Magician Roy Horn Of Siegfried & Roy Has Died Of The Coronavirus At 75

Horn was severely injured in an attack by one of his tigers in 2003.

David MackBuzzFeed News Reporter  May 8, 2020

Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images Siegfried & Roy in the 1970s.

Roy Horn — one half of the tiger-toting and extravagant German magic duo Siegfried & Roy, who became world-famous for their Las Vegas nightlife show — died Friday of the coronavirus. He was 75.

Horn died in the Mountain View Hospital in Las Vegas, according to a media statement to several news outlets.

“Today, the world has lost one of the greats of magic, but I have lost my best friend,” Siegfried Fischbacher said in the statement. “From the moment we met, I knew Roy and I, together, would change the world. There could be no Siegfried without Roy, and no Roy without Siegfried."

Responding to Horn's death, magician David Copperfield described him as "a wonderful artist, a legend."

"Roy gave so much to entertainment and our community," he tweeted.


John Locher / AP
Siegfried Fischbacher, left, with Roy Horn in 2014, some nine years after he was attacked by one of their tigers.

Horn was born in Germany in 1944 as Allied bombs rained down toward the end of World War II. His mother, Johanna, left her three other children in a basement in order to cycle through the carnage to her sister's place to give birth, according to the magicians' website biography.

At a young age, he befriended his family dog, Hexe, while his stepfather struggled with alcoholism and the family sank into post-war poverty.

“I was a prince and Hexe was my unicorn,” Horn said. “We ran, we flew; out there we knew no boundaries—we were free.”

Sensing his affinity with animals, his mother's friends organized for Horn's birthday for him to have access to a zoo where they served as patrons. It was there that Horn grew an affinity to the zoo's tiger and cheetah, beginning his love for wild cats.

While working as a waiter on a cruise ship in the late 1950s, Horn met Fischbacher, who had been working performing magic shows, and teased him that his show needed scarier animals to be more entertaining.

It was the beginning of a multi-decade partnership that saw them tour first the seas, then Europe, then North America, and the world with their levitating tigers and vanishing elephants.

A 1989 New York Times piece on the pair described their show as "a sorcerer's extravaganza, a pageant of Las Vegas glitter and circus glitz."

The performance involved 55 cast members, 24 big cats, an elephant, a python, and an understudy python "just in case."

The pair established a decades-long residency in Las Vegas and were even parodied on The Simpsons.



In 2003, Horn was attacked by a 600-pound white tiger during a show at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas. The animal mauled his neck and dragged him offstage, as crew members tried desperately to free him. But Horn was left partially paralyzed and permanently disfigured.

In 2009, after some 5,000 shows over 13 years, the pair performed one final farewell Las Vegas performance.

''We haven't done too badly for a couple of immigrants,'' Roy told the New York Times in 1989 as they performed in the city. ''When two guys come from Germany with absolutely nothing, it's a great thing to have your name in lights at the Radio City Music Hall, don't you think?''

David Mack is a deputy director of breaking news for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.
Contact David Mack 

Ukrainian Prosecutors Drafted Documents To Charge Paul Manafort With Corruption. Then The Case Disappeared.

Manafort and a former Obama White House counsel were on the brink of being charged for aiding the embezzlement of more than $1 million in Ukraine. And then they weren't.

Posted on May 8, 2020, at 1:28 p.m. ET

Timothy A. Clary / Getty Images
President Donald Trump's onetime campaign manager Paul Manafort arrives at Manhattan Supreme Court, June 27, 2019.

KYIV, Ukraine — A little over a year ago, in a pre-coronavirus pandemic world, Paul Manafort was convicted in the US of financial fraud, witness tampering, and lobbying crimes related to his work in Ukraine, and sentenced to seven and a half years in prison.

The charges against him stemmed from, but were not directly related to, former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russia’s 2016 election interference, which came to a close shortly after Manafort’s sentencing.

Many wondered at the time why prosecutors in Kyiv, ground zero for the crimes that landed Manafort behind bars in the US, had not charged Donald Trump’s former campaign chair with crimes in Ukraine.

It wasn’t for lack of trying.

As BuzzFeed News has reported, Ukrainian prosecutors made several unsuccessful attempts to get US law enforcement officials to turn over evidence from Manafort or make him available for an interview, as they pursued three separate corruption investigations in Kyiv in which he was a “key witness.”

But as the probes went on, Manafort quickly became more than just a witness in one case: he became a suspect.

BuzzFeed News can now reveal that in May 2019, as Manafort settled into his US prison cell, a special investigations unit inside the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office was preparing to wrap up a four-year-long investigation, drafting an indictment for him as well as for Greg Craig, a former Obama White House counsel and partner at the big-shot law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

The charge: aiding in the embezzlement of state funds.

“The managing partner of Skadden Law Firm Gregory B. Craig and Paul Manafort intentionally participated in the misappropriation of the funds from the State Budget of Ukraine totaling $1,075,381.41 (8,595,523.61 Ukrainian hryvnias and more than 600 times the tax-free minimum of citizens’ salaries), causing damage to the state,” reads the draft indictment for the two US citizens obtained by BuzzFeed News.

The document, which has never before been reported and would have been the first criminal charge brought against Manafort abroad, details in more than 4,000 words how and when Manafort and Craig allegedly facilitated the embezzlement of more than $1 million in Ukrainian state funds.

The draft indictment’s authenticity was confirmed to BuzzFeed News by Serhiy Gorbatyuk, the former top Ukrainian prosecutor for special investigations who led the effort to charge Manafort and Craig, and a second prosecutor involved in the case who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he continues to work in the prosecutor general’s office (PGO) and feared retribution for sharing details about the case with reporters.

“In the course of the investigation, enough data was obtained to decide about pursuing criminal prosecution, including that of [Manafort and Craig],” Gorbatyuk told BuzzFeed News.

Craig and Skadden were paid nearly $1.1 million in 2011 by Ukraine’s justice ministry, which at the time was headed by Yanukovych ally Oleksandr Lavrynovych. The firm’s task was to produce a report that justified the controversial imprisonment of the politician Yulia Tymoshenko, who had been jailed for allegedly brokering an unfavorable gas deal with Russia when she was Ukraine’s prime minister. (Tymoshenko’s sentence was viewed by much of the international community as political persecution by the Yanukovych regime. She was released in February 2014 and later reelected to Parliament.)


Win Mcnamee / Getty Images
Gregory Craig (left), former White House counsel to Barack Obama, arrives at federal court in Washington, DC, Sept. 3, 2019 .

Manafort was guiding Ukraine’s efforts to improve its international image at the time and helped connect Craig and Skadden with the Yanukovych government. Manafort had worked for Yanukovych and his Russia-aligned Party of Regions for the better part of a decade.

In June 2017, Skadden refunded $567,000 to the Ukrainian government — roughly half of the total it was paid by the Yanukovych government for the report, according to the Kyiv Post. Skadden told the New York Times that it returned the money because it had been placed “in escrow for future work” that never took place.

