Daily Archives: May 27, 2021

HBO Max Airs Highly-Anticipated ‘Friends’ Reunion

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After so many years — and episode re-watches — could there BE anything left to learn about “Friends”?As the highly-anticipated, almost two-hour reunion special for HBO Max shows (and with apologies to Matthew Perry for continuing to borrow his lines), “Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes.”One thing that we didn’t need to learn (because we already knew it) was just how truly there these six characters were for the audience.In the 1990s and early-aughts, the cast of “Friends” provided hours of joy — first just on Thursday nights when new …

Cameroon Clears Abandoned Mental Health Patients from Streets

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Authorities in Cameroon are clearing the streets in the capital, Yaounde, of more than 300 psychiatric patients whom officials say have been abandoned by family members. The central African state says stress from Boko Haram terrorism, a separatist crisis in its English-speaking western regions and the increase in consumption of hard drugs are responsible for  growing numbers of such patients.Laure Mengueme is the director of mental health at Cameroon’s Ministry of Health. She speaks to a group of about 70 people at the central market in Yaounde on why psychiatric …

Actor John Cena Faces Backlash in China over Taiwan Comment

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Actor and professional wrestler John Cena has apologized to fans in China after he called Taiwan a country in a promotional interview for his upcoming film and became the latest celebrity to face the fury of Chinese nationalists. In a short video posted Tuesday on Chinese social media site Weibo, Cena did not refer to Taiwan or go into much detail about the incident, which occurred earlier this month when he was doing a promotion for “Fast & Furious 9” with Taiwanese media. “In one interview, I made a mistake,” …

New COVID-19 Outbreak Sends Australia’s Victoria State into 4th Lockdown 

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Australia’s southern state of Victoria will enter into a one-week “circuit breaker” lockdown beginning Thursday as it deals with a new and growing outbreak of COVID-19 cases.  The lockdown was ordered after health authorities announced 12 new confirmed cases in Melbourne, bringing the total number of infections in the state capital to 26.   Acting state Premier James Merlino told reporters in Melbourne the new outbreak is due to “a highly infectious strain of the virus, a variant of concern, which is running faster than we have ever recorded.” The new …

Russia, Iran Leading Disinformation Charge on Facebook

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Russia and Iran are leading the way when it comes to pushing bad information on one of the world’s most popular social media platforms, and new analysis finds they are getting savvier at evading detection. Facebook issued a report Wednesday looking at so-called coordinated inauthentic behavior over the past four years, warning that despite ongoing efforts to identify and remove disinformation networks, there is no let-up in attempts to exploit or weaponize conflict and crisis. “Threat actors have adapted their behavior and sought cover in the gray spaces between authentic and inauthentic engagement …