NASCAR announced Thursday that it will resume its season without fans starting May 17 at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina with the premier Cup Series racing three more times in a 10-day span.  NASCAR joins the UFC as the first major sports organizations to announce specific return to play plans since the coronavirus pandemic shut down U.S. sports in mid-March.  “NASCAR and its teams are eager and excited to return to racing, and have great respect for the responsibility that comes with a return to competition,” said Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer. “NASCAR will return in an environment that will ensure the safety of our competitors, officials and all those in the local community. NASCAR’s revised schedule goes only through May and has a pair of Wednesday Cup races, fulfilling fans longtime plea for midweek events. The first race is scheduled for Darlington, NASCAR’s oldest superspeedway, followed by a second race at the 70-year-old, egg-shaped oval track three days later.  Charlotte Motor Speedway will then host the Coca-Cola 600 on May 24 to mark 60 consecutive years the longest race on the NASCAR schedule will be held on Memorial Day weekend. The track in Concord, outside NASCAR’s home base of Charlotte, will then host a Wednesday race three days later.  There will also be lower-tier Xfinity and Trucks series races at the two tracks. The North Carolina governor has said the the Charlotte races can be held as long as health conditions in the area do not deteriorate. “This has been a proactive effort to put our motorsports industry back to work and boost the morale of sports fans around the world, while at the same time keeping the health and safety of all who will be on site the top priority,” said Marcus Smith, president and CEO of Speedway Motorsports. He said “sports fans around the world need this, a return to some sense of normalcy with live sports on TV, and NASCAR is uniquely positioned to deliver it from a competition standpoint.” NASCAR has set guidelines to safely hold the events using CDC guidelines on social distancing and personal protective equipment. Only essential personnel will be permitted to attend the events, and cloth face masks will be required. The entire venue will be used to maintain distancing in garage stalls and where the haulers are parked.  NASCAR suspended its season March 13 with only four of its 36 scheduled races completed. The stock car series, heavily reliant on television money and sponsor payments, has vowed to complete its full schedule. The revised schedule for now stays at tracks within driving distance of Charlotte-based race teams and in states that have started reopening.  “Darlington is one of the most iconic and historic tracks in the sport and will be a tremendous backdrop when NASCAR returns to racing,” said track President Kerry Tharp, who noted the track will now have three Cup races in one season for the first time in its history.  Darlington is also scheduled to open the playoffs with the Southern 500 on Sept. 6. Because the track now has two additional dates, NASCAR will lose two Cup races from its other properties. The same goes for Speedway Motorsports, which gained one additional race so far and will have to forfeit one at another facility.  Almost all teams began returning to their shops this week with either a reduced initial workforce or in split shifts. Now that NASCAR has told the teams where it will be racing this month, they can start preparing cars suitable for the two tracks.  Although Florida and Texas invited NASCAR to compete in those states without spectators, the sanctioning body is holding off on scheduling events at tracks that require air travel and hotel accommodations. 
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The Army’s top leaders on Thursday defended their decision to bring 1,000 cadets back to the Military Academy at West Point for graduation, where President Donald Trump is slated to speak, saying that despite the coronovirus risk students would have had to return anyway to prepare for their next duty assignment.
The announcement has been criticized as a political move to get Trump on stage at the academy, where he hasn’t yet given a graduation address. But Army officials said the students must return for final medical checks, equipment and training.  
“We can’t telecommute to combat,” Gen. James McConville, the chief of staff of the Army, told Pentagon reporters when asked about the decision, which forces cadets spread out across the U.S. to travel, risking exposure on public transportation, and then land in New York, a coronavirus hot spot.
Cadets have been home since spring break in March, with their return to school delayed because of the outbreak. Only the seniors will return, and the graduation is set for June 13.
Lt. Gen. Darryl Williams, academy superintendent, said the students must return for medical and other required tasks that can only be done at the academy before they can be turned over as new officers to the Army.
