Channel building in Burbank, Calif., Oct.11, 2006.Small, born in 1926 in Chicago, broke into broadcasting after fighting in the Army in World War II, including stints as news director at WLS-AM in Chicago and WHAS-TV in Louisville. Less than a year after he arrived, the Kentucky station was honored in 1957 as the nation’s top news operation by the organization that is now known as the Radio Television Digital News Association. Impressed by Small’s work in Louisville, CBS executives hired him in 1962 to be assistant news director of the network’s Washington bureau. He was promoted to bureau director within a year and “put together a TV News bureau the likes of which Washington had never known,” reporter Roger Mudd wrote in his 2009 book, “The Place to Be: Washington, CBS, and the Glory Days of Television News.” JFK assassinationEarly in his tenure, Small presided over the network’s coverage of the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, scrambling cameras to the White House and Capitol Hill and turning a station wagon into a makeshift broadcast truck so they could get live pictures from Vice President Lyndon Johnson’s home. Small didn’t leave the bureau for four days, “from the shooting to the burial,” he told The Associated Press in 2013. “When I finally got home, I asked my wife, What was it like?' She said,There was no one on the streets. Everyone was watching television.'” Kennedy’s assassination marked a seminal moment for television, then still in its nascence, as a source of news and solace — from CBS anchor Walter Cronkite’s tearful announcement of the president’s death to live, wall-to-wall coverage of the funeral procession to Arlington National Cemetery. There would be others on Small’s watch, including clashes over civil rights legislation, bitter divides over the Vietnam War and the 1972 Watergate break-in that prompted myriad legal and journalistic inquiries into President Richard Nixon’s involvement and ultimately led to his resignation. “Backed by the mystique of Murrow’s CBS and his own uncanny judge of talent, Small helped attract a stream of reporters, analysts and producers whose learning, talent, skill and experience were without precedent in news broadcasting,” Mudd wrote, calling him a “sophisticated judge of journalistic horseflesh.” Small remained in charge of the Washington bureau until 1974, when CBS moved him to a senior position at its New York headquarters. Testified before Congress in 1978The promotion put him next in line to become president of CBS News, but after he testified before Congress in 1978 urging strong limits on police entering newsrooms, the network instead assigned him to be its chief lobbyist in Washington. Small defected to NBC in 1979, becoming president of the network’s news division and hiring away several CBS reporters, including Mudd and Marvin Kalb. In 1982, he became president of the UPI wire service. Small and his late wife, Gish, had two daughters and six grandchildren. He is the author of two books on the role of the media in politics and society, taught communications and media management at Fordham University and was on the sociology faculty at the University of Louisville. Small spent the last decade of his career as chairman of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which hands out Emmy Awards for television news and documentaries, retiring in 2010. In 2014, the organization honored Small with its lifetime achievement award. In its presentation, it recognizing him as a television news icon whose work in Washington was “paramount in the dramatic evolution of network news that continues today.”
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Jimmy Cobb, a percussionist and the last surviving member of Miles Davis’ 1959 Kind of Blue groundbreaking jazz album that transformed the genre and sparked several careers, died Sunday. His wife, Eleana Tee Cobb, announced on Facebook that her husband died at his New York City home from lung cancer. He was 91. Born in Washington, D.C., Cobb told The Associated Press in 2019 he listened to jazz albums and stayed up late to hear disc jockey Symphony Sid play jazz in New York City before launching his professional career. He said it was saxophonist Cannonball Adderley who recommended him to Davis, and he ended up playing on several Davis recordings. Cobb’s role as a drummer on the Kind of Blue jam session headed by Davis would forever change his career. That album also featured Adderley and John Coltrane. FILE – The “Kind of Blue” album cover is on display at Bull Moose record store in Portland, Maine, August 17, 2019, the 60th anniversary of the album’s release.Kind of Blue, released on Aug. 17, 1959, captured a moment when jazz was transforming from bebop to something newer, cooler and less structured. The full takes of the songs were recorded only once, with one exception, Cobb said. Freddie Freeloader needed to be played twice because Davis didn’t like a chord change on the first attempt, he said. Davis, who died in 1991, had some notes jotted down, but there weren’t pages of sheet music. It was up to the improvisers to fill the pages. “He’d say, ‘this is a ballad. I want it to sound like it’s floating.’ And I’d say, ‘OK,’ and that’s what it was,” Cobb recalled. The album received plenty of acclaim at the time, yet the critics, the band and the studio couldn’t have known it would enjoy such longevity. Cobb and his bandmates knew the album would be a hit but didn’t realize at the time how iconic it would become. “We knew it was pretty damned good,” Cobb joked. Kind of Blue has sold more than 4 million copies and remains the best-selling jazz album of all time. It also served as a protest album for African American men who looked to Davis and the other jazz musicians to break stereotypes about jazz and black humanity. Cobb would also work with such artists as Dinah Washington, Pearl Bailey, Clark Terry, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Wynton Kelly and Stan Getz. He’d also release a number of albums on his own. He performed well into his late 80s and played in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 2017, as part of the New Mexico Jazz Festival. Jazz fans from throughout the American Southwest came to pay their respects in what many felt was a goodbye. Cobb released his last album, This I Dig of You, with Smoke Sessions Records in August 2019.