Manafort, who is currently serving out his sentence in a Pennsylvania prison, has sought early release because of the threat that the novel coronavirus poses to his health. He could not be reached through his lawyer for comment

Craig, who served as White House counsel for President Barack Obama, was charged in April 2019 with lying to the justice department about his role in the Tymoshenko saga and work for Manafort on behalf of the Yanukovych government, but he was acquitted by a jury in September. Reached by BuzzFeed News, Craig’s attorneys declined to provide comment for this story.

For Gorbatyuk and his team of prosecutors taking on many of the highest-profile cases in the country, seeing a portion of the money returned to Ukraine wasn’t enough. They were bent on pursuing a case against Manafort and Craig and getting back every penny.

After four years of investigating the case, a final push to possibly indict the men came at a particularly critical moment for Ukraine. It was May 2019, and the presidential office was changing hands in Kyiv.

The incoming president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and his team were well aware of the importance of keeping the US–Ukraine relationship strong and wary of offending Trump, who described Ukraine to his envoy at the time as being full of “terrible people” who “tried to take me down.” Trump would also be the one to give final approval for $391.5 million in US military aid to Ukraine that the country needed to continue the fight against Russia-backed separatists in its war-torn eastern regions. That assistance package was the one at the center of the Trump impeachment saga that would be set off by a phone call between the US president and Ukraine’s Zelensky in July — a call in which Zelensky said he was about to appoint a new prosecutor general who would be “100% my person.”

Around that time in July, Gorbatyuk said the criminal charges for Manafort and Craig were nearly ready but one of prosecutors decided to hold off because he wanted to send one more request for assistance to the US Department of Justice (DOJ). A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment, saying the department does not publicly speak about communications with foreign governments on investigative matters, including confirming or denying the very existence of such communications.

That decision to hold off may have been the thing that ultimately kept Manafort and Craig from being charged in Ukraine.

In August, Zelensky appointed Ruslan Riaboshapka as Ukraine’s new prosecutor general. Riaboshapka was an anti-corruption expert who vowed to clean up a dirty justice system and deliver high-profile corruption convictions.

“Riaboshapka came on. And in September, I reported to him about the prospects for all our cases, and in particular, in this case, I reported that we had actually prepared a draft notice of suspicion,” Gorbatyuk said, describing the Manafort and Craig indictment document.

But Gorbatyuk’s optimism was quickly dashed when Riaboshapka transferred to other departments the cases being pursued by his unit, which had been created to investigate high crimes committed during the 2014 Maidan revolution and corruption offenses committed by top officials during the Yanukovych presidency.

“He [Riaboshapka] destroyed our unit,” Gorbatyuk said. “I assume that it was done to intervene and destroy most of the investigations that we were conducting.” He said that included the case involving Manafort and Craig but he did not believe that that case was the sole reason behind the moves.

Riaboshapka told BuzzFeed News in an interview that he did not remember discussing an indictment being drafted for Manafort and Craig. And he said that Gorbatyuk’s unit was “not disbanded, it was reorganized and those people who wanted to work wrote a statement and were recertified [and] remain at work.”

Riaboshapka himself was fired from his post in March after falling out with Zelensky. Critics in Zelensky’s ruling party in Parliament said the prosecutor failed to make sufficient progress in prosecuting corrupt officials.

On Thursday, Manafort’s name was in the news in the US once again. The House intelligence committee released thousands of documents relating to the Russia investigation. In them, Hope Hicks, a Trump adviser, expressed concern that Manafort had been stealing from the Trump campaign.

“Was there ever any concern about Mr. Manafort stealing money from the Trump campaign," Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell asked. “Yes,” Hicks replied, adding that she had discussed it with several people, including Trump himself.

As of the time of publication, no charges had been filed against Manafort and Craig in Ukraine, and it is not known whether the indictment will ever be filed. For now, the case is sitting amid a pile of dozens of other corruption cases on a desk somewhere inside the national anti-corruption bureau of Ukraine. Prosecutors there did not respond to requests for comment.

Tanya Kozyreva is an investigative correspondent for BuzzFeed News based in Kiev, Ukraine.
Contact Tanya Kozyreva

Christopher Miller is a Kyiv-based American journalist and editor.

Contact Christopher Miller 

Costco Meatpacking Worker: "We’re All Worried About Getting Sick"

As concerns about a meat shortage mount, a meatpacking worker discusses her fear of getting the coronavirus while still needing to work.

Melissa Segura BuzzFeed News Reporter May 8, 2020

Nati Harnik / AP
Workers process chickens at the Lincoln Premium Poultry plant in Fremont, Nebraska, in 2019.

Costco announced Monday that it would be limiting the amount of meat and poultry each customer would be allowed to purchase because supplies had been affected by coronavirus outbreaks at meatpacking plants. On that same day, the first worker at one of Costco’s poultry producers, Lincoln Premium Poultry, died of COVID-19. The worker was one of 28 diagnosed at the Fremont, Nebraska, plant, which employs 1,100 workers, most of them immigrants.

With some plants closing because of the spread of the coronavirus, President Donald Trump has classified meat processing as critical infrastructure in a move to keep plants open and safeguard the nation’s food supply. The CDC reported nearly 5,000 meatpacking workers in 115 facilities across the country tested positive in April. At least 20 have died.

BuzzFeed News spoke with an employee of the Fremont plant. She asked that we not use her name for fear of retaliation by the company; BuzzFeed verified she worked for the company by checking her employee identification.

The employee arrived in the United States from Central America more than 10 years ago. She is an unauthorized immigrant who has mostly worked in meatpacking plants since arriving in the US. BuzzFeed News talked with her about what it’s like going to work in one of the virus’s hot spots, what she and her colleagues are talking about, and why she keeps showing up despite the dangers.

Below is an edited transcript of that conversation, translated from Spanish to English.

I know about 18 of the people who have tested positive for the coronavirus in the Lincoln Premium Poultry plant where I work.

They say the virus feels like death. That it brings about this deep cold in your body. Everyone says stay in your house, but if I stay in my house, how am I going to survive?

It’s a question without an answer.

I don’t feel safe going to work. Before the virus, I used to get to work early to start my 5 a.m. shift. Now I struggle to get to the plant. I worry about getting sick and bringing the virus home to my three children.

Fortunately I work in an area where we have a good amount of space, not like the place where they kill the chickens. In that area, they’re practically on top of one another. I stand at one of three conveyor belts where 120 chickens pass per minute. They’re mostly clean by the time they get to me, without their feathers. I look for the chickens that look purple or still have feathers and take them off of the belt. I make $16 per hour doing that. Sometimes if someone is missing, I’ll go to the area where they cut the chickens’ necks.

I first heard of the outbreak at Lincoln from Facebook. There were posts from the City of Fremont and from the media about the virus. Then when five people had been diagnosed with the virus, we had small meetings where supervisors told us to make an extra effort not to get too close to one another, not to touch our faces. The company put up dividers to separate us at the round tables in the lunchroom. They say they’re sanitizing the plant in the early morning hours, but people continue being contagious.