He said the school will create a “safety bubble” around the cadets and build a staging base where they will arrive. All cadets will be screened and tested for the virus at the staging area and then separated into five groups that will eat and live separately. They will be quarantined for 14 days.
 
Williams said Keller Army Community Hospital at the base now has all the needed testing equipment, and was converted to be able to handle and quarantine virus patients.
Asked if cadets will face discipline if they can’t or don’t want to come back because of the virus, he said commanders will decide on a case-by-case basis.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., a member of West Point’s Board of Visitors, said she expressed her concerns about the decision to Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy in a call this week.
“Trump’s reckless decision to gather 1,000 Cadets at West Point for a speech puts our future military leaders at increased risk — all to stroke his own ego,” said Duckworth, a retired Army helicopter pilot, who served in the Iraq war and received a Purple Heart.
McCarthy told reporters the Army wants to have a “small, safe graduation ceremony” for the cadets to celebrate.
In contrast, the U.S. Naval Academy has announced it will hold a virtual graduation and postpone other traditional milestone events until large-scale gatherings are allowed. The academy’s superintendent, Vice Adm. Sean Buck, called it a difficult decision but necessary “to safeguard the health and welfare of the entire Naval Academy family and local community.”
The U.S. Air Force Academy opted to hold a scaled-down ceremony with hundreds of graduating cadets sitting in chairs eight feet apart on the school’s parade field, instead of in its stadium. The ceremony was closed to visitors.
West Point’s graduation ceremonies are usually held in May in a football stadium.
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Veteran Bollywood actor Rishi Kapoor died Thursday in Mumbai after battling leukemia for two years.   
 
The 67-year-old star, who made his debut as a child actor in “Mera Naam Joker,” (My Name is Joker) went on to win the hearts of millions of fans with a teenage love story, “Bobby” in 1973.
 
The news of his death was a double blow for the Bollywood Hindi movie industry and its tens of millions of fans – Kapoor passed away a day after another acclaimed actor, Irrfan Khan, succumbed to cancer.   
 
Kapoor had undergone treatment in a New York hospital for almost a year before returning to India last September. He was admitted to a hospital in Mumbai on Wednesday.
 
“The doctors and medical staff at the hospital said he kept them entertained to the last. He remained jovial and determined to live to the fullest right through two years of treatment across two continents,” Kapoor’s family said in a statement.
 
Kapoor was a third-generation actor in a famed Bollywood family that has played a dominant role in the industry.   
 
During a career that spanned nearly five decades, he made a mark as a romantic hero during his earlier films but transitioned to a much-acclaimed character actor in the past decade. He last starred in a film “102 Not Out” released in 2018.
 
Tributes poured in from veteran actors and his fans on social media. Bollywood’s most iconic star, Amitabh Bachchan tweeted “I am destroyed.”
 
“Multifaceted, endearing and lively, this was Rishi Kapoor,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote on Twitter.   
 
“This is a terrible week for Indian cinema, with the passing of another legend, actor Rishi Kapoor,” Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi tweeted.
 
With India in a strict lockdown due to COVID-19, Kapoor’s family appealed to the public to follow the rules in force and said “he would like to be remembered with a smile and not with tears.”
