Phil Spector, the eccentric and revolutionary music producer who transformed rock music with his “Wall of Sound” method and who later was convicted of murder, has died. He was 81.California state prison officials said he died Saturday of natural causes at a hospital.Spector was convicted of murdering actress Lana Clarkson in 2003 at his castle-like mansion on the edge of Los Angeles. After a trial in 2009, he was sentenced to 19 years to life.Clarkson, star of “Barbarian Queen” and other B-movies, was found shot to death in the foyer of Spector’s mansion in the hills overlooking Alhambra, a modest suburban town on the edge of Los Angeles.Until the actress’ death, which Spector maintained was an “accidental suicide,” few residents even knew the mansion belonged to the reclusive producer, who spent his remaining years in a prison hospital east of Stockton. Decades before, Spector had been hailed as a visionary for channeling Wagnerian ambition into the three-minute song, creating the “Wall of Sound” that merged spirited vocal harmonies with lavish orchestral arrangements to produce such pop monuments as “Da Doo Ron Ron,””Be My Baby” and “He’s a Rebel.”He was the rare self-conscious artist in rock’s early years and cultivated an image of mystery and power with his dark shades and impassive expression.Tom Wolfe declared him the “first tycoon of teen.” Bruce Springsteen and Brian Wilson openly replicated his grandiose recording techniques and wide-eyed romanticism, and John Lennon called him “the greatest record producer ever.” The secret to his sound: an overdubbed onslaught of instruments, vocals and sound effects that changed the way pop records were recorded. He called the result, “Little symphonies for the kids.”
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Month: January 2021
COVID Lockdown Turns Family Quartet Into Instagram Sensation
A family of four in Brooklyn, New York, has tried to make the most of their time together – and for some 300 days in a row they have been posting funny videos of their music rehearsals. Anna Nelson has the story of the Hochman family, narrated by Anna Rice.
Natalia Latukhina contributed.
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Virtual ‘You’ Can Now Attend Meetings with Virtual ‘Them’
After almost a year of staring at each other’s living rooms or other spaces in virtual meetings due to the coronavirus pandemic, members of a Swiss startup have come up with a new idea: sending holographic emissaries to a virtual meeting space. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.
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Jordan Among First to Vaccinate UN-Registered Refugees it Hosts
Jordan has become one of the world’s first countries to start coronavirus vaccinations for United Nations-registered refugees, according to the U.N. refugee agency and the royal palace. As part of the kingdom’s national vaccination drive that began last week, anyone living there, including refugees and asylum seekers, is entitled to receive the shot free of charge. Jordan hosts hundreds of thousands of refugees from the region’s conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya.
Some 80% of refugees sheltering from neighboring conflicts live in Jordan’s urban areas and will be vaccinated in these local health clinics. The U.N. refugee agency says it is working closely with Jordan’s Ministry of Health to administer the vaccination to those housed in the Zaatari and Azraq camps for Syrian refugees. Last Thursday, 43 Iraqis and Syrians were the first batch of refugees vaccinated in the northern towns of Irbid and Mafraq near the border with Syria, UNHRC Jordan spokesman Francesco Burt told VOA. “But there are many more who have signed up,” he said. “There’s a government portal where everybody needs to register. So far, about 250,000 people have signed up, including refugees. That really depends on the availability of doses that the Jordanian government has available. They have about 3 million doses so far. So, they plan to cover about 25 percent of the population in the next months.” The UNHCR says Jordan has included refugees in its national response plan since the beginning of the pandemic. Dominik Bartsch, the agency’s representative to Jordan, said that “reducing the spread of COVID-19 now necessitates that the most vulnerable people in our society and around the world can access vaccines, no matter where they come from.” Burt says the pandemic has greatly impacted refugee resettlements to other countries in the West. “That’s part of the problem with COVID and travel restrictions. But we have seen some resuming. It really depends on the countries’ regulations and that changes so fast. They discover new strains of the virus so that’s very much dependent on that. But some refugees have departed in the past months; not many. It all depends on the vaccination rollout and regulations in the coming months,” he said. The UNHCR says the number of refugees with the infection in Jordan has remained low at 1.6 percent compared with 3 percent among the general population. But poverty rates among the refugees have spiked by 18 percent since the outbreak last March. Both the Jordanian government and the U.N. say they need additional funding to aid more than 1.5 million refugees hosted in the country. The UNHCR Jordan is appealing for $370 million to help the refugees.
