Britain’s Prince William and Prince Harry unveiled a statue to their late mother Princess Diana in a ceremony Thursday at London’s Kensington Palace, on what would have been her 60th birthday. It’s the first time the brothers have met each other since the funeral of their grandfather, Prince Philip, in April.Prince Harry flew to London last week from the United States, where he moved with his American wife, Meghan Markle, and their son Archie, after quitting royal duties last year. Meghan gave birth to a daughter, Lilibet Diana, last month.William, who is 39, and Harry, 36, unveiled the statue in a ceremony in the sunken gardens of Kensington Palace, Princess Diana’s London home. They were joined by a small group of guests, including Diana’s brother Charles Spencer and the sculptor, Ian Rank-Broadley.The two brothers did not speak publicly at the ceremony. In a statement they said, “Today, on what would have been our mother’s 60th birthday, we remember her love, strength and character — qualities that made her a force for good around the world, changing countless lives for the better.”“Every day, we wish she were still with us, and our hope is that this statue will be seen forever as a symbol of her life and her legacy.”A view of a statue commissioned by Britain’s Prince William and Prince Harry of their mother Princess Diana, on what woud have been her 60th birthday, London, July 1, 2021.The statue depicts Diana surrounded by three children, which Kensington Palace said represented “the universality and generational impact” of her work.The location of the statue in the sunken gardens of Kensington Palace is poignant, says royal author Richard Fitzwilliams. “She found it a particularly peaceful spot, so this particular place has been chosen as one that she would have approved of.”Britain took Princess Diana into their hearts after her marriage to Prince Charles in 1981, says Penny Junor, a biographer of the royal family.“Diana was the fairy tale princess, you know, when she married Charles, the whole country bought into the fairy tale. She was this beautiful young girl marrying her prince and she was an extraordinary woman. She was vulnerable in a way that members of the royal family never had been vulnerable before. We hadn’t seen it. She touched people’s hearts,” Junor told Reuters.“She went about her royal work in a very different way. She would sit on a hospital bed and take people’s hands in hers, whereas the traditional way of visiting a hospital would be, you know, probably gloved hands and certainly not sitting down on a bed but standing and talking. She just brought a very personal touch and people loved that,” Junor added.The unconditional love and affection she showed for her sons broke royal traditions – but touched the hearts of millions around the world. She combined motherhood with glamour, traditional royal duties with a dedication to charity.“I do think it’s important that there be a proper tribute to Princess Diana,” royal author Fitzwilliams told VOA. “She had a truly extraordinary life, and indeed her reaching out to AIDS sufferers and also her campaign against landmines are titanic achievements. If you consider the way also that the British people took her so much to their hearts and the outpouring of grief when she tragically died.”“I mean there was no question that she was someone who was deeply personally unhappy and a very complex individual but achieved so much in a very, very short life,” said Fitzwilliams.Diana and Prince Charles divorced in 1996. She died in a Paris car crash a year later, which also killed her fiancé, Dodi Al Fayed.Britain’s Prince William, right, and Prince Harry speak with garden designer Pip Morrison during the unveiling of a statue they commissioned of their mother Diana, Princess of Wales, July 1, 2021.Britain, a nation once famed for its reserve and restraint, saw an outpouring of public emotion. At the funeral, William and Harry were made to walk behind the coffin in royal tradition – an experience that Harry says left deep mental scars, says Fitzwilliams.“I think it was devastating for both of them but there’s no doubt that Harry was affected — as he’s spoken so publicly to help others as well who suffered with their mental health — for some 20 years.”Speaking in May to U.S. talk show host Oprah Winfrey on the Apple TV+ series The Me You Can’t See, Prince Harry described the royal family’s unwillingness to talk about his mother’s death and how he had been willing to turn to alcohol and drugs to cope with the pain of losing her.Twenty-four years on from Diana’s death, the royal family is engulfed in a new crisis. William and Harry and their wives, Kate and Meghan, once dubbed the fab four and seen as the youthful future of the institution, have fallen out very publicly.In a separate interview with Winfrey, broadcast in March, Harry and Meghan — whose mother is Black — said a member of the royal family had questioned the color of their son’s skin. They spoke of their deep unhappiness in the royal household.There have been numerous claims that Meghan was accused of bullying her staff, which she has denied.Diana’s two sons now rarely speak to each other, said biographer Junor.“I think it’s incredibly sad that this statue was a joint project to celebrate the life of their mother that they both adored and they both miss and it’s turning instead into — the eyes of the world will be looking at those two boys to see what the state of their relationship is,” she told Reuters.Outside Kensington Palace Thursday, royal fans expressed their hopes for the family.“I’m so excited about seeing the statue,” said Anne Daley, a royal fan who had travelled from Wales. “And I do hope that William and Harry can put (aside) their differences … I squabble with my sister, but, you know, whatever you say, you’re still flesh and blood.”Royal analysts say William and Harry are now on very different paths.For a brief moment Thursday, in the grounds of their childhood home, they were able to reflect together on an upbringing filled with a mother’s love for her boys; childhoods transformed through tragedy, played out in the public eye.This report includes information from Reuters.
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The South African pharmaceutical company Aspen has begun production of hundreds of millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccine for African countries. To speed up the process, the company is getting a large funding boost from the U.S. government.
Speaking during a virtual press briefing Thursday, Mark Marchick, a top executive for the U.S. International Development Financial Corporation, said Aspen would receive about $712 million to produce vaccine for people in Africa.
“Our consortium of development financing institutions would provide a direct loan to Aspen, among other things, to strengthen their balance sheet with long-term financing, support vaccine production and expand their operations with core operations based in South Africa. This loan will help them increase capacity to support Aspen’s effort to produce vaccines for the continent this year and next year,” Marchik said.
Gayle Smith, the U.S. State Department coordinator for the global COVID-19 response, said the investment will help Africa deal with long-term health issues.
“We see this investment as in the short-term a really viable response to the urgent need on the continent for vaccines for COVID and also, importantly, as a long-term investment in the capacity of the continent to increase its own production of this vital goods so there is a greater availability and resilience over time, so it’s a short-term investment with a long-term vision,” Smith said.
It is estimated that the world needs at least 11 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to at least help communities return to normal lives. So far, less than 2% of Africans have received a vaccine.
The need for vaccine has prompted criminals to exploit Africa’s weak regulatory systems to bring in phony and substandard drugs.
In November, officers from South Africa’s customs and crime unit seized 2,400 fake COVID-19 vaccine doses. Zambian and Chinese nationals were arrested.
In January of this year Nigeria’s food and drug administration advised the public to be aware of nefarious players pushing phony vaccines.
Adebayo Alonge, head of RxAll, an organization that fights counterfeit and substandard pharmaceuticals in Africa using artificial intelligence technology, said African governments need systems to efficiently distribute and keep track of the vaccine.
“They can have selected sites across the country where people can go and be vaccinated. People pre-book online or by SMS and make a record of those people who have come and taken the vaccine at those locations,” Alonge said.