 
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The six-year fan campaign for a standalone Black Widow movie was paying off: At long last, a film would put Scarlett Johansson’s popular Avenger front and center. And, like many of Marvel’s biggest spectacles, it was set to open the weekend of May 1.  “Black Widow” was to kick off what promised to be a typically lucrative summer moviegoing season, which runs from Memorial Day through Labor Day and generally accounts for $4 billion, nearly 40% of the yearly North American box office. And there was a lot more to look forward to: Tom Cruise’s return to one of his most iconic roles; a “Wonder Woman” sequel; original fare from Christopher Nolan and Wes Anderson, and more. Then the unthinkable happened.Now modern Hollywood is faced with a gutted summer season that at the very earliest will kick off months late — and even that is changing by the minute. On Monday, Judd Apatow’s Pete Davidson movie “The King of Staten Island” switched to a June 12 home video  release, following in the path of Disney’s “Artemis Fowl,” out on Disney Plus June 12, and Warner Bros.’ “Scoob!” available May 15.No blockbusters until JulyA few states are talking about allowing movie theaters to reopen soon — Texas as early as Friday. But no major blockbusters are set to open until mid-July. The first is Christopher Nolan’s thriller “Tenet,” a Warner Bros. film, which has ardently stood its ground on July 17. Shortly afterward, Disney plans to open “Mulan” on July 24, four months after its original date. And then comes “Wonder Woman 1984” on August 14, two months later than planned. It’s something, but it’s still a shell of what summer 2020 at the movies was supposed to be.  “We’re down 50% right now,” said Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “If theaters open in mid-July it’ll offset some of the really disastrous models. But it would be naive to think that we’re going to make up all that box office.”Studios have depended on massive revenues from the summer months for decades, but in recent years they have discovered that movies can do blockbuster numbers in nearly any month.  That will be tested with Hollywood’s massively revamped schedule. Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch” will open on October 16, “Black Widow” will get her day on November 6; and “Top Gun: Maverick” is now set for Christmastime.Some films abandoned 2020 entirely, including the “Fast and Furious” movie “F9”; the Dwayne Johnson-Emily Blunt adventure “Jungle Cruise”; and “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” which were all pushed to 2021.FILE – A person walks across a street as a marquee displays a message that a movie theater is temporarily closed because of the coronavirus outbreak, March 31, 2020, in downtown St. Louis.It’s not as simple as just allowing venues to reopen. Theaters need new movies to show and the biggest on the horizon, “Tenet,” is still almost three months away.”The movie theater industry is also a national one,” the National Association of Theatre Owners said in a statement. “Until the majority of markets in the U.S. are open, and major markets in particular, new wide-release movies are unlikely to be available.”The nation’s largest movie theater chain, AMC, which operates over 630 theaters in the U.S., said in a statement that in order to reopen it needs “a line of sight into a regular schedule of new theatrical blockbusters that get people truly excited.”AMC said it would open in the weeks ahead of blockbusters like “Tenet” and “Mulan” using “creative programming” of previously released films.Eric Wold, a Wall Street analyst for B. Riley FBR, said there’s simply a lot of uncertainty about when theaters can open, what the guidelines will be and how moviegoers will respond.’There’s no rush'”Do you open now and show ‘Jaws’ and ‘Harry Potter’ and older titles? Or are people going to say, ‘I can watch that at home’?” Wold said. “I think [theaters will] be smart and wait. There’s no rush. You might as well wait until June and see how it goes and slowly open from there.”  Should restrictions stay in place longer, Wold said, the bigger chains have raised enough cash to last to at least until Thanksgiving for AMC, and even into 2021 for Cinemark, with no revenue coming in.  “Black Widow” will still have her day in the sun, even if it is in November, and all of the movies will eventually come out in one form or another. On Tuesday, theater owners and Universal squabbled over “Trolls World Tour’s” straight-to-video-on-demand strategy and what it means for the future of theatrical windows.  But perhaps the turbulence of the lost 2020 summer movie season will result in some strategic rethinking — at least that’s what film critic and “Unspooled” co-host Amy Nicholson hopes.”For decades, the major studios have wandered away from producing mid-budget comedies and adult dramas to gamble their money on gargantuan summer blockbusters,” said Nicholson. “I’d love to see the industry recover by greenlighting an eclectic slate of $5 million-to-$15 million flicks that could make moviegoing fun again. Time to swap out financial risks for creative risks.”