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Phil Spector, Famed Music Producer and Murderer, Dies at 81
Phil Spector, the eccentric and revolutionary music producer who transformed rock music with his “Wall of Sound” method and who later was convicted of murder, has died. He was 81.California state prison officials said he died Saturday of natural causes at a hospital.Spector was convicted of murdering actress Lana Clarkson in 2003 at his castle-like mansion on the edge of Los Angeles. After a trial in 2009, he was sentenced to 19 years to life.Clarkson, star of “Barbarian Queen” and other B-movies, was found shot to death in the foyer of Spector’s mansion in the hills overlooking Alhambra, a modest suburban town on the edge of Los Angeles.Until the actress’ death, which Spector maintained was an “accidental suicide,” few residents even knew the mansion belonged to the reclusive producer, who spent his remaining years in a prison hospital east of Stockton. Decades before, Spector had been hailed as a visionary for channeling Wagnerian ambition into the three-minute song, creating the “Wall of Sound” that merged spirited vocal harmonies with lavish orchestral arrangements to produce such pop monuments as “Da Doo Ron Ron,””Be My Baby” and “He’s a Rebel.”He was the rare self-conscious artist in rock’s early years and cultivated an image of mystery and power with his dark shades and impassive expression.Tom Wolfe declared him the “first tycoon of teen.” Bruce Springsteen and Brian Wilson openly replicated his grandiose recording techniques and wide-eyed romanticism, and John Lennon called him “the greatest record producer ever.” The secret to his sound: an overdubbed onslaught of instruments, vocals and sound effects that changed the way pop records were recorded. He called the result, “Little symphonies for the kids.”
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Los Angeles First US County to Reach 1 Million COVID Cases
John Hopkins University reported early Sunday there are 94.5 million global COVID-19 cases. The United States leads the world in the number of cases with 23.7 million infections, followed by India with 10.5 million and Brazil with 8.4 million.Los Angeles County in California has become the first U.S. county to record 1 million COVID-19 cases. The news of the number of infections is compounded by the confirmation of the appearance in the county of the highly contagious British variant of the coronavirus.Dr. Barbara Ferrer, the county’s public health director, said in a statement, “The presence of the U.K. variant in Los Angeles County is troubling, as our health care system is already severely strained with more than 7,500 people currently hospitalized.” She added that Los Angeles is also experiencing “hospitalizations and deaths, five-times what we experienced over the summer.”Norway is investigating the deaths of more than 25 elderly people who died after receiving Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. The Norwegian Medicines Agency said the affected people already had “serious basic disorders.”In southwestern England, people 80 and older have been able to get their vaccination shots to the sound of live organ music in the 800-year-old Salisbury Cathedral. The cathedral’s music director chose the works of Bach and Handel to help people relax as they waited.The Australian Open will go ahead as planned, despite the discovery of three coronavirus cases that have put 47 players into quarantine for two weeks, the tennis tournament’s director, Craig Tiley, said Saturday.Australia’s international borders are closed, but there are exceptions.For the international tennis tournament, players and their coaches flew into the country on 17 charter flights from seven nations. Each of the estimated 1,200 players, coaches, staff members and officials was required to receive a negative coronavirus test before they boarded the planes, which were kept at 25% capacity.However, two positive cases were detected in people who arrived on a flight from Los Angeles and a third case arrived on a flight from Abu Dhabi. Sylvain Bruneau, who coaches Canadian star Bianca Andreescu, said he tested positive after arriving from Abu Dhabi, but the rest of his team has tested negative.Since the pandemic began, Australia has recorded nearly 29,000 cases and just over 900 deaths, according to Hopkins. Just over 800 of those cases occurred in Victoria state during a second wave of the virus. Melbourne, the capital of Victoria, is where the Australian Open is played.Tournament organizers had hoped that charter flights, early arrivals and frequent testing would allow the Open to be played without a hitch.
