Archives for May 2021

Czechs light nearly 30,000 candles to honor COVID-19 victims

PRAGUE (AP) — Czechs lit nearly 30,000 candles at Prague Castle, the seat of the presidency, on Monday evening to pay their respects to the pandemic’s victims.

The hard-hit European Union nation of 10.7 million people has registered at least 29,711 virus-related deaths.

After observing a minute of silence, President Milos Zeman was the first to light a candle. In his brief speech, he thanked the medical personnel and anyone who has been fighting the pandemic.

Zeman said some of those people died because “we succumbed to the temptation to ease (restrictive measures) prematurely.”

He said he hoped that Czechs had learned from it. His words came at the end of a day that saw the country massively relaxing its coronavirus restrictions.

The latest easing came after new infections fell to the levels last seen in August, at which time the government failed to react fast enough to a rising number of infections, which later contributed to a record number of deaths.

People in the capital of Prague formed lines Monday before opening time as all stores and shopping malls returned to business.

“It’s a relief that they are open,” said shopper Dan Cooper. “I think I have a long list of things that I need to buy now.”

In a visible change, Czechs were allowed to remove face masks in all outdoor spaces if they stayed at least two meters (6 feet) from other people.

Also reopening Monday were car dealerships, tanning salons, shooting ranges, travel agencies, shoe repairers, tattoo parlors and many other services.

Children returned to all elementary schools under strict conditions even in the hardest-hit regions. All have to wear face masks and be tested twice a week. They are also returning on a rotating basis, with in-school attendance one week and distance learning the next.

Schools in the seven of the country’s 14 regions, including Prague, will be able to abandon the rotating principle on May 17, the government announced Monday.

The relaxation of restrictions came as the daily number of new infections dropped from almost 17,000 in early March to 381 on Sunday, while the number of infected fell to 101 per 100,000 people in the past seven days.

But in some counties, the number of cases still surpassed 180 per 100,000 people, prompting experts to warn against dropping restrictions there.

“If the situation remains unfavorable in some counties and regions, the relaxation there should not be the same as in other parts of the country,” Petr Pazdiora, the head of the Institute of Epidemiology at the University Hospital in western city of Plzen, told Czech public radio.

The Czech Republic at one point topped the global per capital death toll table, due to a too-early relaxation of virus restrictions.

Also Monday, the government approved a plan to allow up 700 spectators to attend outdoor concerts and events, starting next week, and bars and restaurants will open for outdoor dining. People will be allowed to attend the events and go to bars and restaurants on condition they have been vaccinated, present a negative coronavirus test or recovered from COVID-19.

High schools and universities in the Czech Republish still remained closed.

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Adam Pemble contributed to this report.

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EU: Pandemic measures to total about $5.85 trillion

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union’s top economy official said Monday that the recovery measures the EU and its 27 member states have in the works to emerge from the pandemic total around $5.85 trillion.

EU Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni told a European Parliament committee said that if comparisons are made with U.S. President Joe Biden’s pandemic stimulus relief package, the EU can confidently stand next to to Washington when all efforts are counted together.

“Measures taken until now from member states and the EU reach so far 4.8 trillion” euros, the Italian commissioner told legislators, sweeping aside criticism that authorities weren’t doing enough compared with Washington.

The EU has agreed to a common recovery fund package of 750 billion euros ($910 billion), plus a 1.1 trillion euro ($1.3 trillion) seven-year budget that will be strongly geared toward dealing with the unprecedented economic recession caused by COVID-19 that the bloc’s 450 million citizens will have to overcome. Many of those measures still need a final stamp of legislative approval.

During his first 100 days in office, Biden has secured passage of a sweeping $1.9 trillion pandemic package to bring relief to 330 million Americans. There is also a proposed $2 trillion-plus infrastructure plan and the recently unveiled $1.8 trillion proposed student-families-workers plan bringing the total to a potential $6 trillion.

“If we look at it in a certain way, we could say that the U.S. reaction was stronger, faster than the European one,” Gentiloni said.

Take note, however, “that we are not a federal state. And so we have to consider both member states and the EU level,” bringing the total to $4.8 trillion.

“So we are not used to mixing all the different interventions. But if we do this, we reach an amount which is not so different from the effort of the United States,” Gentiloni said.

Many major social affairs and economic policies are still run at a national level in the European Union, and stimulus measures for companies and the workforce also have a massive national input which is rarely visible in EU statistics.

Still the 750-billion euro “Next Generation EU” package stands out because it allows the bloc for the first time to raise money on the markets by itself. Much of the aid will be spent among the poorer and harder-hit member states.

EU Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said that if requests from member states proceeded as planned, the first disbursements to the member states on prefinancing could already be made in July. He added that the second tranches of financing could already be made before the end of the year.

The EU has a strict set of benchmarks that member states must reach if the money is to be paid out. In all, 37% must be spent on green projects, ranging from offshore wind parks to cycling tracks. And 20% must go to digital projects, including 5G networks and digitizing public administration.