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The most controversial movie of the year is … “Trolls World Tour”? As innocuous as the rainbow-colored, music-blaring animated movie may seem, the digital release of the “Trolls” sequel has caused a storm to course through the movie industry. Just as the pandemic worsened and movie theaters were shuttering, Universal Pictures shifted the film’s release to video on demand, leading a charge straight through the theatrical window. Universal calls the “Trolls World Tour” digital release a success and suggests it may be the beginning of a sea change in how movies are released. Theater owners strenuously disagree. AMC Theaters, the largest chain in the United States, is signaling an all-out war, saying it will no longer show Universal movies.  While few anticipated a skirmish would come over a glitter explosion like “Trolls World Tour,” it has been long in coming. Netflix, Amazon and other streaming services have in recent years broken the industry’s traditional theatrical window of 72-90 days (and thus had their films excluded from major theater chains), and the major studios have sometimes been tempted to try their own luck and head straight to homes.  FILE – Jeff Shell, NBCUniversalOn Tuesday, NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell told The Wall Street Journal  that the digital release for “Trolls World Tour” has gone well enough to demonstrate the viability of direct-to-home releases. He promised that even once theaters reopen, “We expect to release movies on both formats.”  The Journal reported that in three weeks of $20 on-demand rentals, “Trolls World Tour” has grossed about $95 million. The studio, which normally splits sales approximately in half with theaters, pocketed about $75 million of that. A spokesman for Universal did not dispute those figures.  By comparison, 2016’s “Trolls” grossed $116 million in U.S. and Canada and $346.9 million worldwide. The sequel cost a reported $90 million to produce, not including marketing costs that likely exceeded $50 million.Pandemic-era fluke?Whether that performance constitutes a “hit” or merely an intriguing pandemic-era experiment has been the subject of much debate. Under stay-at-home orders, the country’s moviegoers are on lockdown. “Trolls World Tour” benefited by being the first such release during the crisis. And even in those extreme circumstances, it’s made significantly less than the original film did. The rentals may have also eaten into other “downstream” home entertainment revenue sources.  “Universal does not have reason to use unusual circumstances in an unprecedented environment as a springboard to bypass true theatrical releases,” said John Fithian, president and chief executive of the National Association of Theatre Owners. He touted the irreplaceable “beloved immersive, shared experience” of seeing a film in a theater, adding that many families would have flocked to “Trolls” if “the world had not been sequestered at home.” AMC threatAMC Theaters went further. CEO Adam Aron said his company would sever relations with Universal, effective Tuesday. He insisted the policy would continue once theaters reopened, would apply to its venues around the world and “is not some hollow or ill-considered threat.” FILE – Adam Aron, AMC TheatersAron said AMC would do the same to any distributor that “unilaterally abandons current windowing practices absent good faith negotiations between us.”  He declared absent further discussions, “decades of incredibly successful business activity together has sadly come to an end.”Late Tuesday, Universal responded it was disappointed with the AMC and NATO statements.  “We absolutely believe in the theatrical experience and have made no statement to the contrary,” Universal said, adding it would consider video on demand “when that distribution outlet makes sense.” Universal has been bolder than other studios. A day earlier, Universal said it would steer another upcoming release, the Judd Apatow comedy “The King of Staten Island,”  to on-demand. It also quickly brought movies like “The Hunt” and “Emma,” released in theaters just before the shutdown, to on-demand.Embracing streamingBut the studio isn’t the only one experimenting.  Warner Bros. will make the Scooby-Doo film “Scoob!”  available for digital rental next month instead of waiting for theaters to open. The Walt Disney Co. is steering “Artemis Fowl” to its Disney Plus streaming service. Other studios have simply sold movies to streaming services. Netflix acquired the Paramount Pictures comedy “Lovebirds,” once planned for a spring theatrical release.  Even the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has been forced to embrace streaming. On Tuesday, it announced  it will allow films without a theatrical release — long a hot-button issue for the Oscars — to contend at next year’s Academy Awards.  Meanwhile, theater chains are struggling with the losses incurred by an open-ended shutdown. AMC earlier this month issued a $500 million debt offering to keep itself afloat. It has furloughed some 26,000 employees as well as executives, including Aron.  But it remains to be seen if on-demand is a box-office replacement or merely a useful Band-aid in unprecedented times. Would a more expensive movie be able to compensate for $500 million in box office? Or $1 billion? For now, only the likes of “Trolls,” “Scoob!” and “Artemis Fowl” are testing the waters. The largest movies, including the Disney-Marvel release “Black Widow,” the James Bond installment “No Time to Die” and “Wonder Woman 1984,” are waiting it out.  Also on hold: Universal’s “F9,” which moved from this summer to next year. The other nine films in the “Fast & Furious” franchise have collectively grossed nearly $6 billion in worldwide box office.  