At Lincoln Premium Poultry, the majority of us are Latinos. For those of us who are unauthorized immigrants, in reality, there are very few jobs we can do. The owner of the plant smiles and says, “Without Latinos this plant wouldn’t exist.” That’s something [Trump] doesn’t value — the help that Latinos provide. We talk about the government a lot at the plant. Trump declared that meatpacking plants had to stay open; he doesn’t think of the workers, right? It’s when you go to the store that you see the importance of what we do. If we didn’t go to work, you wouldn’t have those products in the store.


Icon Sportswire / Getty Images

Chicken refrigerator cases inside a Costco Wholesale Club on March 13 in East Hanover, New Jersey.

But it’s really hurtful, for example, that I’ve been in the United States for more than 10 years and I’ve paid all my taxes and the government doesn’t recognize it. The government is giving money to a lot of people but as an unauthorized immigrant, I don’t qualify for anything.

We’re all worried about getting sick. Last week, I wasn’t feeling well and had to go to get tested. I had to stay home from work until the coronavirus test came back. I didn’t have the coronavirus.

Everyone is asking one another, “Do you think you’ll keep coming to work?” No one wants to fall behind on their bills. There are lots of people working because of that.

Since the virus, the company realizes that we’re falling behind on production. Now they’re offering us overtime. Logically, the more time we spend at work, the more likely we are to get sick. A lot of people in the plant are saying, if the coronavirus kills us, who are the ones who are going to die of hunger?

Response from Lincoln Premium Poultry: Spokesperson Jessica Kolterman listed a variety of measures to keep workers healthy and assist those who are sick. She said the company provides masks to employees and hand sanitizer in designated areas of the plant. In other areas, 20-second handwashing is required. Plant doors are propped open in areas to assist with ventilation but are not opened in zones where doing so would compromise food safety or violate regulations. Kolterman said that Lincoln provides sick pay, that those employees who test positive for the coronavirus are paid, and that days missed from work do not count against the sick leave that works accrue. The company will pay a $2-per-hour bonus in May for those who have worked during the pandemic. Additionally, the company says it provides housing and meals for workers who are ill or who are healthy but don’t want to risk infecting members of their households.

Melissa Segura is an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New Mexico. Melissa Segura at melissa.segura@buzzfeed.com.

Mass unemployment is a failure of capitalism

May 8, 2020 By Richard Wolff, Independent Media Institute  - Commentary

The difficulties caused to workers by record unemployment during the pandemic are a product of capitalism. Most of the time, employers decide to hire or fire workers depending on which choice maximizes employers’ profits. Profit, not the full employment of workers nor of means of production, is “the bottom line” of capitalism and thus of capitalists. That is how the system works. Capitalists are rewarded when their profits are high and punished when they are not. It’s nothing personal; it’s just business.

Unemployment is a choice mostly made by employers. In many cases of unemployment, employers had the option not to fire employees. They could have kept all employed but reduced their hours or days or else rotated off-work times among employees. Employers can choose to retain idled employees on payrolls and suffer losses they hope will be temporary.

However, unemployment is received almost everywhere and by almost all as a negative, unwanted experience. Workers want jobs. Employers want employees producing profitable output. Governments want the tax revenues that flow from employees and employers actively collaborating.

So why has the capitalist system periodically produced economic downturns wherever it has settled across the last three centuries? They have happened, on average, every four to seven years. The United States has had three crashes so far this century: “dot-com” in 2000; “sub-prime mortgage” in 2008; and now “coronavirus” in 2020. Thus the United States conforms to capitalism’s “norm.” Capitalists do not want unemployment, but they regularly generate it. It is a basic contradiction of their system.

There are good reasons why capitalism produces and reproduces unemployment over time. It draws benefits (as well as suffers losses) from doing so. Reproducing a “reserve army of the unemployed” enables periodic upsurges in capital investment to draw more employees without driving up wages. Rising wages—and thus falling profits—would accompany investment surges if all workers were already fully employed before such surges. Unemployment also disciplines the working class. The unemployed, often desperate to get jobs, give employers the opportunity to replace existing employees with unemployed candidates willing to work for less. Unemployment thus operates as a downward pressure on wages and salaries and thereby a boost for profits. In short, capitalism both wants and does not want unemployment; it expresses this tension by periodically adding to and drawing down a reserve army of the unemployed that it continually maintains.

That reserve army exposes a stark reality that no ideological gloss ever fully erases. While unemployment serves capitalism, it does not well serve society. That key difference is most glaringly in evidence when unemployment is very high, as it is today. Consider that today’s many unemployed millions continue much of their consumption while ceasing much of their production. While they continue to take their means of consumption from socially produced wealth, they no longer produce nor thereby add to social wealth as they did when employed.

Unemployment thus entails wealth redistribution. Part of the wealth produced by those who are still employed must be redistributed away from them and to the unemployed. Taxes accomplish that redistribution publicly. Employees and employers, labor and capital struggle over whose taxes will fund the consumption of the unemployed. Such redistribution struggles can be and often are bitter and socially divisive. In the private sphere of households, portions of the incomes and wealth of the employed likewise get redistributed to enable consumption by the unemployed: spouses share, as do parents and children, relatives, friends, and neighbors. Working classes always redistribute their incomes and wealth to cope with the unemployment capitalism so regularly imposes on them. Such redistributions typically cause or aggravate many tensions and conflicts within the working class.

Many public and private redistribution struggles could be avoided if, for example, public re-employment replaced private unemployment. If the state became the employer of last resort, those fired by private employers could immediately be rehired by the state to do socially useful work. Governments would stop paying unemployment benefits and instead pay wages to the re-employed, obtain in return real goods and services, and distribute them to the public. The 1930s New Deal did exactly that for millions fired by private employers. A similar alternative to private capitalist employment and unemployment (but not part of the New Deal) would be to organize the unemployed into worker co-op enterprises performing socially useful work on contract with the government.

This last alternative is the best because it could develop a new worker-co-op sector of the U.S. economy. That would provide the U.S. public with direct experience in comparing the capitalist with the worker-co-op sector in terms of working conditions, product quality and price, civic responsibility, etc. On that concrete, empirical basis, societies could offer people a real, democratic choice as to what mix of capitalist and worker-co-op sectors of the economy they prefer.

Richard D. Wolff is professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, in New York. Wolff’s weekly show, “Economic Update,” is syndicated by more than 100 radio stations and goes to 55 million TV receivers via Free Speech TV. His two recent books with Democracy at Work are Understanding Marxism and Understanding Socialism, both available at democracyatwork.info.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Trump’s refusal to wear a mask isn’t just vanity — it’s a manifestation of his fascism
May 9, 2020By Amanda Marcotte, Salon- Commentary

Despite knowing full well the furor that Vice President Mike Pence raised by not wearing a mask during a Mayo Clinic visit in late April, Donald Trump refused to wear a mask when visiting Honeywell factory in Arizona earlier this week — a factory that makes masks. This wasn’t just a symbolic nose-thumbing at people’s reasonable desire to be safe. Trump and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows were putting the lives of Honeywell employees in danger.