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China Builds Hospital After Surge in ‘Harder to Handle’ Virus Cases
China on Saturday finished building a 1,500-room hospital for COVID-19 patients to fight a surge in infections the government said are harder to contain and that it blamed on infected people or goods from abroad.The hospital is one of six with a total of 6,500 rooms being built in Nangong, south of Beijing in Hebei province, the official Xinhua News Agency said.About 650 people are being treated in Nangong and the Hebei provincial capital, Shijiazhuang, Xinhua said. A 3,000-room hospital is under construction in Shijiazhuang.Virus clusters also have been found in Beijing and the provinces of Heilongjiang and Liaoning in the northeast and Sichuan in the southwest.The latest infections spread unusually fast, the National Health Commission said.”It is harder to handle,” a commission statement said. “Community transmission already has happened when the epidemic is found, so it is difficult to prevent.”The commission blamed the latest cases on people or goods arriving from abroad. It blamed “abnormal management” and “inadequate protection of workers” involved in imports but gave no details.”They are all imported from abroad. It was caused by entry personnel or contaminated cold chain imported goods,” said the statement.The Chinese government has suggested the disease might have originated abroad and publicized what it says is the discovery of the virus on imported food, mostly frozen fish, though foreign scientists are skeptical.Also Saturday, the city government of Beijing said travelers arriving in the Chinese capital from abroad would be required to undergo an additional week of “medical monitoring” after a 14-day quarantine but gave no details.Nationwide, the Health Commission reported 130 new confirmed cases in the 24 hours through midnight Friday. It said 90 of those were in Hebei.On Saturday, the Hebei government reported 32 additional cases since midnight, the Shanghai news outlet The Paper reported.In Shijiazhuang, authorities have finished construction of 1,000 rooms of the planned hospital, state TV said Saturday. Xinhua said all the facilities are to be completed within a week.A similar program of rapid hospital construction was launched by the ruling Communist Party at the start of the outbreak last year in the central China city of Wuhan.More than 10 million people in Shijiazhuang underwent virus tests by late Friday, Xinhua said, citing a deputy mayor, Meng Xianghong. It said 247 locally transmitted cases were found.Meanwhile, researchers sent by the World Health Organization were in Wuhan preparing to investigate the origins of the virus. The team, which arrived Thursday, was under a two-week quarantine but was scheduled to talk with Chinese experts by video link.The team’s arrival was held up for months by diplomatic wrangling that prompted a rare public complaint by the head of the WHO.That delay, and the secretive ruling party’s orders to scientists not to talk publicly about the disease, have raised questions about whether Beijing might try to block discoveries that would hurt its self-proclaimed status as a leader in the anti-virus battle.
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Despite Planning, Australian Open Players Test Positive
The Australian Open will go ahead as planned, despite the discovery of three coronavirus cases that have put 47 players into quarantine for two weeks, the tennis tournament’s director, Craig Tiley, said Saturday.Australia’s international borders are closed, but there are exceptions.For the international tennis tournament, players and their coaches flew into the country on 17 charter flights from seven nations. All of the estimated 1,200 players, coaches, staff members and officials were required to receive negative coronavirus tests before boarding their planes, which were kept at 25% capacity.However, two positive cases were detected on a flight from Los Angeles and a third case was found on a flight from Abu Dhabi. Sylvain Bruneau, who coaches Canadian star Bianca Andreescu, said he tested positive after arriving from Abu Dhabi, but the rest of his team has tested negative.Since the pandemic began, Australia has recorded nearly 29,000 cases and just more than 900 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Research Center. Just over 800 of those cases occurred in Victoria state during a second wave of the virus. Melbourne, the capital of Victoria, is where the Australian Open is played.Tournament organizers had hoped that charter flights, early arrivals and frequent testing would allow the Open to be played without a hitch.A health worker receives COVID-19 vaccine at a hospital in Kolkata, India, Jan. 16, 2021. India started inoculating health workers Saturday in what is likely the world’s largest COVID-19 vaccination campaign.Also Saturday, India began its COVID-19 vaccine campaign. Frontline workers were slated to receive the first inoculations.The campaign began after Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered a nationally televised speech. India, with 10.5 million cases, is second only to the U.S. in case numbers. It has suffered 152,000 deaths, behind the U.S. and Brazil, according to Johns Hopkins.”We are launching the world’s biggest vaccination drive, and it shows the world our capability,” Modi said.2 million markCOVID-19 deaths worldwide exceeded 2 million Friday, according to Johns Hopkins, a year after the coronavirus was first detected in Wuhan, China.“Behind this terrible number are names and faces, the smile that will now only be a memory, the seat forever empty at the dinner table, the room that echoes with the silence of a loved one,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters Friday.FILE – U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres talks with reporters in Berlin, Germany, Dec. 17, 2020.Guterres also said the death toll “has been made worse by the absence of a global coordinated effort” and added that “science has succeeded, but solidarity has failed.”The United States remains at the top of the COVID case list with the most cases and deaths. Johns Hopkins reported more than 23 million COVID-19 cases in the U.S., with a death toll rapidly approaching 400,000.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Friday that a newly detected and highly contagious variant of the coronavirus might become the dominant strain in the U.S. by March.The variant, first detected in Britain, threatens to exacerbate the coronavirus crisis in the U.S., where daily infection and hospitalization records are commonplace.The CDC said the variant apparently does not cause more severe illness but is more contagious than the current dominant strain.Oregon caseLater Friday, the Oregon Health Authority reported that an individual with “no known travel history” had tested positive for the British variant.“As we learn more about this case and the individual who tested positive for this strain, OHA continues to promote effective public health measures, including wearing masks, maintaining 6 feet of physical distance, staying home, washing your hands and avoiding gatherings and travel,” the agency said in a statement.Also Friday, some U.S. governors accused the Trump administration of deceiving states about the amount of COVID-19 vaccine they could expect to receive. Government officials said states were misguided in their expectations of vaccine amounts.FILE – Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar speaks during a news conference on COVID-19 vaccine distribution, Jan. 12, 2021, in Washington.U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told NBC News on Friday that the U.S. did not have a reserve stockpile of COVID vaccines as many had believed. However, he said he was confident that there would be enough vaccine produced to provide a second dose for people.As of Friday, the U.S. government said it had distributed over 31 million doses of the vaccine. The CDC said about 12.3 million doses had been administered.Earlier on Friday, Pfizer announced there would be a temporary impact on shipments of its vaccine to European countries in late January to early February caused by changes to its manufacturing processes to boost output.The health ministers of six EU countries — Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — said the Pfizer situation was “unacceptable.””Not only does it impact the planned vaccination schedules, it also decreases the credibility of the vaccination process,” they said in a letter to the EU Commission about the vaccine delays.In Brazil, the country’s air force flew emergency oxygen supplies Friday to the jungle state of Amazonas, which is facing a surge in the virus. Health authorities in the state said oxygen supplies had run out at some hospitals because of the high numbers of patients.