Aspen, which is based in the city of Durban, is slated to produce 400 million doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. Distribution will begin in the next few weeks.
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The World Health Organization says the recent decline in the number of new coronavirus infections throughout Europe “has come to an end.”Hans Kluge, the director of the U.N. health agency’s Europe region, said Thursday during a news briefing in Copenhagen that the number of cases in the area’s 53 countries rose 10 percent last week. Kluge attributed the rise to “increased mixing, travel, gatherings, and easing of social restrictions,” which he said is taking place amid “a rapidly evolving situation” — the emergence of the more transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus, a situation aggravated by the regions slow rate of vaccinations. The coronavirus causes the COVID-19 disease.With more than 60 percent of all people still waiting for at least their first shot of COVID-19 vaccine, and with the relaxed restrictions on travel and “social mixing,” Kluge warned the European region will be “Delta dominant” by August. “Delays in getting vaccinated cost lives and economies, and the slower we vaccinate, the more variants will emerge,” he told reporters.The warning from WHO Europe comes as Russia reported another record-setting 672 COVID-19 deaths on Thursday, breaking the record of 659 deaths posted just the day before. Russia has posted 5.4 million cases since the start of the pandemic, including 132,973 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.Indonesian President Joko Widodo announced Thursday that new emergency measures will go into effect on Saturday for the islands of Java and Bali to blunt the rise of new cases in the world’s fourth most-populous country. The measures, which include tighter restrictions on movement and air travel, a ban on restaurant dining and the closure of non-essential offices, will last through July 20, a period that includes the Muslim holiday of Eid. Indonesia has been dealing with the worst coronavirus outbreak in Southeast Asia, posting 24,836 new infections and 504 deaths on Thursday, both of them record-setting numbers. The country has recorded more than 2.1 million coronavirus infections, including 58,491 deaths.Johns Hopkins University is now reporting 182.2 million confirmed coronavirus infections, including 3.9 million deaths. The United States remains the global leader in both categories with 33.6 million overall cases and 604,718 deaths.
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American comedian Bill Cosby issued his first statement Wednesday after being freed from prison by the state of Pennsylvania Supreme Court, saying he has never changed his story and has always maintained his innocence. On his Twitter account, Cosby went on to say, “Thank you to all my fans, supporters and friends who stood by me through this ordeal. Special thanks to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for upholding the rule of law.” In 2018, Cosby received a sentence of three to 10 years based on testimony he gave in 2005 in a civil lawsuit brought against him by Andrea Constand, who accused him of sexual assault after he gave her a sedative without her knowledge, leaving her incapacitated. The state high court ruled Wednesday that the testimony he gave should have never been heard because a previous district attorney had promised he wouldn’t be charged if he gave it. The 83-year-old Cosby returned to his Philadelphia-area home Wednesday hours after the court threw out his conviction. Constand’s accusation was one of dozens leveled against the popular entertainer, many of them going back decades. His conviction was one of the first in the so-called “Me Too” era, which saw scores of women coming forward to accuse powerful men in entertainment, media and politics of sexual assault and related crimes. Constand and her lawyers issued a statement Wednesday calling the ruling disappointing, and expressed fear that it could discourage sexual assault victims from coming forward. The Associated Press news service and the Reuters news agency contributed to this report.
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Amid rising caseloads of coronavirus infections as it emerges from a strict COVID lockdown, Cambodia is pinning its hopes on a vaccination rollout that will help the nation reach herd immunity, even as the nation confronts unique challenges that could hamper that effort.Daily case numbers reached a record high of 1,130 Wednesday, far more than reported in April, when severe lockdowns, bans on alcohol sales and travel between provinces were imposed.Cambodia, though, like most developing countries, faces a range of problems not typically associated with wealthier countries in the West, particularly overcrowding in the capital, Phnom Penh, where several people often rent one room, in some cases one bed, to find a few hours’ sleep, away from the grind outside.Bradley Murg, a senior adviser to the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace, told VOA people here simply don’t have the space, security, or access to health services and supermarkets as those in the leafy suburbs of Western cities in countries such as the United States or Australia.“In a highly densely populated city like Phnom Penh, it’s incredibly difficult to implement a lockdown effectively even with a whole-of-government approach,” he said.“There are naturally going to be challenges in light of the level of development, in light of the daily needs of the population et cetera,” he added.“Ultimately a permanent lockdown or long-term lockdown is simply not a feasible strategy in Cambodia or in Phnom Penh specifically.”The closure of markets resulted in food shortages and price gouging, with authorities struggling to enforce lockdowns after dividing the capital into yellow, orange and red zones, depending on case numbers and transmissions – with red areas containing the greatest risks.Restrictions have eased, but schools, bars, gyms and many other businesses remain closed, while restaurant hours have been curtailed with strict social distancing and other health measures in place.Hang Sokunthea, an academic and author of I Am a Daughter, a book about female empowerment in Cambodia, said life during the pandemic has been harsh on the poor.“A lot of the poor families live very close to each other, which is where a lot of the red zones was located, where they live together and then they spread the COVID infection even faster,” she told VOA.Moreover, she said, “without the market, without having the living income, they just cannot really make much of a living,” she said.The situation resulted in a cat-and-mouse game between the police and vendors, Hang Sokunthea said, adding, “they were just selling anything on the streets even with the police chasing them.”Keo Savady is a small business operator, selling clothes online, and, like many from Cambodia’s burgeoning middle classes, she too is feeling the pinch after losing her job at the Hard Rock Cafe in Phnom Penh.“The bad thing is I just start my new online business, a small online business, and it doesn’t work because of the situation, COVID-19 is not so good,” she said, adding, “me and my family, some of them lost their job, so we had to find a smaller room.”Cambodia had emerged relatively unscathed from the pandemic during its first year but that changed on Feb. 20 when, authorities say, two Chinese women bribed their way out of quarantine, went out dancing and spread the disease.Since then, the number of confirmed cases has climbed from less than 500 to more than 50,000 with more than 44,143 recoveries and 602 deaths.However, Cambodia is ranked second, after Singapore, in its vaccination rollout among the 10 Association of South East Asian Nations countries after securing about 11 million doses of Sinopharm and Sinovac from China.It says a total of 20 million doses will be secured by August, while funding from Australia and the United States has enabled access to the COVAX-facility and AstraZenica vaccinations.“When one places Singapore in comparison to Cambodia in terms of level of development, level of infrastructure etcetera – it’s truly remarkable that Cambodia’s had this level of success in its all-of-government campaign to rollout vaccinations as quickly as possible,” Murg said.“The kingdom is well on track towards meeting its goals and it’s a story that has not received nearly the attention it deserves,” he added.Almost 18% of Cambodia’s population of 16.5 million people have been fully vaccinated with two doses, while a quarter of its population have received a single dose.Cambodia hopes to reach herd immunity with 10 million people vaccinated by the end of the year and it wants to reopen its tourism industry in the fourth quarter to fully vaccinated tourists.
