As Catherine O'Hara accepted her Golden Globe for Schitt's Creek on Sunday night, her husband Bo Welch was right by her side. Welch may not be a household name like his wife, but he's no less successful, with a lengthy resume as an Oscar-nominated set designer. In fact, it was working together on a movie set that led to a decades-long marriage for O'Hara and Welch!
Back in 1988, Welch was brought onto Beetlejuice by director Tim Burton. O'Hara, of course, was part of the movie's memorable cast, starring as Delia Deetz, a sculptor whose family moves into a house that's being haunted by its previous owners and an out-of-control afterlife being. The quirky movie became a classic, and Welch and O'Hara came out of it not just with a great item on their resumes, but with a relationship that has lasted for over thirty years and counting!
"It was a real creative thrill. We were kind of left alone, too ... We didn't have the crushing pressure of a big studio breathing down our necks. It was like, oh, let these people go off and make these crazy movies and see what happens. It didn't have the pressure of a third episode of a franchise movie. So, all of that was great. My memories of Beetlejuice are very fond, of course. Not to mention, I met my wife, who was in it," Welch reminisced to Uproxx in 2015. The couple married in 1992 and have since had two children: Matthew, born in 1994, and Luke, born in 1997.
Welch had a bit of a moment at the Golden Globes during his wife's acceptance speech, when technical issues put a damper on the playful joke the couple were trying to pull off. During O'Hara's speech, Welch pulled out his phone to play applause sound effects, followed by a bit of orchestral music, like the kind that's used to play off celebrities when their acceptance speeches get too long. Unfortunately, the gag didn't quite translate as well on the remote broadcast, but it was a cute moment to show just how much O'Hara and Welch still enjoy trying to create comedy together!
One media worker said soldiers had entered his home and accused him of supporting the TPLF.
Four media workers recently arrested in Ethiopia’s conflict-hit northern Tigray region have been released.
Fitsum Berhane and Alula Akalu, translators working for AFP news agency and Financial Times respectively, BBC journalist Girmay Gebru and Temrat Yemane, a local journalist, had been arrested over the weekend and earlier this week.
On Wednesday, Abebe Gebrehiwot Yihdego, deputy head of Tigray’s interim administration, told Reuters news agency “all journalists and translators have been released without cartoons”.
Mulu Nega, leader of Tigray’s interim administration appointed by Addis Ababa, had earlier said the four were being investigated and “there is already some evidence”.
“They let us out today. They didn’t say anything about why they let us go. But they said they have decided to free us, ”Fitsum said.
Tigray has been at the center of fighting since November last year when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced military operations against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), accusing them of attacking federal army camps.
The northern region was an information black hole for much of that time, with reporting heavily restricted and the internet cut off.
Seven international media organisations, including Al Jazeera, have now been granted accreditation to report from Tigray, but journalists were warned by officials they might face unspecified “corrective measures” if they did not meet local standards.
Fitsum told AFP that soldiers entered his home and accused him of supporting the TPLF.
“They were saying a lot of things about how I am a member of the TPLF and have been helping the party since the war started and giving them information,” he said. “But I denied all because I don’t know what they are talking about.”
Abiy’s government declared victory over the TPLF after its forces withdrew from principal cities and towns at the end of November.
A nurse has spoken about the racist abuse she has received at work as part of a trust campaign to get more staff to tell their stories.
Elita, who works at the Royal Derby Hospital, said some patients had asked if she was qualified “obviously because of [her hers] skin color”.
She added: "In the midst of all of this, I still do what I do with love."
University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust said racism would not be tolerated.
‘Very proud’
Elita, a registered nurse for nearly 23 years whose full name has not been released by the trust, said: “I’ve had patients who have come to me and said,‘ Is there someone else who could look after me? Are you sure you’re qualified enough to do this job? ’, Obviously because of my skin color.”
She said some patients had also questioned her ability to speak English.
“I’ve stated,‘ I am communicating to you in a way that you can fully understand ’,” she said.
Elita also lists other offensive patient remarks in the video, released as part of a campaign to get more staff to share stories and speak out against racism.
"It has been a challenge," she said.
“However in the challenges, in the midst of all of this, I still do what I do with love and respect and care and I will not stop doing it, because it is what I love to do.
"I am very proud to be the nurse that I am today."
Cathy Winfield, executive chief nurse at the trust, said: “I give my full support to Elita and all our other colleagues.
“We are going to do whatever we can to face this head-on and to educate and support our staff and our local communities to understand that racism won’t be accepted or tolerated.”
Last month, a nurse from the Philippines tweeted about racist abuse he was subjected to by a patient at the Royal Derby Hospital.