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NASA’s Boeing Moon Rocket Ground Test Is Cut Short
All four engines of the core stage of NASA’s deep space exploration rocket built by Boeing were ignited for the first time Saturday, but only briefly.Mounted in a test facility at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, the Space Launch System’s (SLS) 212-foot-tall core stage roared to life at 4:27 p.m. local time (2227 GMT) for just more than a minute — well short of the roughly four minutes engineers needed to stay on track for the rocket’s first launch this November.The engine test, the last leg of NASA’s nearly yearlong “Green Run” test campaign, was a vital step for the space agency and its top SLS contractor Boeing before a debut unmanned launch later this year under NASA’s Artemis program, the Trump administration’s push to return U.S. astronauts to the moon by 2024.It was unclear whether Boeing and NASA would have to repeat the test, a prospect that could push the debut launch into 2022.To simulate internal conditions of a real liftoff, the rocket’s four Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 engines ignited for roughly 1 minute and 15 seconds, generating 1.6 million pounds of thrust and consuming 700,000 gallons of propellants on NASA’s largest test stand, a massive facility towering 35 stories tall.The expendable super heavy-lift SLS is three years behind schedule and nearly $3 billion over budget. Critics have long argued for NASA to retire the rocket’s shuttle-era core technologies, which have launch costs of $1 billion or more per mission, in favor of newer commercial alternatives that promise lower costs.By comparison, it costs as little as $90 million to fly the massive but less powerful Falcon Heavy rocket designed and manufactured by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and some $350 million per launch for United Launch Alliance’s legacy Delta IV Heavy.While newer, more reusable rockets from both companies — SpaceX’s Starship and United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan — promise heavier lift capacity than the Falcon Heavy or Delta IV Heavy potentially at lower cost, SLS backers argue it would take two or more launches on those rockets to launch what the SLS could carry in a single mission.Reuters reported in October that President-elect Joe Biden’s space advisers aim to delay Trump’s 2024 goal, casting fresh doubts on the long-term fate of SLS just as SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin scramble to bring rival new heavy-lift capacity to market.NASA and Boeing engineers have stayed on a 10-month schedule for the Green Run “despite having significant adversity this year,” Boeing’s SLS manager John Shannon told reporters this week, citing five tropical storms and a hurricane that hit Stennis, as well as a three-month closure after some engineers tested positive for the coronavirus in March.
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Elvis Presley’s Graceland Starting Live Virtual Tours
Elvis Presley’s Graceland is now offering live online tours for fans around the world, including those who can’t travel to the Tennessee tourist attraction during the coronavirus pandemic.Graceland said the two-hour guided tours will take virtual visitors into Presley’s former Memphis home, which has been turned into a museum, and through the Meditation Garden, where he is buried. The singer and actor died in Memphis on Aug. 16, 1977.Also included in the $100 ticket is a tour of Presley’s jet and a walk through the entertainment complex, which houses exhibits and artifacts related to Presley. Viewers will be able to ask questions during the tours.Elvis Presley’s Jewelry, Clothing Sold at Graceland Auction
Jewelry, clothing and other Elvis Presley-related memorabilia have been sold at auction in Tennessee.
Elvis Presley Enterprises says the auction at The Guest House Graceland netted more than $600,000 Tuesday on what would have been his 84th birthday. The Guest House is a hotel located steps from the Graceland home, where the singer lived in Memphis.
Graceland says a red velvet shirt likely worn on stage by Presley at a 1956 show in Tupelo, Mississippi, sold for $37,500. A gold and diamond ring that…
Graceland typically hosts hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. But the tourist attraction has seen a drop in visitors during the coronavirus outbreak. Graceland was closed for several weeks last year and is now open for limited-capacity, in-person tours.Virtual tours are scheduled for Jan. 27, Feb. 25, and March 25, with more dates expected.