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The Golden Globes, American film awards at the heart of a lively controversy in recent months over their representativeness, announced Wednesday that they would change their rules to allow foreign language films to compete in the generalist categories and films of animation. These criticisms prompted the NBC broadcaster to cancel the ceremony scheduled for next year, to allow time for the Golden Globes to improve its ethnic and cultural diversity as well as its transparency. Many had particularly criticized this year the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA in English) which awards these trophies for having relegated “Minari,” an American film featuring South Korean immigrants settling in the Arkansas and mainly filmed in Korean, in the category of best foreign language film. While it was featured in many Oscar flagship categories, “Minari” was unable to appear at the Golden Globes for Best Comedy or Best Drama. “Parasite,” the Oscar-winning film the previous year, had suffered the same fate for the same reasons. “As we review our rules this year” to take into account criticism from the entertainment industry, “we decided to take new approaches to upcoming ceremonies and to make sure these films benefit from the the attention they deserve, “HFPA President Ali Sar said in a statement to AFP. “The language will no longer be a barrier to be recognized as the best,” he assures us. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a group of about 90 journalists working for various media, has been facing charges of discrimination, sexism and corruption for several years. Last month, the organization passed a series of reforms to improve its representativeness and try to appease critics, but those assurances failed to convince the entertainment industry and criticism continued to rain. Stars like Scarlett Johansson and Tom Cruise have judged these reforms far too slow and vague while two members of the HFPA have resigned from this group which they described as “toxic.” Heavyweights like Netflix and Warner Bros have made it known that they will no longer work with the association until significant changes are implemented. On Wednesday, the HFPA said the majority of its members have completed diversity and inclusion awareness sessions. New rules prohibiting, for example, the acceptance of gifts and providing for the hiring of diversity advisers are also planned.
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A judge has shot down Britney Spears’ request to have her father removed from her conservatorship — at least for now.New court documents that were filed by the Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday show that the judge has denied the request by Spears’ attorney, Samuel Ingham III, to remove her father, Jamie Spears, as her sole conservator. These documents are not in direct response to last week’s hearing, where Spears gave an explosive testimony; though Spears delivered a powerful 24-minute statement, the judge cannot make any ruling based on what she said, as she still has yet to file a petition to terminate her conservatorship.”The conservator’s request to suspend James P. Spears immediately upon the appointment of Bessemer Trust Company of California as sole conservator of estate is denied without prejudice,” the court documents filed on Wednesday stated.FILE – People protest in support of pop star Britney Spears on the day of a conservatorship case hearing at Stanley Mosk Courthouse in Los Angeles, Calif., June 23, 2021.The new court filings are another legal setback for the singer, but the judge’s denial is nothing new. Samuel Ingham III had filed the request to remove Spears’ father back in November 2020, stating that his client was “afraid of her father” and would refuse to perform again, if her father continued to be in charge of her career.At that time, Judge Brenda Penny declined to suspend her father from the conservatorship, though she did not rule out future petitions for his removal or suspension. Also, at that time, the judge appointed financial company Bessemer Trust as a co-conservator.Today’s paperwork was solely intended for the judge to approve Bessemer Trust as the co-conservator, but also reiterates the judge’s decision to not remove the elder Spears from the pop star’s conservatorship.However, it’s significant that the document was signed by Judge Penny on June 30 — after the singer’s explosive testimony where she told the judge that her conservatorship was “abusive.”Last week, Spears gave her 24-minute testimony, marking the first time she had publicly addressed the court in her 13-year conservatorship. While speaking to the judge, Spears said that her dad enjoys controlling her life, and stated that she believes her conservators, including her father, should be in jail, and that she wants to sue her family.Spears’ case has garnered an enormous amount of global attention, with pressure mounting to support the pop star and remove her father from the conservatorship.Wednesday’s court filing states that the court found Spears to be “substantially unable to manage his or her financial resources or to resist fraud or undue influence.”Spears’ father has been her co-conservator since 2008, when the singer suffered a very public breakdown. He became sole conservator in 2019 after attorney Andrew Wallet resigned from co-conservatorship.In September 2019, he temporarily relinquished his powers and Jodi Montgomery became the conservator of her person, meaning she is responsible for Spears’ medical and personal well-being. Spears’ father remains the sole conservator of her estate, managing all of her finances — while making a hefty sum of of her annual multi-million dollar earnings, given that Spears has continued to record music and perform regularly at her residence in Las Vegas, while under her restrictive conservatorship.Earlier today, Variety reported that Spears’ father attorney filed paperwork on his behalf, pointing the finger at Montgomery with the father’s perspective being that he loves his daughter, is very concerned and has done nothing wrong.”Mr. Spears is concerned about the management and care of his daughter,” his attorney said in the docs. “Based on her statements to the court, Mr. Spears is concerned that the petition to appoint Jodi Montgomery filed by Ms. Spears’ court-appointed counsel Samuel D. Ingham III does not reflect her wishes. Ms. Spears told the court on June 23 that she is opposed to being under a conservatorship and revealed her ongoing disputes with Ms. Montgomery about her medical treatment and other personal care issues.”Montgomery strongly denied the elder Spears’ stance with her attorney fighting back, releasing a statement that she is a “tireless advocate for Britney and for her well-being.”Meanwhile, despite her father’s perspective and the judge’s ruling, the pop star has made her stance clear: she wants her father out, and wants to end her conservatorship altogether without further evaluation.”I cried on the phone for an hour and he loved every minute of it,” Spears told the judge, referring to her father. “The control he had over someone as powerful as me — he loved the control to hurt his own daughter 100,000%. He loved it.”Spears pleaded to the judge: “I just want my life back. And it’s been 13 years. And it’s enough. It’s been a long time since I’ve owned my money. And it’s my wish and my dream for all of this to end without being tested.”