Chief executive Gavin Boyle said at the time he was “incredibly angry”, adding the trust would launch a campaign to tackle the issue.
The 3rd of March is International Sex Worker Rights Day. The day originated in 2001 when over 25,000 sex workers gathered in India for a sex worker festival. The organizers, Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, a Calcutta based group whose membership consists of somewhere upwards of 50,000 sex workers and members of their communities. Sex worker groups across the world have subsequently celebrated 3 March as International Sex Workers' Rights Day.
Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (2002): "We felt strongly that that we should have a day what need to be observed by the sex workers community globally. Keeping in view the large mobilization of all types of global sexworkers [Female, Male, Transgender] , we proposed to observe 3rd March as THE SEX WORKERS RIGHTS DAY.
Knowing the usual response of international bodies and views of academicians and intellectuals of the 1st world [many of them consider that sex workers of third world are different from 1st world and can't take their decision] a call coming from a third world country would be more appropriate at this juncture, we believe. It will be a great pleasure to us if all of you observe the day in your own countries too ... We need your inspiration and support to turn our dreams into reality.
Background: DMSC
The founding members of DMSC had come together through their active involvement as peer educators in a STD / HIV prevention intervention program, widely known as the Sonagachi Project, which has been running since 1992. Since then we have been successfully networking among sex workers in India and some other countries, particularly in South and South-East Asia, to foreground the demands for promotion and protection of our rights. Our political objectives are decriminalization of adult prostitution, securing social recognition of sex work as a valid profession and establishing sex workers right to self-determination. We [brought] together 80000 or more delegates for this seminal meet, the first of its kind in this part of the world. Although our resources are limited, our dreams are unbounded and our enthusiasm is high and commitment unwavering. With your support, we are determined to make this event a grand success. We believe ONLY RIGHTS CAN STOP THE WRONGS.
Africa Eye investigates an unsolved murder of a sex worker in Sierra Leone
Africa Eye investigates an unsolved murder of a sex worker in Sierra Leone and uncovers a world where women who sell sex are often abused, attacked, trafficked, and even killed.
In the city of Makeni, a group of sex workers, led by a woman called Lady P, are on a mission to fight for justice and to improve their rights. Although sex work is not illegal in the country, these women are seen as immoral outcasts and receive little support from the government or society. And as Tyson Conteh reports, their survival has been made even more precarious since the pandemic coronavirus.
When we think of elephants, we may think: gentle giants, majestic, noble creatures. All of which is true. Especially for visitors to the areas they usually inhabit.
But these same elephants can also quietly sneak up on a farmer’s land and devour their entire harvest in one night; they can traumatise entire communities; stop children from going to school; flatten homes; and even kill people.
For communities living on the front lines of wildlife habitats, the reality of sharing space with animals can be harsh - especially the cost of living alongside often contested protected areas, national parks and nature reserves.
So depending on who or where you are, your perception of elephants may differ.
It is hard for environmentalists to admit, but many conventional conservation methods are failing. Entire ecosystems are being lost to industrial and economic expansion, pushing wildlife into ever-smaller spaces, where they compete with local communities who are already marginalized. That is why we hear so much about the human-elephant conflict.
To reduce this conflict and protect the environment, it is time we address the needs of the African communities that share spaces with wildlife; the people who have too often been displaced and ignored - not only by governments but also by generations of conservationists.
We have to learn from our mistakes and acknowledge that many protected areas were founded on racial, gender and class divisions, which helped create today’s inequalities. Our governments, conservationists and society at large must tackle the root causes, not only the symptoms.
It is the challenge of African conservation in the 21st century.
Hogwarts Legacy players will be able to create characters that have a masculine or feminine voice no matter what their bodies look like, sources told Bloomberg News.
The next Harry Potter video game will allow players to customize their character’s voice, body type and gender placement for the school dormitories, taking a stride toward inclusivity after several recent controversies stemming from comments by series creator J.K.Rowling that were seen as transphobic.
Hogwarts Legacy is scheduled for 2022 release from publisher Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Inc. and developer Avalanche Software. When players start up the game, they will be able to create a character that has a masculine or feminine voice no matter what their body looks like, according to people familiar with the game’s development. The people requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the press.
Players will then get to select one of two options - “witch” or “wizard” - that will determine the dorm they get placed in at the magical school of Hogwarts and how they are addressed by other characters in the game.
Although this level of customization has grown more common in video games and is no longer unusual, it’s noteworthy for Hogwarts Legacy. Last summer Rowling made several comments that were widely viewed as demeaning toward transgender people and denounced by many, including Harry Potter film stars Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson.