After all, masks are not primarily meant to protect the mask-wearer, but to protect others, since there’s clear evidence that people who are infected but have no symptoms can spread the coronavirus. Trump is regularly exposed to the virus, in fact — one of his personal valets just tested positive — and is a prime candidate to be such a carrier.

Of course Trump doesn’t care about other people, only his ego and his appearance. Reporting from the Associated Press confirms this, as a Thursday article explained Trump told advisers that wearing a mask would “send the wrong message.

“The president said doing so would make it seem like he is preoccupied with health instead of focused on reopening the nation’s economy,” the AP reporters write.

This is another example of Trump’s false dichotomy between saving the economy and fighting the virus. After all, the economy isn’t going to recover if millions are sick and people are afraid to leave their houses — and early evidence from the states that have tried to “reopen” their economies makes that clear. But there’s also good reason to believe that the Trump-Pence antipathy to wearing masks signals to something deeper and darker.

Even before Trump started to make a big show out of not wearing a mask, it was common, at least in my South Philadelphia neighborhood, to see MAGA-hat-clad white men walking around without masks, delivering contemptuous sneers to the rest of us suckers who are covering our noses and mouths. Fox News host Laura Ingraham, in her friendly competition with fellow host Tucker Carlson to see who can be the most obnoxious, has started to demonize mask-wearing by claiming that public health advisories are somehow a conspiracy to sow “fear and intimidation.”

(Considering that mask-wearing to protect others took off in Asia long before Trump even ran for president, Ingraham’s conspiracy theory doesn’t possess even the most remote logical consistency.)

Between Trump and Fox News, the practice of mask-wearing is swiftly becoming another culture-war flashpoint. But the question is why. After all, masks seem to make people feel more comfortable with going out in public and going to work, and those are both things Trump dearly wants Americans to return to doing.

But Trump and his most ardent supporters seem almost physically repulsed at the very idea of wearing a mask. One Republican Ohio state legislator even claimed that since “we are all created in the image and likeness of God,” covering the face with a mask is an affront to God’s creation. (Many have noted that this same argument could be made against the practice of wearing pants.)

Ultimately, the rejection of mask-wearing really goes back to the fact that Trump, Ingraham and their most faithful followers are guided by fascist impulse, even when they don’t or can’t articulate a fully fleshed-out fascist ideology. Above all other things, the fascist personality is one that rejects even the possibility of sickness. To wear a mask is to publicly admit that one’s body is suspectible to illness, which is coded as “weak” and therefore unacceptable.

Natascha Strobl, an Austrian political scientist who is an expert in far-right organizing and rhetoric, had an important English-language Twitter thread in early April about why the far right was embracing the view that the coronavirus should simply be allowed to run wild. From the beginning, this has been the view Trump clearly prefers on an emotional level and has pushed federal policy toward all along. While Strobl didn’t mention masks, her observations also help explain why these same folks are repulsed by mask-wearing.

The fascist narrative, Strobl explained, is that “men aren’t men anymore, but nervous, urban, overly intellectualized and (here it comes) sickly weaklings.

“Weakness is never worthy of protection and has to be cast out. This is fascism,” she continues. The fascist believes that those viewed as “weak” have an obligation to die “without protest for the greater good” and that if “they don’t do it, they are weak and the weak drag everyone else down and therefore must be done away with.”

To wear a mask, in other words, indicates a belief that your personal body can become infected. A fascist-minded person like Trump cannot admit such a thing, either because he genuinely believes he is too strong to be affected by the virus or because he fears looking weak in public. Just as important, wearing a mask indicates care and concern for others, especially those who are high-risk. But the fascist-minded person doesn’t want to protect those viewed as “weak” — in fact, those people are expected to die so as not to be a burden on others. As Strobl points out, the far right believes that by becoming seriously ill or dying in service to some warped conception of the greater good, the “weak” can prove themselves strong through their sacrifice.

Trump hasn’t exactly concealed his impulse to see the coronavirus as a force that culls the herd of its weakest members, or to perceive that the “weak” can be redeemed through this morbid, sadistic ritual sacrifice. This week, he repeatedly insisted that Americans should think of themselves as “warriors” who bravely go forth and face the virus for the cause of, well, his re-election, which he is convinced depends on reopening the economy without bothering with the testing protocols, contact tracing and other precautions that could make doing so both safe and feasible.

(Even if people are willing to die for a noble cause, it’s worth pausing here and observing gently that Donald Trump’s re-election campaign is not such a cause.)

Moreover, Trump has always made a point of presenting himself as the fascist version of the Übermensch, even as he is likely too dim to know that word or what it signifies. Trump is forever bragging about his alleged “good genes,” which he often invokes as being so powerful as to render him a genius-level expert in any number of subjects, from medicine to economics to military strategy, without any need to do anything as weak and effeminate as learning stuff. Wearing a mask would go against his effort to present himself as possessing near-supernatural genetic powers to repel the sorts of viruses with which mere mortals must contend.

Of course, Trump doesn’t actually believe his own lies on this subject (nor on many others). As NBC News has reported, when Trump found out that a White House valet had the coronavirus, he became “lava level mad” at his staff and accused them of not doing enough to protect him. His public bravado is, as with all things Trump, a thin mask plastered over a deep well of insecurity. He may want you to believe his immune system is superhuman, but he knows full well that his obese and shattered 73-year-old physique puts him in the category of the high-risk people he and his fellow Republicans are treating as weaklings better off culled from the herd.

Unfortunately, because face masks have become such a potent symbol to far-right culture warriors of values they reject, such as equality and compassion, we can only expect the symbolic clash over masks to escalate. More and more conservatives, especially men, will try to prove their superior masculine strength and power by refusing to wear them. This is childish, selfish and entirely counterproductive, of course. What else can we expect from Trump and his followers, who are the real weaklings in this unhappy social equation?

‘We are invisible’: Greece’s artists struggle for state aid amid Covid-19 pandemic



Issued on: 09/05/2020

Musicians wearing face masks gather around the White Tower during a protest by workers in the music industry in demand of state aid to mitigate financial losses due to the Covid-19 pandemic in Thessaloniki, Greece on May 7, 2020. © Murad Sezer, REUTERS
Text by:NEWS WIRES

Despite being one of Greece's best-known folk singers, Natassa Bofiliou is among thousands of artists worried about the economic impact of coronavirus lockdowns that have only just begun to be eased.

In a country where art is widely seen as a pastime, and performers have long struggled to secure steady pay and royalties, the closure of theatres and cinemas, and the cancellation of summer festivals has wrought havoc.

Having lived through Greece's 10-year economic crisis, 37-year-old Bofiliou is no stranger to job insecurity.

"For us, there is no return to normality," she told AFP. "The state has never really seriously concerned itself with the problems of artists, who often need to have a second job to survive."

Unpaid or uninsured work is a reality for many in the profession, she notes.

With restaurants and hotels reopening in June, officials are now trying to salvage some of the season.