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Several countries have imposed restrictions on travelers from Britain amid rising cases of the delta variant of the coronavirus. Scientists say the delta mutation is more infectious and now makes up around 95 percent of new cases in Britain. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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Zimbabwe’s new COVID-19 lockdown includes a curfew, a ban on intercity travel, and a vaccination blitz aimed at border towns and vendors. But vendors and rights activists say the government should make more vaccine available instead of tightening regulations.President Emmerson Mnangagwa announced the new measures, including a 6:30 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew, on national television Tuesday. He said the restrictions were the result of a recent spike in COVID-19 cases.“Commerce and industry are to open from 0800 hours to 1530 hours. Travelers from countries with alpha and delta COVID-19 variants will be quarantined and tested on the 1st, 3rd, 5th and 10th day, at their own expense. Those deported back to Zimbabwe will be subject to self-quarantine or will be quarantined in identified places. Travelers with fake COVID-19 documents will attract custodial sentences,” said the president.The new measures to contain COVID-19 include what the government is calling a “vaccination blitz” targeting borders and vendors.The head of the Zimbabwe Vendors Initiative for Social and Economic Transformation, Samuel Wadzai, has welcomed the new regulations allowing vendors to operate for limited hours.But Wadzai said the vaccination program should be voluntary, not compulsory.“What we can urge the government is for the vaccine to be accessed without queueing for long hours. Let’s decentralize. This is the only way we can do away with these lockdowns. In their nature lockdowns are restrictive and they don’t give us space to operate as informal traders. So, we urge the government to quickly ensure that the vaccines are available,” he said. About 771,000 Zimbabweans out of a population of 14 million have received their first shots, and 545,000 have received their second inoculations since the program started in February. The country had a monthlong shortage of vaccine until it received 500,000 Sinopharm doses from China on Saturday.People queue for COVID-19 vaccine shots at Zimbabwe’s largest health institution, Parirenyatwa Hospital, in Harare, June 08, 2021. (Columbus Mavhunga/VOA)Zimbabwe has about 48,533 confirmed coronavirus infections and 1,761 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University in the United States, which tracks the global outbreak.Dewa Mavhinga, head of Human Rights Watch in southern Africa, told VOA the infection figures do not justify a dusk-to-dawn curfew.“It seems excessive. The government is focusing more on restrictions than on other efforts that are needed to contain the coronavirus — efforts such as ramping up vaccinations, ensuring that all essential workers are vaccinated and ensuring that the adult population in Zimbabwe is vaccinated. There is no movement in that regard,” said Mavhinga.Zimbabwe’s seven-day average infection rate has increased five times in the last two weeks, according to official figures released this week.The government says it is importing more vaccine in July and in August to achieve herd immunity for about 10 million people by the end of the year.
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Pennsylvania’s highest court threw out Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction and released him from prison Wednesday in a stunning reversal of fortune for the comedian once known as “America’s Dad,” ruling that the prosecutor who brought the case was bound by his predecessor’s agreement not to charge Cosby.Cosby, 83, flashed the V-for-victory sign to a helicopter overhead as he trudged into his suburban Philadelphia home after serving nearly three years of a three- to 10-year sentence for drugging and violating Temple University sports administrator Andrea Constand in 2004.The former “Cosby Show” star — the first celebrity tried and convicted in the #MeToo era — had no immediate comment.Cosby was arrested in 2015, when a district attorney armed with newly unsealed evidence — the comic’s damaging deposition in a lawsuit filed by Constand — brought charges against him just days before the 12-year statute of limitations was about to run out.But the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said Wednesday that District Attorney Kevin Steele, who made the decision to arrest Cosby, was obligated to stand by his predecessor’s promise not to charge Cosby, though there was no evidence that promise was ever put in writing.Justice David Wecht, writing for a split court, said Cosby had relied on the previous district attorney’s decision not to charge him when the comedian gave his potentially incriminating testimony in Constand’s civil case.A policeman patrols past the home of Bill Cosby in Elkins Park, Pa., Wednesday, June 30, 2021. Pennsylvania’s highest court has overturned comedian Cosby’s sex assault conviction.The court called Cosby’s subsequent arrest “an affront to fundamental fairness, particularly when it results in a criminal prosecution that was forgone for more than a decade.” It said justice and “fair play and decency” require that the district attorney’s office stand by the decision of the previous DA.The justices said that overturning the conviction, and barring any further prosecution, “is the only remedy that comports with society’s reasonable expectations of its elected prosecutors and our criminal justice system.”As Cosby was promptly set free from the state prison in suburban Montgomery County and driven home, his appeals lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, said he should never have been prosecuted. “District attorneys can’t change it up simply because of their political motivation,” she said, adding that Cosby remains in excellent health, apart from being legally blind. In a statement, Steele said Cosby went free “on a procedural issue that is irrelevant to the facts of the crime.” He commended Constand for coming forward and added: “My hope is that this decision will not dampen the reporting of sexual assaults by victims. … We still believe that no one is above the law — including those who are rich, famous and powerful.”Constand and her lawyer did not immediately return messages seeking comment. “FINALLY!!!! A terrible wrong is being righted — a miscarriage of justice is corrected!” the actor’s “Cosby Show” co-star Phylicia Rashad tweeted.”I am furious to hear this news,” actor Amber Tamblyn, a founder of Time’s Up, an advocacy group for victims of sexual assault, said in a Twitter post. “I personally know women who this man drugged and raped while unconscious. Shame on the court and this decision.”In sentencing Cosby, the trial judge had ruled him a sexually violent predator who could not be safely allowed out in public and needed to report to authorities for the rest of his life.Four Supreme Court justices formed the majority that ruled in Cosby’s favor, while three others dissented in whole or in part. Peter Goldberger, a suburban Philadelphia lawyer with an expertise in criminal appeals, said prosecutors could ask the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for reargument or reconsideration, but it would be a very long shot.”I can’t imagine that with such a lengthy opinion, with a thoughtful concurring opinion and a thoughtful dissenting opinion, that you could honestly say they made a simple mistake that would change their minds if they point it out to them,” Goldberger said.Even though Cosby was charged only with the assault on Constand, the judge at his trial allowed five other accusers to testify that they, too, were similarly victimized by Cosby in the 1980s. Prosecutors called them as witnesses to establish what they said was a pattern of behavior on Cosby’s part.Cosby’s lawyers had argued on appeal that the use of the five additional accusers was improper.But the Pennsylvania high court did not weigh in on the question, saying it was moot given the justices’ finding that Cosby should not have been prosecuted in the first place.In New York, the judge at last year’s trial of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, whose case helped sparked the #MeToo movement in 2017, let four other accusers testify. Weinstein was convicted and sentenced to 23 years in prison.In May, Cosby was denied parole after refusing to participate in sex offender programs behind bars. He said he would resist the treatment programs and refuse to acknowledge wrongdoing even if it meant serving the full 10 years.Prosecutors said Cosby repeatedly used his fame and family man persona to manipulate young women, holding himself out as a mentor before betraying them.The groundbreaking Black actor grew up in public housing in Philadelphia and made a fortune estimated at $400 million during his 50 years in the entertainment industry that included the TV shows “I Spy,” “The Cosby Show” and “Fat Albert,” along with comedy albums and a multitude of television commercials.The suburban Philadelphia prosecutor who originally looked into Constand’s allegations, Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor, considered the case flawed because Constand waited a year to come forward and stayed in contact with Cosby afterward. Castor declined to prosecute and instead encouraged Constand to sue for damages.Questioned under oath as part of that lawsuit, Cosby said he used to offer quaaludes to women he wanted to have sex with. He eventually settled with Constand for $3.4 million.Portions of the deposition later became public at the request of The Associated Press and spelled Cosby’s downfall, opening the floodgates on accusations from other women and destroying the comic’s good-guy reputation and career. More than 60 women came forward to say Cosby violated them.The AP does not typically identify sexual assault victims without their permission, which Constand has granted.