 
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Veteran Bollywood actor Irrfan Khan, who rose to international acclaim with roles in such films as “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Life of Pi,” has died at the age of 54.A spokesman said Khan died Wednesday in a Mumbai hospital where he had been admitted earlier this week for a colon infection.  Khan sought treatment in Britain after he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in 2018.The native of India’s western desert state of Rajasthan broke into the Indian film industry in 1988 in the Academy Award-nominated drama “Salaam Bombay.”  Khan went on to star in a number of notable Bollywood films, including “The Namesake” “The Lunchbox” and “Paan Singh Tomar,” which earned him India’s National Film Award for best actor in 2012.In addition to “Slumdog Millionaire,” which won the 2008 Acadamy Award for Best Picture, Khan appeared in such Hollywood films as “The Amazing Spider Man,”“Jurassic World” and “Inferno.”His most recent role was the Bollywood film “Angraezi Medium,” a sequel to his hit 2017 film “Hindi Medium.” The new movie was released before India was placed under a nationwide lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.  
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When the coronavirus began raising concerns in China this past January, Taiwan’s professional baseball league set up a task force to help determine whether the outbreak would spread into nearby Taiwan and scuttle a scheduled 2020 season start in March.    After China sealed off its disease outbreak center Wuhan and hundreds of Taiwanese began fleeing back from Lunar New Year holidays in China around the start of February, the Taipei-based Chinese Professional Baseball League brought on a legal expert too. “We figured conditions were extremely serious,” commissioner Wu Chih-yang said in an interview. A veteran sports watcher anywhere in the world would assume at this point that the league delayed play until May, June or whenever. Pro baseball and basketball have put off play in the United States. Baseball has been halted for now in Japan and South Korea. The 2020 Tokyo Olympics will take place in 2021. But the Taiwan baseball league opened play just three weeks late, on April 11. Its five teams intend to finish all 240 normal season games before December even though at the present time the teams are playing the games without their usual crowds of thousands.   Here’s how the league beat the odds. As the disease spread in China in February and March, Taiwan’s league was trying to plan its normal season as well as two other series including one in preparation for the 2020 summer Olympics, which hadn’t yet been postponed. At the same time, the Taiwan government’s Central Epidemic Command Center was laying out ideas on how to manage large events such as ball games, but they were just suggestions, Wu recalled.  In view of the advice, the government’s suggestions and confusion after two brief season delays in March and Taiwan’s light coronavirus caseload, the league decided to start play with empty stadiums but enough atmosphere that viewers at home could imagine the real thing. Taiwan’s outbreak of the coronavirus-caused respiratory disease COVID-19 has reached 429 cases over a total 23 million population, one of the developed world’s lowest infection rates. It’s low enough to protect gatherings of athletes and other personnel, the league found. But crowds of spectators, who had averaged 6,000 per game in previous seasons, could spread the virus, Wu said.This Friday, April 24, 2020, photo, shows Chinatrust Brothers players during a game against Fubon Guardians with no audience at Xinzhuang Baseball Stadium in New Taipei City, Taiwan.Cheerleaders can get into the venues now because they’re known to the teams rather than strangers. They do enough dancing that TV and internet viewers can exercise in sync with their moves while watching from home, Wu said. Cheerleading, rah-rah music tracks blasted through the stadium speakers and empty seats in some stadiums decked with spectator-like mannequins add a sense authenticity despite lack of fans. One team has brought in six robots as drummers. “I think we’d all like more fans to come in and cheer us on, but there’s truly no way for that, due to the outbreak,” said Wang Wei-chen, an infielder with the Chinatrust Brothers team. “We’re lucky we can play games and let people see them.” Online viewing that hit 650,000 people during one game April 15 attracts brands to display ads in stadiums and promotes the sale of team-specific uniforms worn by cheerleaders, the commissioner said. “If they were losing money, no one would do this,” he said of the teams. Wu believes Taiwan’s professional baseball league