Greece's premier summer event, the annual Athens-Epidaurus festival, is set to open in mid-July, six weeks later than scheduled.

And organisers in Kalamata are "optimistic" that the international dance festival will begin on July 16 as scheduled.

The Thessaloniki documentary festival, originally to be held in March, will now be held online in late May.

The Greek culture ministry on Thursday announced a series of "corrective" measures to support artists after their apparent omission from income benefits sparked an outcry from opposition parties, and even Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis.

"I sincerely regret having lived to see that deeply obscurantist views still exist... in a civilised country, artists should be in the front row of appreciation," Theodorakis, the 94-year-old "Zorba the Greek" composer said in a statement last month.

When news broke in April that artists had been excluded from an 800-euro ($865) emergency stipend arranged by the state for furloughed employees, their representatives hit the streets in a symbolic protest outside the ministry of finance.

"Unfortunately, we are invisible to the government and culture ministry," said Costas Kehayoglou, head of the federation of Greek performers.

'People behind the puppets'

On Thursday, around 2,000 actors, musicians, puppeteers and other artists gathered outside the Greek parliament to protest the snub.

Some of the banners they carried read "Art's not dead", "We are not beggars" and "There are people behind the puppets".

Hours earlier, Culture Minister Lina Mendoni had announced that artists would be included in a 100-million-euro support fund, including 70 million specifically for staff.

"Our aim is to keep culture active... we don't want a scene without culture because of the pandemic," she told a news teleconference.

The performers' federation later called the measures "inadequate", noting that "those excluded are more than those included".

"Our civilisation is in peril," renowned singer Dimitra Galani told Athens municipal radio on Friday.

"Just look at how France and other European countries protect their national (cultural) product," she said.





Elise Jalladeau, director general of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, warns that Greece's audiovisual industry will carry the effects of the shutdown for some time.

"The sector is more fragile than in other European countries where there is more structure, especially as regards the protection of artists' (intellectual) rights," she told AFP.

Greek artists have long struggled to secure decent pay for their work.

The Greek intellectual property agency collapsed in 2018 in a mismanagement scandal, owing millions in unpaid royalties, and a new structure has yet to take hold.

(AFP)

Africa's forgotten World War II veteransMore than a million African soldiers served in colonial armies in World War II. Many veterans experienced prejudice during the war and little gratitude or compensation for their services afterwards.


This Senegalese soldier served with the French army in 1942


May 8, 1945, marks the 75th anniversary of the surrender of the German armed forces and the end of the Second World War in Europe.

Japan, a German ally, continued fighting and only conceded defeat in August 1945 when the Americans dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

More than a million Africans served as combatants as well as war workers and carriers in World War II for the colonial powers - more than half enlisted by Britain with the rest serving France and Belgium.

Some served in Africa or Europe; others fought on battlegrounds in the Middle East or as far afield as India, Myanmar and the Pacific Islands. Many were wounded or killed.

Their services have been rarely acknowledged by the governments of the former colonizers.

Some progress has been made - at least symbolically. On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Allied landing in Provence in southern France, President Emmanuel Macron expressed gratitude for the contribution of African soldiers in defeating the German forces occupying France.

"Thousands of people sacrificed themselves to defend a distant land, an unknown land, a land they had until then never trod, a land they have forever marked with their blood," Macron said in a speech.

"France has a part of Africa in her, and on this Provence soil, this part was that of shed blood."


Forced recruitment

European newscasts of the time referred to the African soldiers as volunteers. But a considerable share of those recruited were forced into the colonial armed forces.

In an interview with DW in 2015, Albert Kunyuku, who served as Congolese corporal in the Belgian colonial army, explained how he and others were forced to enlist.

"I was working in a textile company when they came to take us away. Then they went to other companies. All the young workers were recruited. No one was younger than 30," said Kunyukua, who is now 97 and one to two surviving Congolese World War II veterans.

Read more: World War I: The 'Black Army' that marched in from Africa

Baby Sy, a veteran from Burkina Faso (then the French colony of Upper Volta), said at the time; he didn't understand what the war was really about.

"People didn't understand when they heard talk of fascism," he said in an interview with DW in 2015.

"We were just told that the Germans had attacked us and considered us Africans to be apes. As soldiers, we could prove that we were human beings. That was it. That was all the political explanation there was at the time."

Not always equal in war

In a recent interview with AFP, Congolese veteran Kunyuka remembered racial segregation the Congolese suffered even as they fought together with Belgians.

"We were like slaves because it was Belgium that brought us into this war. We could not say anything," Kunyuka was quoted as saying.

In 2019, an investigation by Al Jazeera discovered that African soldiers who served in the British army were paid a fraction of what their white colleagues were. The investigation called their treatment "akin to slavery".

Troops from the East Africa Division fought in Burma, today Myanmar

War experiences influenced independence movements

This close contact with European soldiers and with the reality of life in Europe changed the awareness of many of those Africans serving. It later sparked them to be politically active when they returned home.

Senegalese writer and filmmaker Ousmane Sembene, himself a former colonial soldier, put it like this in a 2015 interview with DW: "In war, we saw the white men naked and we have not forgotten that picture."

Read more: Léopold Sédar Senghor: From WWII prisoner to president

These kind of experience had far-reaching consequences, says German journalist Karl Rössel who spent 10 years researching the topic in West Africa.

During the war, the African soldiers saw Europeans lying in mud and filth and suffering and dying.

"As a result, they realized that there are no differences between people," he said. This. in turn, led to many former soldiers joining independence movements in their home countries.

African solidiers in Burma read about the end of WWII in Europe

Not all veterans, however, were accepted by the continent's burgeoning independence movements, says historian Raffael Scheck of Colby College in the USA. Many liberation fighters criticized that the African veterans for serving alongside the colonial oppressors.

The vast majority of veterans have died in the meantime.

Those who are still alive often feel a certain bitterness: although they have fought for the victory over fascism, they would hardly have received any recognition for it.

"I only get 5,000 Congolese francs (around five euros) per month in war pension. This is unworthy of someone who has fought for the interests of Belgium," complained veteran Albert Kunyuku.

Lack of recognition even today

The lack of gratitude and recognition in European countries - and especially in Germany, is something that needs to change.

"If there is to be a serious attempt to deal with the past, then one must treat the descendants of our liberators in a different manner than is the case under present refugee policy," Rössel says. "Compensation for the consequences of the war should be paid around the globe. But almost nowhere has postwar reconstruction taken place."

Albert Kunyuku speaks to DW in 2015

Congolese veteran Albert Kunyuku returned home in 1946 after fighting in Myanmar (then Burma) side by side with Belgian troops against the Japanese.

When asked if he was proud of his military service, he paused. With tears flowing down his cheeks, he replies: "No".

His grief for his fallen comrades is deep. Only a few of the 25,000 African soldiers who left with him for the front in Southeast Asia came back.

This article was originally published on May 21, 2015 and has been updated to include recent events.​​​​​​ Saleh Mwanamilongo in Kinshasa contributed to the report.