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Campaign Aims to Convince Americans COVID Vaccine Safe
Two years ago, in January 2019, the World Health Organization said vaccine hesitancy was among the top 10 threats to global health. That was before COVID-19 spread around the globe. VOA’s Carol Pearson tells us how doctors are working to overcome that hesitancy.
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Biden Names Geneticist for New Cabinet-level Post on Science
U.S. President-elect Joe Biden named pioneering geneticist Eric Lander as the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy on Friday, elevating the post to Cabinet-level status for first time.Lander, a Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who helped lead the Human Genome Project, will also serve in the role of presidential science adviser, Biden’s team said.”Science will always be at the forefront of my administration — and these world-renowned scientists will ensure everything we do is grounded in science, facts and the truth,” Biden said in a statement, which announced several personnel appointments to the White House science team.”Their trusted guidance will be essential as we come together to end this pandemic, bring our economy back and pursue new breakthroughs to improve the quality of life of all Americans,” Biden said.Lander, 63, will succeed meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier, who was named director by President Donald Trump in 2019 after the role was left vacant for nearly two years.Biden, who will be sworn in as president on January 20, excoriated Trump repeatedly during the election campaign for undermining faith in science, whether it was Trump’s downplaying of evidence of climate change or suggesting injecting disinfectants might treat COVID-19.Biden has pledged to increase funding in U.S. research and development, including medical research and clean energy. He also appointed former Secretary of State John Kerry as a special presidential envoy for climate.”Tremendously excited to work alongside so many bright minds to advise the President-elect and push the boundaries of what we dare to believe is possible. We need everyone,” Lander said in a tweet.The duties of OSTP, the White House’s top body for space policy formation under former President Barack Obama, could clash with the National Space Council that Trump revived in 2017.Biden’s transition team is weighing whether to disband or keep the council, a person familiar with the team’s planning said.
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WHO Calls on All Nations to Begin Vaccination Programs Within 100 Days
World Health Organization officials said Friday that they would like to see vaccination programs under way in every country in the world within the next 100 days, with frontline health workers and high-risk groups prioritized.Speaking at the agency’s regular briefing at its headquarters in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the WHO emergency committee met this week and stressed the need for equitable access to vaccines around the world.FILE – Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director- general of the World Health Organization, attends a session on the coronavirus, in Geneva, Switzerland, Oct. 5, 2020.Tedros said the committee recommended use of the WHO-organized COVAX vaccine cooperative to ensure this is happening. The WHO’s European division Thursday noted 95% of the vaccines that have been administered in the world so far have gone to 10 countries.The WHO chief, who is from Ethiopia, said he knows what it is like to come from a continent where not all health services are available. He said AIDS drugs were available only to rich nations until international health advocates put pressure on manufacturers. Likewise, he said, low-income nations did not receive H1N1 drugs until that pandemic was over.Tedros said that he went into public health to ensure this does not happen again. “It is critical this momentum on equitable vaccine rollout continues in the weeks ahead,” he said.On the subject of COVID-19 variants that have developed around the world, Tedros said the WHO emergency committee called for a global expansion of genomic sequencing and sharing of data, along with greater scientific collaboration to identify and address the new strains.Tedros said the more a virus spreads, the more it mutates, and preventing the spread of COVID-19 is the best way to stop the development of variants.
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US COVID Death Toll Rapidly Approaching 400k, Says Johns Hopkins
The numbers for the coronavirus pandemic continue upward, with more than 93 million global infections and nearly 2 million worldwide deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.The U.S. remains at the top of the list with the most cases and deaths. Johns Hopkins reports more than 23 million COVID-19 cases in the U.S., with a death toll rapidly approaching 400,000.Some states, having vaccinated their frontline workers, have opened vaccinations to older people, but have been overrun with requests. Medical facilities are on the verge of running out of vaccines. In many instances, the technology used to take the requests has crashed.President-elect Joe Biden announced a nearly $2 trillion American Rescue Plan for the pandemic and the U.S. economic crisis Thursday, with $400 billion of the package slated for the COVID-19 outbreak.“A crisis of deep human suffering is in plain sight,” Biden said.China has reported its first COVID-19 death in eight months amid a surge in the country’s northeast as a World Health Organization team arrived in Wuhan to investigate the beginning of the pandemic.China’s death toll is more than 4,600, a relatively low number resulting from the country’s stringent containment and tracing measures.China has imposed various lockdown measures on more than 20 million people in Beijing, Hebei and other areas to contain the spread of infections before the Lunar New Year holiday in February.The relatively low number of COVID-related deaths in China has raised questions about China’s tight control of information about the outbreak.The investigative team arrived Thursday after nearly a year of talks with the WHO and diplomatic disagreements between China and other countries that demanded that China allow a thorough independent investigation.Two members of the 10-member team were stopped in Singapore after tests revealed antibodies, while the rest of the team immediately entered a 14-day quarantine period in Wuhan before launching their investigation.The coronavirus was first detected in Wuhan in late 2019 and quickly spread throughout the world.Officials said Thursday that infections in the northeastern Heilongjiang province have surged to their highest levels in 10 months, nearly tripling during that period.Elsewhere in Asia, Japanese authorities have expanded a state of emergency to stop a surge in coronavirus cases.Coronavirus infections and related deaths have roughly doubled in Japan over the past month to more than 310,000, according to Johns Hopkins.The emergency was initially declared a week ago and was expanded to cover seven new regions. The restrictions are not binding, and many people have ignored requests to avoid nonessential travel, prompting the governor to voice concern about the lack of commitment to the guidelines.Indonesia reported 12,818 new infections Friday, its largest daily tally.Hungary says it plans to buy vaccines from China’s Sinopharm. If the country’s medical officials sign off on the deal, Hungary would be the first European Union country to purchase the Chinese product.