Funds will only be released piecemeal once member states have proven previous aid has been spent according to plan.

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Muti: Pandemic year silenced culture, leaving world stunned

RAVENNA, Italy (AP) — Maestro Riccardo Muti has once again reopened the Italian musical season in his adopted hometown of Ravenna after another — and if all goes well perhaps final — round of pandemic closures.

With a purposeful nod and flick of his baton, the 79-year-old conductor on Sunday ended what has been an unexpectedly long silence in Italian theaters, enrapturing a socially distanced and masked audience with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra’s first live performances since the fall — back-to-back evening concerts of Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms.

The concerts launched a three-stop Italian tour by the Vienna Philharmonic to celebrate 50 years of ties with the conductor and served as a precursor to the summertime Ravenna Festival, this year celebrating the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death.

“The emotion is above all one of rebirth, which is a positive word, but it means that something died before. So, within the positivity, there is the regret over something lost. And we, for a year, lost the possibility of life, in the complete sense of the word,” Muti told The Associated Press before the concert.

“This fact, that in nearly the whole world, theaters have remained empty, orchestras were reduced to silence, is something that has never been seen before.”

After World War II, Muti said, U.S. soldiers made it a priority to reopen the San Carlo Theater in his native Naples, and in Milan city fathers rebuilt La Scala, destroyed bombs, reopening it on May 11, 1946 with a concert conducted by Arturo Toscanini.

La Scala reopened to the public on Monday after a six-month COVID-19 closure, with Riccardo Chailly conducting Verdi and Wagner for the 75th anniversary of the reconstruction. The orchestra performed from risers built over the platea, while the chorus was spaced on stage.

During this year, Muti has been unable to return to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where he has been music director for a decade. His last European performance, the traditional Vienna New Year’s Day concert, was a triumph but was performed to an empty concert hall. In his closing remarks, he urged governments to fund culture, as a salve to mental health that suffered during the pandemic closures. “Music helps,” he said.

Nearly a year ago, Muti reopened the European musical season after Italy’s draconian spring 2020 lockdown with an outdoor concert of the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra he founded. Then, the hope was that the summer music festivals would flow smoothly into the fall concert calendar, and cultural life would resume. The fall virus spike and variants doomed that trajectory. Musicians around the world have been deprived of playing for an audience, not to mention income, and audiences the comfort of a live performance.

Muti called the experience of the past year “an unnatural global experiment” that had “stunned” the world.

“If we truly took into account how we are living, we would all go crazy. We try to maintain the illusion that we are living a normal life. It is the only way to reach the end of this absurd path,’’ he said.

Muti is plunging back into concert life. He is conducting his much-curtailed 50th anniversary tour with the Vienna Philharmonic in Florence on Monday and at Milan’s La Scala on Tuesday, before returning to Ravenna to prepare for festival appearances of his Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra and for the debut of a piece of music written for the Dante anniversary based on the Divine Comedy’s Purgatory canticle.

The world premiere of “Purgatory” by Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian will be held in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, on July 4, part of Muti’s series of Paths of Friendship concerts in their 25th year in cities recovering from war, hatred and conflicts. It will be repeated in Ravenna for the 700th anniversary celebrations of Dante’s death in September. It is one of three, along with Inferno and Paradise, commissioned for this year’s festival.

Muti plans to be back in Chicago by the fall.

The Ravenna Festival, founded 30 years ago by Muti’s wife, Cristina Mazzavillani, reopens June 2 with an ambitious program of 120 musical, dance and theatrical performances and runs through July 31, despite uncertainty in the pace of reopening and the return of tourism. Optimistically, the program calls for 9:30 p.m. curtain times, even though a 10 p.m. curfew remains in place nationwide.

“It is a return of hope,” said general manager Antonio De Rosa. “We want to restore dignity to audiences with the possibility of listening live.”

With a regime of daily virus testing, the Vienna Philharmonic played without masks, spaced at least a meter a part. The audience was spread out across the four tiers of balconies, and every other row was removed from the floor seats, with government rules limiting seating in the 800-seat theater to 250 people.

In between the shows, orchestra members in their gray pinstriped stage garb wandered over to see Dante’s tomb across the street, or to sit at an outdoor café next to the Alighieri Theater, named for the famed poet who died in Ravenna on Sept. 13, 1321.

“Starting again to make music means starting to live again. Starting to live again means starting to be together again,’’ Muti said. “What has not been able to happen for a year, has been a real tragedy.”

Muti has appealed to Italy’s culture minister to fund more orchestras, encouraged by the commitment he saw working in cities like Turin and Palermo this pandemic year bound largely to Italy, after decades spent mostly conducting abroad if not with his youth orchestra. “Their response was excellent, and this gives me hope,” he said.