Cosby, in the deposition, acknowledged giving quaaludes to a 19-year-old woman before having sex with her at a Las Vegas hotel in 1976. Cosby called the encounter consensual.On Wednesday, the woman, Therese Serignese, now 64, said the court ruling “takes my breath away.””I just think it’s a miscarriage of justice. This is about procedure. It’s not about the truth of the women,” she said. She said she took solace in the fact Cosby served nearly three years: “That’s as good as it gets in America” for sex crime victims, she said.
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Bangladesh starts its most severe lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic Thursday with people allowed to leave their homes only in emergencies and soldiers set to patrol the streets to enforce it, as the nation faces a deadly resurgence of COVID-19 infections.The government announced the new measures as the coronavirus surged in recent days, particularly in border areas. Health officials say the national COVID-19 positivity rate is now over 20%. Sunday saw a record number of deaths, with 119, followed by a record number of new cases — 8,364 — set Monday.Along with home confinement, the restrictions include the closure of public transport networks, sending thousands rushing to ferry and bus stations over the last two days to make it home before Thursday. The Guardian newspaper reports Cabinet secretary Khandker Anwarul Islam told reporters troops would be deployed after the lockdown takes effect. He said, “If anyone ignores their orders, legal action will be [taken against] them.”Bangladesh closed its borders when the pandemic hit last year. But many people travelled to and from India illegally anyway, bringing with them new infections. And while India’s situation has stabilized, in Bangladesh, it has escalated.Health officials are concerned the Eid al-adha Muslim holiday at the end of July will only exacerbate the situation. Bangladesh Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research official Dr. ASM Alamgir said that if the Delta variant of coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is not already in Bangladesh, it will be by then. He said that while new infections are currently concentrated around border areas, during Eid millions of people go from the capital, Dhaka, where infections are also on the rise, to village areas.Officials expect Thursday’s lockdown to last at least a week. Some information in this report is from The Associated Press.
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Federal law enforcement agencies secretly seek the data of Microsoft customers thousands of times a year, according to congressional testimony Wednesday by a senior executive at the technology company.Tom Burt, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for customer security and trust, told members of the House Judiciary Committee that federal law enforcement in recent years has been presenting the company with between 2,400 to 3,500 secrecy orders a year, or about seven to 10 a day.”Most shocking is just how routine secrecy orders have become when law enforcement targets an American’s email, text messages or other sensitive data stored in the cloud,” said Burt, describing the widespread clandestine surveillance as a major shift from historical norms.The relationship between law enforcement and Big Tech has attracted fresh scrutiny in recent weeks with the revelation that Trump-era Justice Department prosecutors obtained as part of leak investigations phone records belonging not only to journalists but also to members of Congress and their staffers. Microsoft, for instance, was among the companies that turned over records under a court order, and because of a gag order, had to then wait more than two years before disclosing it.Since then, Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, called for an end to the overuse of secret gag orders, arguing in a Washington Post opinion piece that “prosecutors too often are exploiting technology to abuse our fundamental freedoms.” Attorney General Merrick Garland, meanwhile, has said the Justice Department will abandon its practice of seizing reporter records and will formalize that stance soon.Burt is among the witnesses at a Judiciary Committee hearing about potential legislative solutions to intrusive leak investigations. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said in opening remarks Wednesday that the Justice Department took advantage of outdated policies on digital data searches to target journalists and others in leak investigations. The New York Democrat said that reforms are needed now to guard against future overreach by federal prosecutors — an idea also expressed by Republicans on the committee.”We cannot trust the department to police itself,” Nadler said.Burt said that while the revelation that federal prosecutors had sought data about journalists and political figures was shocking to many Americans, the scope of surveillance is much broader. He criticized prosecutors for reflexively seeking secrecy through boilerplate requests that “enable law enforcement to just simply assert a conclusion that a secrecy order is necessary.”Burt said that while Microsoft Corp. does cooperate with law enforcement on a broad range of criminal and national security investigations, it often challenges surveillance that it sees as unnecessary, resulting at times in advance notice to the account being targeted.Among the organizations weighing in at the hearing was The Associated Press, which called on Congress to act to protect journalists’ ability to promise confidentiality to their sources. Reporters must have prior notice and the ability to challenge a prosecutor’s efforts to seize data, said a statement submitted by Karen Kaiser, AP’s general counsel.”It is essential that reporters be able to credibly promise confidentially to ensure the public has the information needed to hold its government accountable and to help government agencies and officials function more effectively and with integrity,” Kaiser said. As possible solutions, Burt said, the government should end indefinite secrecy orders and should also be required to notify the target of the data demand once the secrecy order has expired.Just this week, he said, prosecutors sought a blanket gag order affecting the government of a major U.S. city for a Microsoft data request targeting a single employee there.”Without reform, abuses will continue to occur and they will occur in the dark,” Burt said.
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Efforts are taking place around the world to vaccinate as many people as possible to protect against COVID-19. Officials are tracking the safety and effectiveness of those efforts, but some medical experts say they aren’t getting the information they need on Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine. Anush Avetisyan has the story.Camera: David Gogokhia
Produced by: Henry Hernandez
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A former CIA operative known for his exploits everywhere from Miami to Nicaragua to Afghanistan has a book deal. Enrique “Ric” Prado’s “Black Ops: The Life of a CIA Shadow Warrior” will come out next March. “A lot has been said about the CIA over the years,” Prado said in a statement Wednesday. “And a lot of it has been (expletive). I wrote ‘Black Ops’ to clear the name of my agency. I know the untold sacrifices that have been made for this country by devoted men and women who have served anonymously, as quiet heroes. I’m eager to share those stories now.” His book, subject to government review, was announced by St. Martin’s Press, a division of Macmillan. Prado spent 24 years in the CIA before retiring in 2004. His assignments ranged from fighting with the Contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s — even after Congress had cut off U.S. support for the Contras — as they tried to overthrow the Sandinista government, to helping lead the hunt for Osama bin Laden, to overseeing SEAL Team Six missions into Afghanistan. Investigative reports in The Nation and a book by reporter Evan Wright have alleged that Prado has ties to organized crime and drug traffickers in Miami and to shell companies for the private contractor Blackwater. According to St. Martin’s, he is writing the book “to set the record straight about himself, his career and the men and women of his agency.” “In ‘Black Ops,’ Prado shares a harrowing true story of life in the deadly world of assassins, terrorists, spies and revolutionaries and reveals how he and his fellow CIA officers devoted their lives to operating in the shadows to fight a little-seen and virtually unknown war to keep the United States safe from those who would do it harm,” the publisher announced.
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The freshest faces among South Korean influencers are no longer the usual, 20-something celebrities. Instead, entertainment and social media are focusing on a new generation: the elder generation.
Older women were once invisible in South Korean entertainment as the industry stuck to rigidly conservative traditional female roles and cast them only as devoted mothers.
But older women are front and center in recent advertising and entertainment series.