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Warming Planet, EU’s Space Plans, and Wines Return to Earth
The European Space Agency previews a big 2021 starting with a new boss. Data show last year’s temperatures tied the hottest on record, and French wines return to Earth after a year aboard the International Space Station. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us the Week in Space. Producer: Arash Arabasadi.
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Young Poet Amanda Gorman to Read at Biden Inaugural
At age 22, poet Amanda Gorman, chosen to read at the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, already has a history of writing for official occasions.
“I have kind of stumbled upon this genre. It’s been something I find a lot of emotional reward in, writing something I can make people feel touched by, even if it’s just for a night,” says Gorman. The Los Angeles resident has written for everything from a July 4 celebration featuring the Boston Pops Orchestra to the inauguration at Harvard University, her alma mater, of school president Larry Bacow.
When she reads next Wednesday, she will be continuing a tradition — for Democratic presidents — that includes such celebrated poets as Robert Frost and Maya Angelou.
The latter’s “On the Pulse of Morning,” written for the 1993 inauguration of President Bill Clinton, went on to sell more than 1 million copies when published in book form. Recent readers include poets Elizabeth Alexander and Richard Blanco, both of whom Gorman has been in touch with.
“The three of us are together in mind, body and spirit,” she says.
Gorman is the youngest inaugural poet in memory, and she has made news before. In 2014, she was named the first Youth Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, and three years later she became the country’s first National Youth Poet Laureate. She has appeared on MTV; written a tribute to Black athletes for Nike; published her first book, “The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough,” as a teenager, and has a two-book deal with Viking Children’s Books. The first work, the picture book “Change Sings,” comes out later this year.
Gorman says she was contacted late last month by the Biden inaugural committee. She has known numerous public figures, including former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and former first lady Michelle Obama, but says she will be meeting the Bidens for the first time. The Bidens, apparently, have been aware of her: Gorman says the inaugural officials told her she had been recommended by the incoming first lady, Jill Biden.
She is calling her inaugural poem “The Hill We Climb” while otherwise declining to preview any lines. Gorman says she was not given specific instructions on what to write, but was encouraged to emphasize unity and hope over “denigrating anyone” or declaring “ding, dong, the witch is dead” over the departure of President Donald Trump.
The siege last week of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters seeking to overturn the election was a challenge for keeping a positive tone, but also an inspiration. Gorman says that she has been given 5 minutes to read, and before what she described during an interview as “the Confederate insurrection” of Jan. 6 she had only written about 3 1-2 minutes worth.
The final length runs to about 6 minutes.
“That day gave me a second wave of energy to finish the poem,” says Gorman, adding that she will not refer directly to Jan. 6, but will “touch” upon it. She said last week’s events did not upend the poem she had been working on because they didn’t surprise her.
“The poem isn’t blind,” she says. “It isn’t turning your back to the evidence of discord and division.”
In other writings, Gorman has honored her ancestors, acknowledged and reveled in her own vulnerability (“Glorious in my fragmentation,” she has written) and confronted social issues. Her poem “In This Place (An American Lyric),” written for the 2017 inaugural reading of U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, condemns the racist march in Charlottesville, Virginia (“tiki torches string a ring of flame”) and holds up her art form as a force for democracy.
