Daily Archives: April 29, 2020

Lack of ‘Black Widow,’ ‘F9’ Leaves Summer Movie Season Muted

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The six-year fan campaign for a standalone Black Widow movie was paying off: At long last, a film would put Scarlett Johansson’s popular Avenger front and center. And, like many of Marvel’s biggest spectacles, it was set to open the weekend of May 1.  “Black Widow” was to kick off what promised to be a typically lucrative summer moviegoing season, which runs from Memorial Day through Labor Day and generally accounts for $4 billion, nearly 40% of the yearly North American box office. And there was a lot more to …

‘Trolls’ Went Straight to Homes; Movie Theaters Fuming

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The most controversial movie of the year is … “Trolls World Tour”? As innocuous as the rainbow-colored, music-blaring animated movie may seem, the digital release of the “Trolls” sequel has caused a storm to course through the movie industry. Just as the pandemic worsened and movie theaters were shuttering, Universal Pictures shifted the film’s release to video on demand, leading a charge straight through the theatrical window. Universal calls the “Trolls World Tour” digital release a success and suggests it may be the beginning of a sea change in how movies are …

UN Urges World Community to Prevent Child Hunger During Coronavirus Pandemic

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Two United Nations agencies called on the global community Wednesday to prevent hunger and malnutrition among the 370 million children who are not receiving school meals due to the closure of schools worldwide in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.The U.N. said school meals are particularly vital for girls, especially those in poor countries, whose struggling parents often send them to school to get meals, allowing them to avoid domestic responsibilities or early marriage.”For millions of children around the world, the meal they get at school is the only meal …

UN: New Polio Outbreak in Niger After Vaccination Suspended

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The World Health Organization says Niger has been struck by a new outbreak of polio, following the suspension of immunization activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.N. health agency reported that two children were infected by the highly infectious, water-borne disease and that one was paralyzed. The outbreak was sparked by a mutated virus that originated in the vaccine and was not connected to a previous polio epidemic Niger stopped last year, WHO said, in a statement last week.   “The poliovirus will inevitably continue to circulate and may paralyze …

Police File Reveals Suspicions of Blatter in FIFA TV Deal

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Swiss investigators concluded Sepp Blatter knew that a World Cup broadcasting contract was breached illegally and that it would cost FIFA millions of dollars, according to a federal police file obtained by The Associated Press. Investigation reports sent to prosecutors in December and January showed FIFA wrote off a $3.8 million debt from a Caribbean TV deal signed in 2005 by then-FIFA president Blatter and long-time vice president Jack Warner. The deal was later alleged to have been illegally mismanaged by Blatter. “Blatter acted … more in the interests of …

Acclaimed Bollywood Actor Irrfan Khan Dies

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Veteran Bollywood actor Irrfan Khan, who rose to international acclaim with roles in such films as “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Life of Pi,” has died at the age of 54.A spokesman said Khan died Wednesday in a Mumbai hospital where he had been admitted earlier this week for a colon infection.  Khan sought treatment in Britain after he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in 2018.The native of India’s western desert state of Rajasthan broke into the Indian film industry in 1988 in the Academy Award-nominated drama “Salaam Bombay.” …

Orphaned, Abused, Exploited: The Coronavirus Threat to Children  

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Children could be the biggest victims of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the fact that the disease affects mostly older people, according to human rights groups.  It is estimated that 1.5 billion children worldwide are missing school. The outbreak is having myriad other impacts on young people, with hundreds of thousands orphaned by the disease that the coronavirus causes.  “More and more children are going to be left without parents,” said Jo Becker of Human Rights Watch. “We’ve seen from the Ebola crisis, for example, the HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa, that when children are orphaned, they become much more vulnerable to sex trafficking, to …

Play by Play: How a Taiwan Sports League Opened its 2020 Season Despite COVID-19

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When the coronavirus began raising concerns in China this past January, Taiwan’s professional baseball league set up a task force to help determine whether the outbreak would spread into nearby Taiwan and scuttle a scheduled 2020 season start in March.    After China sealed off its disease outbreak center Wuhan and hundreds of Taiwanese began fleeing back from Lunar New Year holidays in China around the start of February, the Taipei-based Chinese Professional Baseball League brought on a legal expert too. “We figured conditions were extremely serious,” commissioner Wu Chih-yang said in an …