You’re about to meet the virtual Corona Community Chorus — a group based in New York City. Each Sunday, the chorus members gather online to unite voices forced into isolation in the global effort to curb the coronavirus outbreak. VOA correspondent Mariama Diallo reports on its founder — an author and Harvard Divinity School graduate. …
American ballet dancer Julie Kent was a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre from 1993 to 2015. Her farewell role was as Juliet, and in 2016 Kent was named the artistic director of The Washington Ballet. Karina Bafradzhian spoke with Kent about what it takes to be a ballerina — on and beyond the stage. …
Scientists studying data from a European Space Agency (ESA) satellite say they have observed a strong reduction in ozone concentrations over the Arctic, creating what they are calling a “mini-hole” in the ozone layer.The ozone layer is a natural, protective layer of gas in the stratosphere that shields life from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation, often associated with skin cancer and cataracts, as well as other environmental issues.The “ozone hole” most often referenced is over Antarctica, forming each year. But observations scientists made at the German Aerospace Center in the …
John Prine, an American singer and songwriter whose blend of folk and country earned him a devoted legion of fans and reverence from music greats such as Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen over a five-decade career, died Tuesday at age 73 from complications of the novel coronavirus. Prine was admitted for the disease late last month at a hospital in the southeastern city of Nashville, Tennessee. He had survived two separate bouts of cancer, the first in 1998, and the second as recently as 2013. The Kentucky-born Prine was working as …
India is considering plans to seal off coronavirus hotspots in Delhi, Mumbai and parts of the south while easing restrictions elsewhere as a way out of a three-week lockdown that has caused deep economic distress, officials said on Wednesday. The sweeping clampdown in the country of 1.3 billion people to prevent an epidemic of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, ends on April 14 and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to decide this week whether to extend it. He told a conference of political leaders on …
You have to make Yao Chung-jen pose before his face cops the menacing scowl expected of rappers. In normal conversation he bounces between happy casual and sober rational. Yao’s stage name is MC Hot Dog. He’s Taiwanese and raps about everyday concerns in his hometown Taipei.He’s among his hometown’s few superstar rappers. He had sold more than 300,000 CDs as of 2018 and his YouTube videos handily grab 2 million to 20 million apiece. Among his 200 songs written since he took a shine to rap while in high school, a …
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has declared a state of emergency in Tokyo and six other hard-hit Japanese prefectures to fortify the fight against the coronavirus outbreak. But this is no European or Wuhan-style lockdown. A look at what Japan’s state of emergency entails:Why Did Abe Declare A State Of Emergency? A. Abe was facing heavy pressure to declare a state of emergency after the number of new cases in Tokyo began doubling every several days in late March. The city of 14 million had 1,339 cases as of Wednesday, up …
At the construction site in Tel Aviv, Jamal Salman and the other Palestinian workers wore gloves and masks, and their employer provided apartments for them to stay overnight.But his wife, alarmed by the news about the coronavirus outbreak in Israel, called him every night from the West Bank, begging him to come home. He came back early this week.Now he sits alone in his basement all day, quarantined from his wife and five children and wondering how he’ll make ends meet. In Tel Aviv he earned $1,500 a month, enough …
John Prine, the ingenious singer-songwriter who explored the heartbreaks, indignities and absurdities of everyday life in “Angel from Montgomery,” “Sam Stone,” “Hello in There” and scores of other indelible tunes, died Tuesday at the age of 73. His family announced his death from complications from the coronavirus. Winner of a lifetime achievement Grammy earlier this year, Prine was a virtuoso of the soul, if not the body. He sang his conversational lyrics in a voice roughened by a hard-luck life, particularly after throat cancer left him with a disfigured jaw. He joked that …