DW RECOMMENDS


Africa and World War I

A million people died in East Africa alone during World War I. Many Africans also fought in Europe, defending the interests of their colonial masters. Today, their sacrifice has been largely forgotten. (16.04.2014)

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Growing calls to acknowledge African troops who served UK army

Date 07.05.2020

Lead poisoning reveals environmental racism in the US
A recent study shows that being black is a bigger risk factor for lead poisoning than poverty or poor housing. 'Color-blind' health policy has exacerbated the environmental injustice, the authors say.



Reports that the new coronavirus is disproportionately killing African Americans in the United States are no surprise to the country's public health researchers. Numerous examples, from polluted water in Flint, Michigan, to parasites like hookworm in Alabama, have long shown that African Americans are more exposed to environmental dangers and ill-health than white Americans.

Read more: How austerity poisoned the people of Flint, Michigan

But a study into one of the most enduring of these threats — lead poisoning among children —provides a new measure of what many say is the toxic effect of systematic racism in the US.

There is no safe level of lead in the blood, which means even trace amounts can damage brain cells. But it is particularly dangerous for children in their pre-school years, when it can disrupt brain development. Overall, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that around 2.5% of children aged between 0 and six in the country have an "elevated blood lead level".

Read more: UK's 'Birdgirl' a voice for equality and against racism in conservation

Using publicly available data collected by the CDC from a representative sample of thousands of children aged one to five over an 11-year period, thestudy, published in February by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, found that black children living below the poverty line are twice as likely to have elevated levels of lead in their blood than poor white or Hispanic children.

The CDC did not offer a comment on the new study, on the grounds that it was not involved in writing it.

The danger of being African American

Statistically, the increased risk of lead poisoning associated with being black persists even when you correct for all other factors, from poverty to education levels to the presence of smokers in the home, to quality of housing.

"A lot of people had been saying: 'oh black children are just more at risk because they're more likely to be poor,'" said study co-author Deniz "Dersim" Yeter, an independent academic and undergraduate nursing student in Kansas. "Yeah, poverty's a problem, but it's nothing compared to being a black child in America."

Yeter was "astounded" by the results of their three-year analysis. "I knew it was bad, but I was expecting something like a marginal increase, something statistically significant, but ... not two to six times higher," they told DW. "That is obscene."

Read more: Investigating environmental racism

The study includes some surprising conclusions: The social condition of being African American is a bigger risk than living in an old house. In other words, black children living in buildings built between 1950-1977 are six times more likely to have elevated levels of lead in their blood than white children living in a building of that era.


African Americans are often more exposed to environmental dangers, such as water pollution in Flint, Michigan

That date is important. The US began putting restrictions on the lead content of paint in 1977. But leaded paint was never systematically removed from old buildings, and the US Department of Housing estimates that over 3.6 million homes housing children still contain lead hazards.
"It's so bad," Yeter said. "It deteriorates, it's little pieces of dust, you inhale it, kids touch stuff, touch their mouths, absorb it. [Before the 1950s] it used to be so bad that kids would go into seizures, go to the hospital and die, because there was so much lead in their blood."

Read more: The global injustice of the climate crisis

The consequences of 'redlining'

The figures Yeter unearthed aren't surprising to community workers in areas where lead poisoning is just one of many health hazards that African Americans face.

"You just have look around you," said Kinzer Pointer, pastor and health campaigner in an overwhelmingly African-American community in Buffalo, New York, a city where most of the housing is older than 1978 and 40% of children tested in 2016 had an elevated blood lead level.

Buffalo is a prime example of the effects of "redlining" — the exclusion of minorities in the US from everything from insurance, to grocery stores — which offers a clue to how racism leads to poor health.

Pointer said that in the neighborhood he serves, the nearest supermarket selling fresh fruit and vegetables is over five miles away, and 60% of people don't own their own transport. "People live on fast food," he said.


African Americans face higher rates of eviction than other groups

Redlining also extends to mortgages and home ownership — the US census shows that only around 42% of African Americans own their homes, compared to 68% of white Americans.

Rahwa Ghirmatzion, director of People United for Sustainable Housing in Buffalo, explained that when renters receive a letter from health authorities warning their building is contaminated, "the expectation is for them to either move … or get their landlord to remediate the issue."

Confronting your landlord can be more fraught for black people: A 2012 study in the American Journal of Sociology showed that African Americans face disproportionately higher eviction rates than whites in the same income brackets. And moving voluntarily may mean breaking a lease and losing a deposit, making it still harder to afford a lead-free home.

Read more: Climate change leads to more violence against women, girls

The 'color-blind' failure

David Rosner, co-author of the 2014 book Lead Wars, which traces the post-war history of lead poisoning, said racism has always been part of why lead poisoning has been tolerated.

As he explained, after the war, the Lead Industries Association even tried to blame black parents for letting their children eat paint: One 1956 letter showed the LIA arguing to government that lead poisoning was a problem of "educating the parents, but most of the cases are in Negro and Puerto Rican families, and how does one tackle that job?"

With their study, Yeter wants to show that hidden, structural racism can be just as dangerous, and that "color-blind" public health screening only exacerbates the problem.

Currently, blood lead screening is recommended (by organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics) when children live in old buildings or belong to a certain economic class. Yeter says not addressing race too, blinds authorities to the endemic discrimination.

"If you're ignoring black race as a leading risk factor — you're leaving so many black kids at far greater risk out of the local, state, and federal response." He added: "To act like there's no politics behind people being at risk, or what causes that, or how to solve that... it's political!"

ASBESTOS PHOTO ESSAY


ASBESTOS — AN OFTEN INVISIBLE DANGER
Actually it's a natural rock

Asbestos is a collective term for various naturally occurring silicate minerals. These include grunerite, anthophyllite, actinolite and chrysotil. The fibrous material was popular both in construction and industry because of its durability, fire resistance and because it could be easily processed in cement.

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Living Planet: 'Why would you want lead in your food?'

Date 07.05.2020

Putin calls Russia'invincible'

Sea levels could rise 1.3 meters by 2100, scientists warn

Even if nations are able to limit warming, sea levels will still rise significantly, new research from Germany's Potsdam Institute shows. In a worst-case scenario, seas could rise 5.6 meters.


Global sea levels will probably rise by even more than currently predicted, scientists warned on Friday.

Even if nations are able to achieve their Paris-Agreement commitment to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the oceans will still rise by about 0.5 meters (1.6 feet) by the end of the century and as much as 2 meters by 2300, a new study found.

If nations fail to act, and current emissions lead to warming of 4.5 degrees, then sea levels are predicted to rise between 0.6 and 1.3 meters by 2100 and between 1.7 and 5.6 meters by 2300.

Read more: Hotter, higher seas to worsen extreme floods without 'urgent and ambitious' action, United Nations warns

The predictions are based on a survey of 106 of the world's leading sea level researchers, carried out by scientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and co-authored by researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and published in the Nature Partner Journal Climate and Atmospheric Science.