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Biden on COVID-19: ‘Crisis of Deep Human Suffering is in Plain Sight’
The numbers for the coronavirus pandemic continue upward, with more than 93 million global infections and nearly 2 million worldwide deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.The U.S. remains at the top of the list with the most cases and deaths. Johns Hopkins reports more than 23 million COVID-19 cases in the U.S., with a death toll rapidly approaching 400,000.Some states, having vaccinated their frontline workers, have opened vaccinations to older people, but have been overrun with requests. Medical facilities are on the verge of running out of vaccines. In many instances, the technology used to take the requests has crashed.President-elect Joe Biden announced a nearly $2 trillion American Rescue Plan for the pandemic and the U.S. economic crisis Thursday, with $400 billion of the package slated for the COVID-19 outbreak.“A crisis of deep human suffering is in plain sight,” Biden said.China has reported its first COVID-19 death in eight months amid a surge in the country’s northeast as a World Health Organization team arrived in Wuhan to investigate the beginning of the pandemic.China’s death toll is more than 4,600, a relatively low number resulting from the country’s stringent containment and tracing measures.China has imposed various lockdown measures on more than 20 million people in Beijing, Hebei and other areas to contain the spread of infections before the Lunar New Year holiday in February.The relatively low number of COVID-related deaths in China has raised questions about China’s tight control of information about the outbreak.The investigative team arrived Thursday after nearly a year of talks with the WHO and diplomatic disagreements between China and other countries that demanded that China allow a thorough independent investigation.Two members of the 10-member team were stopped in Singapore after tests revealed antibodies, while the rest of the team immediately entered a 14-day quarantine period in Wuhan before launching their investigation.The coronavirus was first detected in Wuhan in late 2019 and quickly spread throughout the world.Officials said Thursday that infections in the northeastern Heilongjiang province have surged to their highest levels in 10 months, nearly tripling during that period.Elsewhere in Asia, Japanese authorities have expanded a state of emergency to stop a surge in coronavirus cases.Coronavirus infections and related deaths have roughly doubled in Japan over the past month to more than 310,000, according to Johns Hopkins.The emergency was initially declared a week ago and was expanded to cover seven new regions. The restrictions are not binding, and many people have ignored requests to avoid nonessential travel, prompting the governor to voice concern about the lack of commitment to the guidelines.Indonesia reported 12,818 new infections Friday, its largest daily tally.Hungary says it plans to buy vaccines from China’s Sinopharm. If the country’s medical officials sign off on the deal, Hungary would be the first European Union country to purchase the Chinese product.
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A Warming Planet, EU’s Space Plans, and Wines Return to Earth
The European Space Agency previews a big 2021 starting with a new boss. Data show last year’s temperatures tied the hottest on record, and French wines return to Earth after a year aboard the International Space Station. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us the Week in Space. Producer: Arash Arabasadi.
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WHO Europe Chief: 95% of World’s Vaccines Being Administered in 10 Countries
The World Health Organization’s ((WHO)) European chief says 95% of the 23.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines that have been administered around the world so far have been given out in just 10 countries.
At a Copenhagen news briefing Thursday, WHO Europe Director Hans Kluge voiced perhaps the health agency’s most recurring theme of the COVID-19 pandemic: To effectively stop the virus, the world’s vaccines must be shared equitably, with low-income nations as well as poor ones.
In the global effort to end the pandemic, Kluge said, “collectively, we simply cannot afford to leave any country, any community behind.” The WHO and its partners in the COVAX cooperative, he added, are making “huge efforts to get the vaccines into every country; we need every country capable of contributing, donating and supporting equitable access and deployment of the vaccines, to do so.”
WHO Public Health Specialist Ihor Perehinets joined Kluge at the news conference and expressed confidence that those who need vaccines will get them.
“The scope and availability of vaccines will increase at a rapid rate in all countries and we will reach the necessary level of immunity to protect not just vulnerable groups, but the whole population of the European region and the world,” he said. “The question isn’t if this will happen, but when.”
Kluge said public health measures designed to fight the pandemic must be based on what he called humanity’s “core values:” solidarity, equity and social justice.
“It is the only way out of these uncertain times because no one is safe until everyone is safe.”
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Europe’s Populists Fearful of Social Media Restrictions
Europe’s populist leaders are outraged by the decision of U.S. social-media giants to block U.S. President Donald Trump from posting on their sites. They fear Facebook, Twitter and other major social media companies could start banning them, too.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki condemned the internet giants Tuesday. “The censorship of freedom of speech, the domain of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, is returning today in the form of a new, commercial mechanism fighting against those who think differently,” he wrote on Facebook.
Poland’s ruling populist Law and Justice Party (PiS) already has introduced legislation aimed at limiting the power of social media giants to remove content or ban users.
The draft law was proposed after Twitter started flagging as misleading content tweets by Trump and supporters disputing the U.S. election result. PiS lawmakers say there shouldn’t be any censorship by social media companies or curtailment of speech because debate is the essence of democracy.
Opposition critics say the proposed measure sits oddly with the ruling party’s efforts to muzzle the national media and to turn the public broadcaster into a propaganda vehicle. Those moves are currently being investigated by the European Union, which has accused the PiS government of rolling back democratic norms.
The Polish government also has vowed to bring foreign-owned media outlets in the country under Polish control, which critics fear means turning them into government propaganda outlets.