is the only major one that’s playing in the world now. “We won’t of course call it glory,” Wu said. “We want players all over the world to stay healthy and then get through the disease outbreaks and be able to start their seasons smoothly, because actually to be the only one is quite lonely.” At the request of some teams, the league decided last week to add English-language play-by-play narration and commentary at each stadium, Wu said. That perk allows people in the United States and other countries without baseball to follow Taiwan’s games. “Taiwan baseball has gone down very well in America,” said Sean King, vice president of the Park Strategies political consultancy. “The relatively small number of Taiwanese teams enables viewers to get know the entire league after only a few games. The fact that Taiwan baseball’s even on shows the world what a great job Taiwan’s done against COVID-19.” That Taiwan’s league can play this month isn’t a diplomatic tool for the island that’s always keen to expand international recognition in the face of its more powerful rival China, however. It reflects “our success in public health policy advanced planning and implementation,” foreign ministry spokesperson Joanne Ou said. “It is just sport, never meant to be a tool of diplomacy,” Ou said. “It just happened to be the only one in the world to carry it out.” 
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He winds up and throws the apple core, aiming for the woods where he hopes a tree will grow. He overshoots his mark. It bounces across the hill of the next-door neighbors’ yard. “I’ll get it,” he says. But in these days of isolation and distance, that is a dicey proposition.Almost furtively, he scurries across the property line. He does not find it. I tell him that he must email the neighbors.For his email, he chooses the subject “Apple Issue.” He writes: “In this time of crisis, it is understandable that you wouldn’t want to touch a saliva-covered fruit. Therefore, if/when you find the apple core, if you would let me know, I would take it back.”He is 13. His name is Wyatt. He is my younger son. Other than his immediate family, he has not come within 20 yards of anyone he knows for nearly two months.My father was a naturalist. Much more, sadly, than I’ve ever been. He planted on our family property well into his mid-80s, when his knees could no longer take it.When I was little, he took me around the land that my wife and I now own, pointing out trees and identifying them as we walked through the backyard woods down to the rushing creek and back.He’d hand me sassafras leaves to chew and show me wild blackberry bushes to pick from. Today, on the property I inherited from my parents, a ginkgo tree — his favorite — looms over the front walk.After he died, I opened one of his reference books, “The Book of Trees.” Tucked carefully into the appropriate pages were dried leaves from his woods excursions.On his side, we come from a long line of cultivators — Ohio farmers, New York farmers, yankee farmers. My sister followed in their footsteps, to a fashion, becoming a molecular biologist after a thesis entitled “Dwarf Plants Produced from Treated Seeds.”Not me. I’m not a lawn-and-garden guy. The closest I’ve ever come to planting something was when I buried a crock of kimchi in the back yard in 1981, hoping it would ferment. That was the last we saw of it.An apple core-related email arrives from next door.”I suspect the deer will find and eat it before I find it. If I do come across it, I will let you know.”And: “If you want an apple tree to grow, I would suggest digging a small hole (2” deep) for each core and covering it with dirt. This is a good time of year to plant.”My son promptly eats another apple. Then he requests a shovel. He darts outside, ponders, picks a spot. He digs a tiny hole. He comes back in. Part of him seems 70. Part of him seems 7. “Dad, want to see me drop the apple core into the hole?”We trudge across the soaked lawn. Silently, I chastise myself for not being better at this stuff. I look over my shoulder at the south side of the house, at the narrow strip where my father grew peas in the 1980s and lost his wedding ring while attempting to cultivate cilantro in the 1990s. His green plastic wheelbarrow is still there. I’ve never moved it.The sassafras tree died during Reagan’s first term. The blackberry bushes disappeared while I was in college. The creek is still there, now usually dry.But now we have an apple core in the ground. Now we wait. Now, in this season of stagnation, there is growth to contemplate.I see myself coming back decades from now. Walking slowly across a better-kept lawn. Reaching up. Picking an apple. Taking a bite. Saying to a man now taller than me: “Hey, Wyatt. Remember the virus?”