A pioneer in the trend is Oscar winner Youn Yuh-jung, the 74-year-old “Minari” actor who promotes Oriental Brewery beer and the Zig Zag shopping app in two recent ad campaigns.
The beer video highlights the novelty of its spokesperson, who says: “For someone like me to be on a beer ad, the world has gotten so much better.” With a Cass beer in her hand, Youn says she makes friends by being her authentic self and alludes to the beer helping people to dissipate their social awkwardness.
South Korean producer Kim Sehee said Youn’s Oscar win earlier this year inspired his entertainment series, “Wassup K-Grandma.” He said South Korean young people have a new interest in their elders, birthing a new word “harmaenial” — a portmanteau of the South Korean word “harmoni,” or grandmother, and the English word “millennial.”
The series broadcast in May was one of the first Korean shows to feature grandmothers as main characters, according to Kim. It brought international guests to live as temporary sons-in-law with Korean grandmothers. The color of the series came from the grandmothers’ attempts to communicate with their foreign in-laws and share homemade meals and decades-old ginseng alcohol.
Park Makrye, a popular South Korean YouTuber, said the country’s attitude towards gender and age has been rapidly changing.
“Back in the days, people thought women were supposed to be only housewives cooking at home but that’s once upon a time. People must adapt to the current era,” she said.
Park, 74, is one of the leading lights in the South Korean frenzy. Her YouTube channel “Korea Grandma” has over 1.32 million subscribers. In her videos, Park throws expletives while reviewing a Korean drama and screams her lungs out while paragliding for the first time.
Park’s success has paved the way for others. Jang Myung-sook gives out fashion and lifestyles tips on her channel ” Milanonna,” a nonagenarian known as Grandma “Gganzi” raps and shares personal stories about living through the Japanese colonization, and a 76-year-old YouTuber flaunts her “single life” on ” G-gourmet. ”
“I would like to tell grandmothers to try everything they want to do and not be concerned with their age,” Park told The Associated Press.
“For young people…You’ll be OK as long as you are healthy,” she said. “Please fight on and best of luck.”
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Last week, a 12-story apartment building suddenly collapsed in a Miami, Florida, suburb, killing at least 11 people and leaving some 150 others missing. While the cause of the disaster is unclear, rising sea levels that flood parts of the Miami area with salt water and regularly left standing water in the underground garage of the Champlain Towers suggest that climate change played a role. Meanwhile, more than 4,000 kilometers away, residents of Seattle, Portland, and the rest of the U.S. Pacific Northwest endured a fourth consecutive day of a record-setting heatwave.While Portland reached a record temperature of over 110 degrees, June 27, 2021 people gathered at Salmon Street Springs water fountain in Portland to cool off. (Mark Graves/The Oregonian via AP)Roadways are buckling as asphalt melts and separates from the ground, making them impassable. Rubberized coatings that protect electrical wiring on mass transit systems are melting, forcing authorities to shut them down until repairs are made. In the United States, people generally take it for granted that buildings will maintain their structural integrity, roadways don’t turn to molten sludge and mass transit systems keep functioning. For many, recent events may shake those assumptions. Nobody is ready It is becoming increasingly clear that how Americans expect society to function within different ecosystems is changing — sometimes dramatically. In the Northeastern U.S., what used to be considered “100-yearFILE – Residents of the Crescent at Lakeshore apartment complex are rescued by Homewood Fire and Rescue as severe weather produced torrential rainfall flooding several apartment buildings, May 4, 2021 in Homewood, Ala. (AP Photo/Butch Dill)Is the nation adequately prepared for precipitous and increasingly calamitous change? People who make it their business to peer into the future say, unequivocally, America and humanity more broadly are not. “Nobody is, probably, least of all the U.S. because of prevalent mindsets,” said Richard Hames, executive director of the Centre for the Future, a global organization that “identifies and redesigns life-critical system that are collapsing under the weight of a population now exceeding seven billion people, that are no longer relevant, or that do not yet exist but will be needed for a future we cannot yet comprehend.” A dystopian vision? The picture Hames paints of humanity’s near-future is not a pretty one. “Scientists are now saying that things are beyond the worst-case scenario, we’re heading fast to irreversible tipping points, simply because of everything that’s locked in already,” he told VOA. FILE – Clouds gather but produce no rain as cracks are seen in the dried up municipal dam in drought-stricken Graaff-Reinet, South Africa, Nov. 14, 2019.In terms of the climate crisis, Hames said, “there is nothing in human experience” on which we can draw. The entire Holocene Period — the age of the earth in which human civilization arose and flourished — has been marked by a climate that existed in a stable state of conditions conducive to human thriving. “Now we’re in a state of exponential change, which, again, nobody really gets, nobody understands. And know that there’s nothing in human experience to [help us] cope with what we’re in for.” Is my home safe? If humanity is to cope with exponentially increasing effects of climate change, some experts say the first step will have to be truly internalizing the seriousness of the species’ perilous position. That, for example, tragedies like the South Florida building collapse might accelerate. Bruce Turkel, an author, speaker, and founder of The Strategic Forum in South Florida, was born and raised in Miami. As someone who makes a living helping businesses look into the future of their brands, he says the Champlain Towers collapse is the sort of event that makes people challenge long-held assumptions. The eastern part of Miami Beach, he notes, is called the “concrete canyon” by locals for the high-rise apartment buildings that line its roads for kilometers of beachfront property. FILE – Clouds loom over the Miami skyline May 14, 2020, the early signs of what would become Tropical Storm Arthur.“Imagine how many buildings there are; multiply that by the number of apartments; multiply that by the average occupancy of each apartment,” Turkel said. “How many people now are wondering, ‘Oh, my God, is my building safe?’” Virtually all of those people knew, on some level, that climate change was a problem, he said. But far fewer of them perceived it as an existential threat on a personal level. “If, in fact, climate change affected this building’s integrity, we didn’t have any perception or understanding that that was an issue,” he said. “What are the unexpected consequences? And how do we deal with those? That’s the big, social, and also socio-economic and geopolitical issue. As people start to say, ‘Oh, my goodness, I never thought of that. Oh, my goodness, I didn’t know that would happen.’ Where does that lead us?” Change is coming, but from where? While few experts doubt that widespread change as a result of the climate crisis is coming, how it will be received — with chaotic reaction or concerted activities to mitigate its impact — is currently unknowable. “If you look at the history of human change, it happens for two reasons,” said Turkel. Change, he added, comes either as a reaction to “a cataclysmic event that causes all of us to move either because of lack of food, lack of water, lack of something” or as a response to leadership that arises, typically, from outside established systems. The latter is preferable to the former, and Hames of the Centre for the Future agrees that if humanity is to be led out of the current crisis, it won’t be by the planet’s current generation of leaders. “Incumbent leaders don’t have the courage or the impulse to do what needs to be done,” he said. “Their interest is to go back to what was their ‘normality’ — not realizing that a lot of the problems we’re facing were caused by that so-called normality.” Cause for hope Hames said that while many people see his writing and public speaking as a reflection of a dystopian vision of the planet’s future, he’s convinced that people, by taking certain concrete actions, can preserve a future for humanity on this planet. “They can live more simply: we don’t need to buy as much stuff as is produced and then throw it away,” he said. “We can have more plant-based nutritional food, rather than eat so much meat. In terms of farms, we can move away from industrial agriculture to more organic, ecologically sensible agriculture, so that we’re not adding to desertification. The little things that we can do will make an awful lot of difference.” But, he added, the leadership needed to guide those steps are more likely to come from those with the most at stake in that future — today’s youth. “I’ve got nine kids and 16 grandchildren,” Hames said. “I’m both optimistic and pessimistic. I’m pessimistic that we’re heading so fast towards stepping over planetary boundaries … we’re like lemmings to the cliff. It’s just extraordinary. … My optimism is in human ingenuity and the resolve of youth in particular, who don’t want to inherit the legacy we’re busy creating for them.” A change of outlook Hames said that if and when change comes, it will involve an overhauling of the “occidental” worldview driven by the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the culture of individualism prevalent in the West, in favor of a more collective understanding of the costs and benefits of modern life. FILE – Protesters demanding action on climate change gather at Te Ngakau Civic Square in Wellington, New Zealand, March 15, 2019.“I believe the brunt of the leadership we need will come from the grassroots, it will come initially from activism and protest, but then it will move to much more positive ways of changing lives locally, and it starts at the local level,” he said. Again, he added, he expects the prime movers in this struggle to be today’s youth. “They want to know that they will have a viable life on this planet, not have to leave what is essentially a terrestrial form of life to go off to the moon or Mars or some crazy idea like that,” he said. “They want the quality of life here that, at the moment, is being taken from them.”