Under the draft law, if content is removed, a social media company would have 24 hours to respond to a complaint from a user and any decision could be appealed to a newly created special court.
Populist leaders aren’t alone in denouncing the moves by social media giants. Across Europe there is unease regardless of political affiliation at censorship by social media giants and their expulsion of Trump, a response to last week’s bid to derail the certification of the U.S. election results by pro-Trump agitators storming the U.S. Capitol. Twitter cited violations of its civic integrity policies to block Trump.
Facebook is blocking and deleting content that uses the phrase “stop the steal,” which refers to false claims by Trump supporters of election fraud. And Twitter says it has suspended more than 70,000 accounts of adherents of the QAnon conspiracy, who believe Trump is waging a secret war against elite Satan-worshipping pedophiles in government, business and the media.FILE – A figure representing hate speech on Facebook is seen featured during a carnival parade in Duesseldorf, Germany, Feb. 24, 2020.German Chancellor Angela Merkel has expressed her concerns about the actions of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, saying they are a step too far.
“The right to freedom of opinion is of fundamental importance,” her spokesperson Steffen Seibert told reporters this week. But campaigns are mounting in Germany and in other European countries for social media giants to block hate speech, populist misinformation and fake news from their sites, regardless of authorship.
Additionally, political pressure is mounting for a tightening of regulatory restrictions that some European governments have already introduced aimed at policing social media.
When voicing concern about the social media blocking of Trump, Merkel’s spokesperson cited Germany’s Network Enforcement Act, which was approved in 2018 and requires social media platforms to remove potentially illegal material within 24 hours of being told to do so, or face fines of up to $60 million.
Seibert said free speech should only be restricted in line “with the laws and within a framework defined by the legislature, not by the decision of the management of social media platforms.”
But some German lawmakers want the law toughened and are also urging social media companies to be more forward-leaning in efforts to block what they see as dangerous speech. German Social Democrat lawmaker Helge Lindh told broadcaster Deutsche Welle that Germany is “not doing enough,” saying more restrictions are needed.
The German parliament approved legislation last year that would ensure prosecution for those perpetrating hate or for inciting it online. Under the legislation, social media companies would have been obliged to report hate comments to the police and identify the online authors.
Final passage of the legislation was halted, though, because of objections raised by the country’s Constitutional Court, which ruled parts of the new legislation were in conflict with data protection laws. The court called for adjustments that are scheduled to be debated this month by German lawmakers.
Populist politicians stand to lose more from the renewed focus on misinformation on the internet, whether the outcome from the new focus is more stringent state regulations or just social media giants being more restrictive in Europe.
Populists tend to be able to galvanize support using social media more than mainstream politicians and parties have managed, says Ralph Schroeder, an academic at the Oxford Internet Institute, part of Britain’s University of Oxford.
“They stand to lose most along with other politicians, on the left and the right and beyond, that seek a politics that is anti-establishment and exclusionary toward outsiders,” he told VOA. “The reason is that social media gives them a means to express ideas that cannot be expressed in traditional news media or in traditional party affiliations.”
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Cars, Phones and TVs Dazzle at Big US Tech Show, Despite Pandemic
More than 150,000 people from 154 countries are at the U.S. Consumer Electronics Show – all online – this week. Michelle Quinn reports.
Contributors: Elizabeth Lee, Julie Taboh
Video editor: Matt Dibble
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New Research Suggests Digestive Tract Bacteria Affect Coronavirus Severity
A new study indicates the kind of bacteria found in a person’s digestive tract can affect the severity of coronavirus infections and the body’s immune response. The study, conducted by researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and published Monday in the medical journal Gut, shows there is growing evidence that the health of the human gastrointestinal tract, or gut, has direct influence on the immune system and hence its response to infections like the coronavirus.The researchers examined 100 patients who had tested positive and divided them by the severity of their cases. Through blood and stool testing, the researchers compared the microbiome in their tracts with patients without coronavirus infections.Netherlands Begins Mass Testing to Isolate COVID-19 Variant Testing center set up after new strain found in 30 schoolchildren Across the board, the microbiome makeup differed significantly between patients with and without COVID-19. Dr. Siew Ng, one of the authors of the study, said they found “COVID-19 patients lack certain good bacteria known to regulate our immune system.” The presence of an abnormal assortment of gut bacteria, or dysbiosis, can persist after the virus is gone and prolong symptoms. COVID-19 is the illness caused by the coronavirus.Ng said her team developed an oral formula of “good” bacteria — known as probiotics — which they gave to the patients. The study showed that more COVID-19 patients who received the probiotics “achieved complete symptom resolution,” and developed neutralizing antibodies to the virus.Other researchers who have reviewed the research say more study is needed to determine whether the altered gut bacteria found in the COVID-19 patients is an effect of the disease or was already present in the patients and was an underlying cause of the disease development.
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