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The head of the Japan Medical Association said Tuesday it will be difficult for the country to host the rescheduled Olympics next year without a coronavirus vaccine available. “I am not saying that Japan should or shouldn’t host the Olympics, but that it would be difficult to do so,” said Yoshitake Yokokura. “Unless an effective vaccine is developed, I expect hosting the Olympics will be difficult.” The pandemic forced organizers to abandon plans to hold the games this July, opting instead to postpone the event that draws thousands of athletes from all over the world. Multiple countries are currently working on developing vaccines, but experts have cautioned the process to test both the safety and effectiveness of vaccine candidates, plus manufacturing doses, could take 12 to 18 months. The coronavirus outbreak has prompted officials to put billions of people under various stay-at-home orders and tell non-essential businesses to close their doors. The result has been increases in unemployment, massive revenue cuts and governments balancing the need to stop the spread of the virus with economic concerns.  Some have enacted financial rescue packages to help put money in people’s pockets and keep businesses afloat. U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock suggested a $90 billion effort to help provide income, food and health aid for the world’s most vulnerable people at a time when experts say the pandemic has not yet reached the poorest parts of the planet. Mark Lowcock, the U.N. Humanitarian Affairs Emergency and Relief Coordinator, address United Nations Security Council with a report on Yemen, Tuesday Oct. 23, 2018 at U.N. headquarters.He said there are 700 million people in 30 to 40 countries that had been receiving some level of humanitarian assistance and will see incomes drop as increased infections force lockdown measures. “What I am suggesting is a lot of the suffering and loss of life can be contained within sums of money which are imaginable,” he said. Lowcock said funding could come from a combination of international institutions, such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, as well as one-time boosts in contributions from governments. World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged European countries that are easing their lockdowns because of declining numbers of new cases to “find, isolate, test and treat all cases of COVID-19 and trace every contact, to ensure these declining trends continue.”      He told a media briefing in Geneva on Monday that “the pandemic is far from over.” He added that the “WHO continues to be concerned about the increasing trends in Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America and some Asian countries.”   His comments followed easing of restrictions in Italy, Spain, Germany and elsewhere. France, one of the hardest-hit nations with more than 23,000 COVID-19 deaths, is due to announce its plans to begin easing restrictions on Tuesday.    Health officials in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the virus originated, said Tuesday there were no new cases and that there were no remaining coronavirus patients in its hospitals for a second consecutive day.   Confirmed cases of coronavirus worldwide have surpassed 3 million, and fatalities have exceeded 211,000, according to Johns Hopkins University statistics.