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“Better than nothing.” That’s one infectious disease expert’s assessment of Sinovac Biotech’s COVID-19 vaccine, following reports that hundreds of Indonesian health care workers who had received the vaccine caught the disease anyway. At least 10 doctors have died after getting both doses of Sinovac’s CoronaVac vaccine, according to the Indonesian Medical Association. It’s unclear how widespread these “breakthrough” infections are. It’s also not clear how severe most of the infections are. Little peer-reviewed data on the vaccine are available. What information is available suggests that the vaccine is less potent than others, especially against the highly contagious delta variant that was first detected in India. However, access to more effective vaccines is limited in much of the world, experts note. Indonesia is one of dozens of countries where the Chinese company’s vaccine makes up a substantial part of the available doses. While the shortage of published peer-reviewed data makes it hard to evaluate the vaccine, a few available studies provide a glimpse. The government of Uruguay FILE – Empty vials to be filled with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine are seen at a production facility in Reinbek, near Hamburg, Germany, April 30, 2021.Pfizer-BioNTech
The Pfizer-BioNTech shot performed better against infections in general in the study, lowering rates by 78%. But hospitalizations and deaths were about the same. It’s not clear what the dominant variant was during the study, however. A key measure of vaccine potency is the level of neutralizing antibodies — the proteins the immune system produces that prevent the virus from infecting cells. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines produce very high levels of these antibodies, which help maintain protection against variants, said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and a professor at the Baylor College of Medicine. “Yes, you’re getting some breakthrough infections with the delta variant, but they tend not to be serious infections,” he said. “People aren’t being hospitalized or losing their lives because of COVID-19.” “When you look at some of the data on the Sinovac vaccine,” he added, “the levels of virus-neutralizing antibody, even after two doses, can still be quite low.” The Sinovac vaccine produced lower levels of these antibodies than seven other vaccines, including those from Pfizer, Moderna, University of Oxford-AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, according to a study in the journal Nature Medicine.The antibody response is even less effective against the delta variant, which has exploded in Indonesia and many parts of the world. It’s not clear, however, exactly what that decline means for patients. The vaccine still offers protection against the most serious forms of the disease, a Chinese official told state media. Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 4 MB480p | 5 MB540p | 7 MB720p | 13 MB1080p | 22 MBOriginal | 263 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioIn China’s first delta outbreak, in Guangdong province earlier this month, “none of those vaccinated infections became severe cases, and none of the severe cases were vaccinated,” said Feng Zijian, former deputy director at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Meanwhile, supplies of other vaccines are arriving slowly in much of the world. “Sometimes, that’s all people have access to,” Hotez said. “It’s better than nothing.”
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U.S. President Joe Biden is holding talks Wednesday with a group of governors from eight Western states about wildfire preparedness as much of the region deals with drought. Biden and other administration officials will be speaking from the White House with the governors joining by video. White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters last week the meeting will “focus on how the federal government can improve wildfire preparedness and response efforts, protect public safety, and deliver assistance to our people in times of urgent need.” Those attending include Democratic governors Gavin Newsom of California, Jared Polis of Colorado, Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, Steve Sisolak of Nevada, Kate Brown of Oregon and Jay Inslee of Washington, along with Republican governors Spencer Cox of Utah and Mark Gordon of Wyoming. Not among the group are three other Republican governors from the region: Doug Ducey of Arizona, Brad Little of Idaho and Greg Gianforte of Montana. Gianforte tweeted Friday that he was “disappointed to learn in news stories” that the president “didn’t offer a seat at the table to Montana and other states facing a severe wildfire season.” The National Interagency Fire Center, which coordinates the mobilization of resources to battle wildfires in the United States, has warned that many Western states are facing a greater than usual likelihood that significant wildfires will occur in the next few months. The U.S. Drought Monitor reports wide areas of Arizona, California, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah are experiencing extreme or exceptional drought.
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Cities in the Pacific Northwest of North America reported power outages Tuesday, both from failures of utility companies and rolling blackouts due to heavy power demand. Seattle and Portland temperatures were expected to fall Tuesday, below Monday’s record highs, but inland, the city of Spokane, Washington, continued to record high temperatures and experience rolling blackouts in the city. Lytton, British Columbia, set Canada’s all-time high temperature Sunday with 46.6 degrees Celsius, only to see it broken less than 24 hours later, hitting 47.9 C Monday. Officials said Tuesday that several deaths in Portland and Seattle were tied to the extreme heat. In Vancouver, British Columbia, first responders have said that as many as two dozen deaths may be attributed to the high temperatures. On Tuesday, the U.N. World Meteorological Organization called the heat wave hitting the Pacific Northwest corner of the United States “exceptional and dangerous” and says it could last at least another five days.Guests at Sunriver resort near Bend, Oregon line up to get into the pool on June 29, 2021 as temperatures were predicted to hit 106 degrees Fahrenheit.Speaking to reporters from Geneva, a WMO spokeswoman said while records have fallen in the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington, western Canada has seen extreme heat as well. The official said the temperatures for this time of year and location are shocking. “It’s in the province of British Columbia, it’s to the Rocky Mountains, the Glacier National Park, and yet we’re seeing temperatures which are more typical of the Middle East or North Africa.” In an area used to temperatures 20 to 30 degrees cooler, the WMO said, the extreme heat poses major health threats to residents as well as agriculture and the environment. The WMO said the extreme heat is caused by “an atmospheric blocking pattern,” which has led to a “heat dome” — a large area of high pressure trapped by low pressure on either side. The organization said the temperatures would likely peak early this week on the coast and by the middle of the week in the interior of British Columbia. Afterward, the baking heat is expected to move east toward Alberta. On its Twitter account late Monday, the U.S. National Weather Service in Portland, Oregon, reported cooler air was already in the region along the coastline. In a tweet Sunday, the Oregon Climate Service said that the climate system is no longer in a balanced state, and that such heat events “are becoming more frequent and intense, a trend projected to continue.” This report includes information from The Associated Press.