The city of Tokyo, where Muti just spent a few weeks with his Italian opera academy, has 17 orchestras, he noted. Italy, the birthplace of lyric opera, has fewer than 30.

A cultural life, he said, is essential for healing from the pandemic year, especially for young people whose social contacts have been dramatically limited at a critical age.

“What future will they have? Will they overcome this trauma? They can overcome this shock only with trust in life, which comes through socializing, living together and sharing above all culture,” Muti said. “I have said it before, and I will say it again. It still seems that culture is not at the top of the priority list, but at nearly the bottom.”

AGs urge Facebook to drop ‘Instagram for kids’ proposal

A bipartisan group of 44 attorneys general has written to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg urging him to drop company plans for a version of Instagram for children under the age of 13, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey announced Monday.

The attorneys general in the letter said they are concerned about social media’s effects on the physical and emotional well-being of children, the potential for increased cyberbullying, possible vulnerability to online predators, and what they called Facebook’s “checkered record” in protecting children on its platforms.

“It appears that Facebook is not responding to a need, but instead creating one, as this platform appeals primarily to children who otherwise do not or would not have an Instagram account,” said the letter, signed by the attorneys general of 40 states, the District of Columbia and three U.S. territories.

Children under 13 are technically not allowed to use the Instagram app in its current form due to federal privacy regulations. But Facebook in March confirmed a report by Buzzfeed News, saying it is “exploring a parent-controlled experience” on Instagram.

“It’s shameful that Facebook is ignoring the very real threat that social media poses to the safety and well-being of young children in an attempt to profit off of a vulnerable segment of our population,” Healey said in a statement.

Facebook in a statement Monday said it is exploring Instagram for kids to give parents more control over what children who are already online are exposed to, will make every effort to protect children, and will not show advertising on the platform.

“We are developing these experiences in consultation with experts in child development, child safety and mental health, and privacy advocates,” the company said. “We also look forward to working with legislators and regulators, including the nation’s attorneys general.”

Facebook also pointed out that it is a founding sponsor of the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital, launched in March to study the effects of digital technology on kids’ “brains, bodies, and behaviors.”

The effort of the attorneys general is backed by Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.

“Facebook faces a critical choice: will they plow ahead with their ill-conceived plan to ensnare young children, or will they listen to the growing chorus of parents, experts, advocates, lawmakers and regulators who are telling them that an Instagram kids’ site will undermine young children’s healthy development and right to privacy?” Executive Director Josh Golin said in a statement.

Facebook faced similar criticism in 2017 when it launched the Messenger Kids app, touted as a way for children to chat with family members and friends approved by parents.

DC aims for full reopening, with masks, by June 11

WASHINGTON (AP) — Washington, D.C., is emerging from its pandemic quarantine.

With COVID-19 numbers dropping, officials in the nation’s capital have announced a reopening timeline that would see all indoor capacity limits eliminated by early June, but with mask requirements still in place.

Mayor Muriel Bowser unveiled a two-stage plan on Monday, with capacity restrictions on most indoor activities lifting on May 21, with the exception of bars, nightclubs and entertainment venues. Those final categories would see their capacity limits removed by June 11.

The two dates represent a pair of major crossroads moments for Washington, both for the daily lives of its residents and for its hospitality-heavy economy, driven by tourism and conventions.

“We are quickly and enthusiastically approaching containment level of the virus in our jurisdiction,” said Health Department Director Dr. LaQuandra Nesbitt. “But in the ensuing weeks, we continue to need to remain vigilant.”

Virus metrics show daily case rates are down to levels not seen since last summer. Nesbitt said contract tracing for new virus cases “would remain a 24/7 operation.”

As of May 10, Bowser said more than 200,000 D.C. residents had been fully vaccinated. She also announced that the overflow field hospital that took over Washington’s convention center last year would be dismantled.

“I’m grateful we never had to use it,” Bowser said.

The D.C. government will be bringing its work-from-home employees back to their offices in stages. Bowser said that by July 12, all D.C. government employees will be working at least part time from the office.

The May 21 shift will lift all capacity restrictions on restaurants, gyms, schools, offices and houses of worship. Bowser said she expected to approve a waiver request from Monumental Sports, owners of the Capitals and Wizards, to immediately increase attendance capacity from 10% to 25% for potential playoff games. The Capitals are solidly in the NHL playoffs, while the Wizards are fighting for the final spot in the NBA’s Eastern Conference play-in tournament.

Bowser has generally proceeded more cautiously on easing restrictions than her neighbors in Virginia and Maryland. In many cases, the surrounding counties in southern Maryland and northern Virginia that comprise the capital region have chosen to stay closer to Bowser’s conservative line.

Bowser on Monday said she has “worked, I think, very cooperatively over the last 15 months” with Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan. “The states of Maryland and Virginia are bigger than this region, obviously, so they need to do some different things that impact their whole state, where we’ve been very focused on the capital region.”

Archives for May 2021

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