Mitigation is 'in our hands'

"What we do now within a few decades will determine sea-level rise for many centuries, the new analysis shows more clearly than ever before," PIK's Stefan Rahmstorf said. "But this is also good news: when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, we have it in our own hands how much we increase the risks for millions of people on the world's coasts, from Hamburg to Shanghai and from Mumbai to New York.

The predictions are higher than those currently published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has already increased its predictions.

Read more: Could flooding be a cure for rising seas?

In September 2019, the UN climate science panel found that unmitigated climate change would lead to a sea level rise of between 0.61 meters and 1.1 meters by 2100. At the time it said the forecast could be conservative due to the speed at which Antarctic ice could melt.

Friday's report said the increased forecast came from better data and improved understanding of climate processes.

Data for decision makers

"The complexity of the sea-level rise projections and the sheer volume of relevant scientific publications makes it difficult for policy makers to gain an overview of the state of research," NTU's Benjamin Horton said in a statement.

"For such an overview, it is therefore useful to ask leading experts what kind of sea-level rise they expect — this gives a broader picture of future scenarios and provides policymakers with the information they need to decide on the necessary measures."



CATASTROPHES TRIGGERED BY WARMING OCEANS
A California day at the South Pole
In Antarctica, scientists measured temperatures on par with Los Angeles. In February, a record 18.3 degrees Celsius (64.9 degrees Fahrenheit) was measured at the Argentinean research station Esperanza Base in the north Antarctic. This was the highest temperature since measurements began there, according to NASA. The warm weather led to quickly developing melt ponds (pictured right).

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Date 08.05.2020

Sea level could rise by more than a meter by 2100 if emission targets are not met

by Nanyang Technological University

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

An international study led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) scientists found that the global mean sea-level rise could exceed 1 meter by 2100 and 5 meters by 2300 if global targets on emissions are not achieved.

The study used projections by more than 100 international experts for the global mean sea-level changes under two climate scenarios—low and high emissions. By surveying a wide range of leaders in the field, the study offers broader assurance about its projections for the ranges of future sea-level rise.

In a scenario where global warming is limited to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the experts estimated a rise of 0.5 meters by 2100 and 0.5 to 2 meters by 2300. In a high-emissions scenario with 4.5 degree Celsius of warming, the experts estimated a larger rise of 0.6 to 1.3 meters by 2100 and 1.7 to 5.6 meters by 2300.

Professor Benjamin Horton, Acting Chair of NTU's Asian School of the Environment, who led the survey, said that sea-level rise projections and knowledge of their uncertainties are vital to make informed mitigation and adaptation decisions.

Prof Horton said, "The complexity of sea-level projections, and the sheer amount of relevant scientific publications, make it difficult for policymakers to get an overview of the state of the science. To obtain this overview, it is useful to survey leading experts on the expected sea-level rise, which provides a broader picture of future scenarios and informs policymakers so they can prepare necessary measures."

Published in Nature Partner Journals Climate and Atmospheric Science on 8 May, the projections of sea-level rise exceed previous estimates by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The NTU-led international study was a collaboration with researchers from The University of Hong Kong, Maynooth University (Ireland), Durham University (UK), Rowan University (U.S.), Tufts University (U.S.), and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (Germany).

"We know that the planet will see additional sea-level rise in the future," says co-author Dr. Andra Garner, Assistant Professor of Environmental Science at Rowan University in the United States of America. "But there are stark differences in the amount of sea-level rise experts project for low emissions compared to high emissions. This provides a great deal of hope for the future, as well as a strong motivation to act now to avoid the more severe impacts of rising sea levels."

"This international study is based on the informed opinions of 106 sea-level experts and underlines the critical importance of pursuing a low emissions policy to limit sea-level rise," says Dr. Niamh Cahill, Assistant Professor in the Dept of Mathematics and Statistics at Maynooth University in Ireland.

The 106 experts who participated in the survey were chosen as they were among the most active publishers of scientific sea-level studies (at least six published papers in peer-reviewed journals since 2014) identified from a leading publication database.

In response to open-ended questions, the climate change experts identified the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets as the greatest sources of uncertainty. These ice sheets are an important indicator of climate change and driver of sea-level rise. Satellite-based measurements show the ice sheets are melting at an accelerating rate. However, the experts also noted that the magnitude and impact of sea-level rise can be limited by successfully reducing emissions.

Dr. Andrea Dutton, Professor in the Department of Geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is not involved in this study, says, "One of the key take-aways from this study is that our actions today can make a profound difference in how much our coastlines will retreat in the future. That knowledge is empowering because it means that we can choose a better outcome through our actions."

The paper, "Estimating global mean sea-level rise and its uncertainties by 2100 and 2300 from an expert survey," was published in Climate and Atmospheric Science on Friday, 8 May 2020.

Expert assessment: Sea-level rise could exceed one meter in this century

---

More information: Benjamin P. Horton et al. Estimating global mean sea-level rise and its uncertainties by 2100 and 2300 from an expert survey, npj Climate and Atmospheric Science (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41612-020-0121-5

Provided by Nanyang Technological University 

Pangolin immune system may hold clues to COVID-19 treatment

Research suggests the new coronavirus moved from bats to pangolins sold in a Chinese market, and jumped to humans. Photo courtesy of HealthDay News

They're small spiny mammals that look like anteaters with scales.

And pangolins -- which some credit with playing a role in the emergence of the new coronavirus -- might hold clues to fighting COVID-19.

Genetic research into the new coronavirus has suggested that it originated in bats, found its way into pangolins sold at Chinese "wet markets," and then migrated into humans.

So why doesn't the virus sicken and kill pangolins?

RELATED Research shines camera on little-known, much abused pangolins

In a new study, researchers at the Medical University of Vienna in Austria analyzed the genomic blueprint of pangolins and compared it to other mammals including humans, cats, dogs and cattle.

In most mammals, certain genes detect when a virus enters the body, triggering an immune response against the invader.

But pangolins lack two of these virus-sensing genes, the research team reported in the May 8 issue of the journal Frontiers in Immunology. Whether or not that difference shields the creatures from COVID-19 isn't known, but warrants further investigation.

RELATED New bat species are close relatives of the one that carries COVID-19

The Austrian scientists believe their findings are important because it means that while pangolins can be carriers of the new coronavirus, they may have ways to keep its nastier effects at bay.

Learning more about this evolutionary advantage in pangolins may suggest possible treatments for coronavirus in humans, the team said.

"Our work shows that pangolins have survived through millions of years of evolution without a type of antiviral defense that is used by all other mammals," study co-author Dr. Leopold Eckhart said in a journal news release.

RELATED Pangolin wanders into family's home in India

"Further studies of pangolins will uncover how they manage to survive viral infections, and this might help to devise new treatment strategies for people with viral infections," Eckhart added.

In humans, the new coronavirus can cause an inflammatory immune response called a cytokine storm, which results in more severe illness.

An overactivated immune system can be moderated, however, "by reducing the intensity or by changing the timing of the defense reaction," Eckhart said.