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Cuban screenwriter Delia Fiallo, widely seen as “the mother of the telenovela” and the writer behind international hits like the soap opera “Crystal,” died Tuesday in Miami at the age of 96, her daughter-in-law confirmed to AFP. A pioneer of the wildly popular romantic soap operas in Latin America, Fiallo , whose career began in the middle of the last century, told AFP in an interview in 2018 that she wanted to be remembered “as a person who loved a lot and who was very loved.”Her daughter-in-law, Odalis Baez, confirmed her death. Adored by her fans, Fiallo left her mark on U.S. Hispanic popular culture in the second half of the 20th century. She started her career in Cuba in 1950 with radio soap operas before writing her first television screenplay in 1957. She then worked with Venezuelan television stations after leaving Communist Cuba for Miami in 1966, scripting popular shows like “Lucecita” in 1967, or global hits like “Esmeralda,” “Leonela,” “Cristal” and “Kassandra.”In all, she wrote more than 40 works for radio and television during her long career.The cause of her death was not immediately made public.
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Tennis great Serena Williams limped out of Wimbledon in tears on Tuesday after her latest bid for a record-equaling 24th Grand Slam singles crown ended in injury. The American sixth seed and seven-time Wimbledon winner was clearly in pain on a slippery Centre Court and sought treatment while 3-2 up in her first-round match against unseeded Belarusian Aliaksandra Sasnovich. Williams returned after a lengthy break, but the distress was evident. She grimaced and wiped away tears before preparing to serve at 3-3 after Sasnovich had pulled back from 3-1 down. Serena Williams, right, retires from the match against Aliaksandra Sasnovich in first round women’s singles on Centre Court at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, June 29, 2021. (Peter Van den Berg-USA Today Sports)The 39-year-old, who had started the match with strapping on her right thigh, then let out a shriek and sank kneeling to the grass sobbing, before being helped off the court. “I was heartbroken to have to withdraw today after injuring my right leg,” Williams wrote on Instagram. “My love and gratitude are with the fans and the team who make being on center court so meaningful. Feeling the extraordinary warmth and support of the crowd today when I walked on — and off — the court meant the world to me.” ‘Great champion’Sasnovich, who practiced her serve while Williams was getting treatment, commiserated with an opponent who had never gone out in the first round at Wimbledon in her previous 19 visits. “I’m so sad for Serena. She’s a great champion,” said the world No. 100 Sasnovich. “It happens sometimes.” Eight-time men’s singles champion Roger Federer expressed shock at Williams’ departure and voiced concern about the surface, with the roof closed on Centre Court on a rainy afternoon. His first-round opponent, Adrian Mannarino of France, also retired with a knee injury after a slip in the match immediately before Williams’. “I do feel it feels a tad more slippery maybe under the roof. I don’t know if it’s just a gut feeling. You do have to move very, very carefully out there. If you push too hard in the wrong moments, you do go down,” Federer said. “I feel for a lot of players. It’s super key to get through those first two rounds because the grass is more slippery. It is more soft. As the tournament progresses, usually it gets harder and easier to move on,” he said. Hopes dashedWilliams has been a Wimbledon finalist in her last four appearances, but her bid to equal Margaret Court’s record 24 Grand Slam singles titles has stalled since her last in Australia in 2017. With the absence this year of world No. 2 Naomi Osaka and third-ranked Simona Halep, hopes were rising of another year to remember for the American. “It was hard for me to watch that,” said compatriot Coco Gauff. “She’s the reason why I started to play tennis. It’s hard to watch any player get injured, but especially her.”
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Florida’s governor has announced the start of Python Challenge in Everglades National Park. The python removal will start July 9 and last for 10 days. The Everglades ecosystem suffers from the overpopulation of Burmese pythons — a nonnative species for South Florida that kill native wildlife. The challenge is meant to protect the native wildlife and bring the local community together. Liliya Anisimova has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.Camera: Liliya Anisimova Produced by: Anna Rice, Rob Raffaele
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A unmanned NASA resupply ship, docked at the International Space Station (ISS) since February, departed Tuesday on one last mission to deploy satellites before burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere.The Cygnus supply ship, built by the Northrop Grumman aerospace company, is named the S.S. Katherine Johnson, after the African American NASA mathematician whose work was made famous in the movie Hidden Figures. Her calculations contributed to the February 20, 1962 mission in which John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth.After departure from the space station, the Katherine Johnson was to remain in Earth orbit to deploy five cube satellites, including one designed to study the Earth’s ionosphere, a layer of electrons in its upper atmosphere, along with an educational satellite from Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi.Thursday evening, the supply ship fires its engines one last time and re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere where it will burn up. The ship is filled with several tons of waste from the orbiting outpost.Another supply ship bound for the ISS is scheduled to be launched later Tuesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
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The U.N. World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Tuesday called the heatwave hitting the Pacific Northwest corner of the United States “exceptional and dangerous,” and says it could last at least another five days. Speaking to reporters from Geneva, a WMO spokeswoman said while records have fallen in the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington, western Canada has seen extreme heat as well. Extreme #heat hits Northwest USA and Western Canada, which saw new record temperature of 47.9°C
Many parts of northern hemisphere have seen exceptionally high temperatures#Climatechange ➡️more frequent and intense heatwaves
Roundup is here https://t.co/qI0ncloKpd
Graphic @ecmwfpic.twitter.com/fposUALIMU
— World Meteorological Organization (@WMO) People look for ways to cool off at Willow’s Beach during the ‘heat dome,’ currently hovering over British Columbia and Alberta as record-setting breaking temperatures scorch the province and in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, June 28, 2021.The WMO said the extreme heat is caused by “an atmospheric blocking pattern,” which has led to a “heat dome” — a large area of high pressure — trapped by low pressure on either side. The organization said the temperatures would likely peak early this week on the coast and by the middle of the week in the interior of British Columbia; afterward, the baking heat is expected to move east toward Alberta. The U.S. National Weather Service in Portland, Oregon, on its Twitter account late Monday, reported cooler air was already in the region along the coastline. In a tweet Sunday, the Oregon Climate Service said the climate system is no longer in a balanced state, and such heat events “are becoming more frequent and intense, a trend projected to continue.”
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