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Countries should levy an “orbit congestion charge” on satellite operators to tackle the growing concentration of space junk cluttering the skies, researchers said on Monday, but with some doubting the practicalities of such a fee. From dead satellites to bits of rockets, the amount of debris orbiting the planet is already so great that space agencies often have to alter the course of satellites to avoid collisions. With the world increasingly reliant on orbital infrastructure to maintain communications links and steer new generations of autonomous vehicles, scientists warn that the danger posed by debris is growing exponentially. The best way to deal with it would be to charge satellite operators an annual orbital-use fee for every satellite launched, according to an economics analysis by researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “Space is a common resource, but companies aren’t accounting for the cost their satellites impose on other operators when they decide whether or not to launch,” Matthew Burgess, who co-authored the study, said in a statement. “We need a policy that lets satellite operators directly factor in the costs their launches impose on other operators,” he added. Under current regulations, satellite operators are unable to secure exclusive property rights on orbital paths or recover collision-related costs that result from others’ junk, the researchers said. This encourages companies to race into space to make some money before it gets too crowded, according to the study published in the scientific journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Solutions proposed so far have mainly focused on technological fixes — such as removing debris with nets or harpoons — that do not address the roots of the problem, said Akhil Rao, the paper’s lead author. “From an incentive standpoint, if we start sucking the debris out, then people are just going to launch more and more satellites until there’s enough debris that it’s not worth it for them to launch anymore,” added Burgess. He said an annual fee agreed through an international treaty would push companies to be more mindful about the risk of creating more junk and to de-orbit satellites when necessary. Holger Krag, the head of European Space Agency (ESA) space debris office, said the idea was “interesting” and the agency was studying similar approaches and looking at ways to calculate the environmental impact of space missions. But the plan could be tricky to put into practice, Christopher Newman, a professor of space law at Northumbria University in Britain told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. A levy could be seen as a restriction on the freedom of usage of space enshrined in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which regulates life far from earth, and getting states to agree to it was no easy task. “A scheme like this could easily get bogged down in a quagmire of detail,” he said.
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The World Health Organization said Monday that it will temporarily drop hydroxychloroquine — the malaria drug U.S. President Trump says he is taking — from its global study into experimental COVID-19 treatments, saying that its experts need to review all available evidence to date.
In a press briefing, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that in light of a paper published last week in the Lancet that showed people taking hydroxychloroquine were at higher risk of death and heart problems, there would be “a temporary pause” on the hydroxychloroquine arm of its global clinical trial.
“This concern relates to the use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine in COVID-19,” Tedros said, adding that the drugs are approved treatments for people with malaria or autoimmune diseases. Other treatments in the trial, including the experimental drug remdesivir and an HIV combination therapy, are still being tested.
Tedros said the executive group behind WHO’s global “Solidarity” trial met on Saturday and decided to conduct a comprehensive review of all available data on hydroxychloroquine and that its use in the trial would be suspended for now.
Dr. Michael Ryan, WHO’s emergencies chief, said there was no indication of any safety problems with hydroxychloroquine in the WHO trial to date, but that statisticians would now analyze the information.
“We’re just acting on an abundance of caution based on the recent results of all the studies to to ensure that we can continue safely with that arm of the trial,” he said. WHO said it expected to have more details within the next two weeks.
Last week, Trump announced he was taking hydroxychloroquine although he has not tested positive for COVID-19. His own administration has warned the drug can have deadly side effects, and both the European Medicines Agency and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned health professionals last month that the drug should not be used to treat COVID-19 outside of hospital or research settings due to numerous serious side effects that in some cases can be fatal.
Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are approved for treating lupus and rheumatoid arthritis and for preventing and treating malaria, but no large rigorous tests have found them safe or effective for preventing or treating COVID-19.
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Country music singer Morgan Wallen apologized Sunday following his weekend arrest on public intoxication and disorderly conduct charges.
Wallen, 27, was arrested Saturday night after he was kicked out of Kid Rock’s bar in downtown Nashville, news outlets reported.
Wallen said on Twitter that he and some friends were “horse-playing” after a few bar stops.
“We didn’t mean any harm, and we want to say sorry to any bar staff or anyone that was affected,” Wallen tweeted. “Thank you to the local authorities for being so professional and doing their job with class. Love y’all.”
Wallen’s hits include “Whiskey Glasses” and “Chasin’ You.” He competed on “The Voice” in 2014 and co-wrote songs for Jason Aldean and Kane Brown.
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