Drugs that suppress gene signaling might therefore be a possible treatment option for severe cases of COVID-19, Eckhart said. But there's a hitch: Any immune-suppressing drug could make patients more vulnerable to other infections.

So, "the main challenge is to reduce the response to the pathogen while maintaining sufficient control of the virus," Eckhart said.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on COVID-19.

Copyright 2020 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Is Philippines muzzling free press amid coronavirus lockdown?

The Philippine government's move to shut the nation's largest broadcaster is the latest affront to press freedom that has left millions of Filipinos cut off from access to vital information in the middle of a pandemic.




ABS-CBN television and radio operations went off-air on Tuesday after the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) issued a cease-and-desist order following the expiration of its legislative franchise on May 4. The station's cable news and digital operations continue to operate.

Vergel Santos, chairperson of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR), told DW that the ABS-CBN shutdown was tantamount to a news blackout.

"The TV and radio programs of ABS-CBN reach millions of Filipinos in the most remote parts of the country. Where will they get their news now?" said Santos.

Read more: Coronavirus: Vulnerable Filipinos fight for survival during lockdown

The veteran journalist also said the timing of the closure was problematic. "The government is taking advantage of this pandemic, which has all of us confined to our homes. Otherwise, we would be protesting on the streets," Santos added.

Media organizations and citizens widely condemned the government's move to shutter the network. Hours before the station aired its final news broadcast, people gathered outside the ABS-CBN headquarters in the capital of Manila, lighting candles and holding protest signs.

"The decision is unfair to the network and the thousands who depend on the network for their livelihood. It creates an unnecessary distraction for both the government and the private sector from focusing on saving lives and keeping people safe," the Philippine Broadcasters Guild (KBP) said in a statement.

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque backed the NTC's decision to issue a closure order and said, "ABS-CBN is free to exhaust all legal remedies available to it."

Government suppression?

In 2017, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte accused ABS-CBN of swindling him for not airing his paid political ads during his presidential campaign. Since then, Duterte has consistently been threatening not to renew the network's legislative franchise.

"Your franchise will end next year. If you expect it to be renewed, I'm sorry. I will see to it that you're out," Duterte said last December.


Media outlets, electricity companies and cable TV providers are required by law to secure a legislative franchise to operate. Neng Juliano Tamayo, president of the national organization of cable TV operators, FICTAP, is opposing the renewal of the ABS-CBN's franchise because of the station's alleged anomalous charging for its cable programs.

ABS-CBN's 25-year legislative franchise expired on May 4. The renewal of its broadcast franchise is subject to a congressional review. However, both the Senate and the House of Representatives issued a resolution stating that ABS-CBN should be allowed to operate while their franchise renewal is pending in Congress.

Duterte has a long track record of cracking down on the media, especially those that exposed the brutality of the nation's war on drugs, his administration's centerpiece campaign. The Duterte government has threatened media outlets like the Philippine Daily Inquirer and online news network, Rappler, with closure.


Hours before the station aired its final news broadcast, people gathered outside the ABS-CBN headquarters, lighting candles and holding protest signs

Maria Ressa, chief executive officer of Rappler, has been the target of relentless political harassment and intimidation. Ressa has been arrested twice and has at least seven cases against her pending in court.

When Katherine Bautista's son, John, was killed in the state-sanctioned drug war, she turned to the media for help. "The media was my only platform to let others know the truth about the war on drugs waged by the government," Bautista told DW.

Deteriorating press freedom

The Philippines was known to have one of the freest presses in Asia following years of media suppression under former dictator Ferdinand Marcos who was ousted in a peaceful people power revolt in 1986.

ABS-CBN was ordered to close in 1972 following Marcos' declaration of martial law. Its closure yesterday heightened fears of media suppression and harassment.

Just as the largest TV network signed off, radio reporter Cornelio Pepino was shot dead in Dumagete City, southern Philippines. "Aside from the media killings, there is a high level of intimidation and harassment against journalists, especially online. We may see less critical reporting as a result of all of this," Nonoy Espina, president of the National Union of Journalists in the Philippines (NUJP), told DW.

Read more: Rappler's Maria Ressa: Duterte government 'weaponizing' information and law

A personal loss

Beyond the legal and political uproar, the closure of the network is an emotional loss for millions of viewers like Lina Bacalando, a 58-year-old community worker and grandmother.

When she turned on her TV earlier today and was greeted by a black screen, Bacalando felt "like something in me had died."

Bacalando told DW that her family tuned into ABS-CBN nearly 24 hours a day for news and entertainment. "The network's telenovelas entertain us and help make quarantine bearable."
But Bacalando's sadness quickly turned to anger and fear. "This government is too much. Too oppressive. Too vindictive. They silenced a media giant. What more can they do to us ordinary people?"

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Every month, the One Free Press Coalition draws attention to unresolved cases of crimes against journalists. In April, the list includes the cases of Mohammad Mosaed, Maria Ressa and Alaa Abdelfattah. (02.04.2020)

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Germany's alleged attempt to fly in Filipino nurses to provide assistance to COVID-19 patients has irked many in the Philippines. The country is facing a shortage of health workers as it tries to combat the disease. (26.03.2020)

Date 06.05.2020

Germany bans gay 'conversion therapy' for minors

Dubious programs that claim to "cure" LGBT+ youths have now been banned in Germany after parliament approved a new law. Failing to comply with the ban carries a one-year prison sentence.


German lawmakers voted to pass a law on Thursday banning so called "conversion therapies" that are aimed at suppressing sexual orientation or gender identity.

"Homosexuality is not an illness," said Health Minister Jens Spahn, who is openly gay. "Therefore the term therapy is already misleading."

Under the new law, advertising or offering conversion therapy will be prohibited for children up to the age of 18. Violators can be fined up to up to €30,000 ($33,000) or sentenced to up to one year in prison.

Read more: Opinion: Homosexuality is not a disease

Parents and guardians who force their children to undergo the programs can also be charged for violating their duty of care.

The practices have long been criticized for causing severe psychological and physical suffering.

Although the new law does not constitute a complete ban of the practice, it carries punishments as well if an adult consented to the therapy after being deceived, coerced or threatened.

Law sends 'a clear signal'

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and their Social Democrat (SPD) coalition partners voted in favor of the ban, as well as the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP).

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) largely abstained, except for one vote against the law. The Left Party and the Greens also abstained from the vote, but argued that the law didn't go far enough to protect young adults.

Read more: Surviving 'conversion therapy' for LGBT+ people in Germany

Prior to the vote in the Bundestag, Spahn defended against criticism that the ban does not protect young adults between the ages of 18 and 26, saying he wanted the ban to be able to hold up in court if challenged.

Although Spahn did not specify his reasons for putting an age limit on the ban, it's easier to protect minors under German law, but the legal justification enters more of a gray area for adults when freedom of speech and conscience laws are taken into account.

"Young people are being forced into conversion therapies," he said, "and so it is very important that they should find support in the existence of this law: a clear signal that the state does not want this to happen."

rs/rt (dpa, Reuters, KNA)
DW