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Actress Olivia Cheng was recently volunteering in Vancouver when she says she witnessed a man drive up to an elderly Chinese woman, roll down his window and yell, “This is your fault!” before throwing trash at her.The incident enraged Cheng, and also served as another reason why she feels it’s so important for celebrities of Asian descent to use their voices and speak up against anti-Asian attacks, which authorities say are increasing during the coronavirus pandemic.”I don’t think we can pretend that this isn’t happening,” Cheng, who stars in “The Stand” on CBS All Access, said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “For now, it would not be unwise to be a little more careful, to maybe have buddy systems when possible to go get your groceries if you’re not feeling safe.” The FBI reports there has been an uptick in hate crimes and harassment against Asian Americans since the outbreak of COVID-19, which first appeared in Wuhan, China, late last year.Some people have blamed China and Asians in general for the spread of coronavirus; President Donald Trump at times has called it the “Chinese virus.”In New York, state Attorney General Letitia James has set up a hotline to report harassment or other targeted crime. Some of those incidents have been filmed and posted online.Tzi Ma arrives at the Los Angeles premiere of “Mulan” at the Dolby Theatre on Mar. 09, 2020.”Tigertail” star Tzi Ma says he’s been a victim of such harassment. He was entering a grocery store in Pasadena, California, recently when he was confronted by a man in a car.”He looked at me straight in the eye and said, ‘You should be quarantined’ and took off,” said the veteran actor, who was born in Hong Kong but moved to the United States as a child. “I got very angry obviously, flush with this kind of cold in your body. And I started screaming at him, but he was way too far away for him to hear me.” Actor Alain Uy, a star of the upcoming Hulu series “Marvel’s Helstrom,” worried early on that such incidents would occur after the virus’ spread. “Once this outbreak happened in Wuhan, we all kind of went, ‘OK, we know what this is gonna mean,'” said the actor, who was born in the Philippines.”Crazy Rich Asians” director Jon M. Chu said he’s been feeling more cautious than usual.”It’s very sad when I feel a little bit weird when I’m going to go for a walk around the block,” he said. Jeannie Mai arrives at the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Jan. 5, 2020, in Beverly Hills, Calif.”The Real” co-host, Jeannie Mai, who is half-Vietnamese and half-Chinese, revealed recently that for the first time, she needed someone to monitor her social media posts to delete racist comments.”The Good Doctor” actor Will Yun Lee is even nervous about taking his baby son to the grocery store: “My wife is Caucasian, but my son is half Korean and half white. But he looks very Asian.”But Ma and other stars are speaking up and working to combat the ignorance and harassment. Ma joined actress Celia Au and other celebrities and influencers in the recent campaign called ” Wash the Hate, ” created by IW Group, an Asian American-focused marketing agency. The PSA features Ma, Au and others washing their hands and reminding people that hygiene, not xenophobia, is the way to help combat the virus. “If I can start the conversation, why not?’ said Au, who was also born in Hong Kong. “If we don’t talk about it, then it’s not going to be talked about at all.”For Cheng, the recent wave of anti-Asian sentiment brought back painful memories of her childhood growing up in Edmonton, Canada, where she was the victim of a bias attack as a teen.She went down an internet rabbit hole of attacks posted online. “I had to stop watching,” she said. “It brought up all those feelings again from being a kid and not being able to do anything.”Mai says that it’s not only important for Asian stars to speak out against these attacks, but people of other races as well. “These are the conversations you need to be having with your kids in your house. You need to, even if you’re not Chinese. You should be explaining that this is terrible, that racism is coming out of this pandemic,” she said. “So, have that talk with your kid. Have that talk with your friends. If one of your friends says, ‘Yo, this ‘Chinese Virus’ is crazy.’ Say, ‘No. Actually, man it’s called COVID-19. It’s not the ‘Chinese Virus.” Just check them.”Earlier this month, Bill Maher, host of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” defended calling coronavirus the “Chinese Virus,” comparing it to the Spanish flu. “While people say it’s innocuous and that it came from China, it’s the undertones,” Lee said. “Certain people will grab those undertones and attach to it.” There’s also a worry that anti-Asian American sentiment could translate to a regression in Hollywood after recent success of telling Asian stories. Bong Joon Ho and the cast of “Parasite” pose at the 92nd Academy Awards in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, Feb. 9, 2020.This year, the South Korean film “Parasite” won the best picture Oscar, and Chinese-American director Lulu Wang took home the Independent Spirit Award for her film, “The Farewell.” “Crazy Rich Asians” was a hit at the box office in 2018 and last year, Sandra Oh became the first Asian woman in 39 years to win the best leading TV actress Golden Globe for “Killing Eve.” “I worry, is this going to impact our chances so soon after it feels like we finally made inroads?” Cheng said. “Is this going to regress us and put us however many steps back?” Ma says the only way to proceed is to keep putting out diverse stories.”There’s no relenting. We’ll keep moving forward. And hopefully one day, people are going to say, ‘You know what? I not only accept the differences, but I also accept the fact that we’re very much alike.'” 
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