The comments also rattled some people working on the game, Bloomberg reported. As a result, some members of the Hogwarts Legacy development team have fought to make the game as inclusive as possible, pushing for the character customization and even for a transgender character to be added.
There was resistance from management at first, the people familiar with the project said, but currently the character customization is included in the game. Warner Bros. spokesperson declined to comment.
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment is a unit of AT&T Inc. and houses titles like Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and Mortal Kombat 1. The unit had attracted interest from several major companies last year and could have reaped $ 4 billion, according to a report from CNBC last June.
But AT&T balked given the business’s growth potential, Bloomberg reported, and pulled the unit from a list of potential asset sales. Harry Potter is one of the most lucrative franchises in entertainment. The film series is the third-highest grossing of all time, with $ 7.7 billion in revenue, while Rowling has sold more than half a billion books, more than any individual author in history.
Last month, Hogwarts Legacy faced more controversy after gaming journalist Liam Robertson revealed that Troy Leavitt, a senior producer at Salt Lake City-based Avalanche, made dozens of YouTube videos attacking feminism and “social justice.”
He also expressed support for Gamergate, a loose community of gamers who harass journalists and game developers for voicing progressive views. ResetEra, one of the largest video game forums, enacted “a total ban on threads for promotional media” around Hogwarts Legacy in the wake of that discovery and Rowling’s comments. Leavitt didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Fighters, government forces and a “private militia” backing the authorities have indiscriminately killed hundreds of civilians in an escalating conflict in northeastern Mozambique, Amnesty International has said in a new report.
Violence stoked by fighters in gas-rich Cabo Delgado province has killed at least 2,600 people since 2017, about half of them civilians, according to an NGO, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data. More than half a million people have been displaced.
Local people are “caught between the Mozambican security forces, the private militia fighting alongside the government and the armed opposition group locally known as 'al-Shabab' - none of which respect their right to life, or the rules of war”, Amnesty's regional chief, Deprose Muchena, said in a statement on Tuesday.
"All three have committed war crimes, causing the deaths of hundreds of civilians."
There was no immediate comment from the government. The authorities have previously denied their soldiers committed any atrocities in Cabo Delgado.
Amnesty said its analysis was based on interviews with dozens of internally displaced people, as well as reviews of videos and pictures, including satellite imagery.
The watchdog said the government hired a South African private military company, Dyck Advisory Group (DAG), after it “lost a number of battles” in its quest to regain control of the region.
The mercenaries have fired guns from helicopters and dropped hand grenades indiscriminately into crowds, according to Amnesty.
DAG said it will hire outside lawyers to look into its activities in Mozambique.
“We take these allegations very seriously and we are going to put an independent legal team in there shortly to do a board of inquiry and look at what we are doing,” Lionel Dyck, the founder of the company, told Reuters news agency.
He declined to give further details of the group’s mission in Mozambique.
Amnesty said it had probed an attack by helicopter at a hospital in the port town of Mocimboa da Praia in June last year, and schools had come under fire in other incidents.
It said it had verified video of another incident in September, in which government troops beat a naked woman with a wooden stick, shot her 36 times and left her body on the highway.
In another gruesome killing, security forces blindfolded and shot several men in Quissanga before dumping their bodies in a mass grave, Amnesty said.
After that attack, “government security forces took women to be raped at the nearby base they had set up, where they also detained, beat, and summarily executed more men”, the rights group added.
The fighters are also accused of heinous acts of violence with machetes, including numerous beheadings, the desecration of corpses and abduction of young women and children, including young girls.
“Fighters routinely kill civilians, loot their homes, and then burn them down using petrol,” Amnesty said.
It added residents used separate words to describe two al-Shabab methods of killing: “Beheaded” and “chopped”, the second of which, it quoted a 75-year-old man as saying, meant “being 'divided like a cow' ”.
Yussuf Adam, a retired professor of contemporary history in Maputo, said there needs to be a firm commitment to getting justice for the victims.
“Everyone is acting with impunity… One of the most important aspects which the government policy lacks is each time there is some reports of violations of human rights, the people involved need to be sent to trial,” Adam told Al Jazeera.
Adam, who taught at The Eduardo Mondlane University, said he had recently visited camps hosting people displaced by the conflict.
“People told me, we are now slaves because we have left our land, our houses, our mosques, the place where we buried our dead… and at this moment we are dependent on the owners of the land where we have been settled,” Adam said.
The United States has lost 5,11,839 lives so far due to COVID-19 ..
President Joe Biden on Tuesday said he hopes that the United States, the country hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic, would be normal by the same time next year.
“When do I think things will get back to normal? I've been cautioned not to give an answer to that because we don't know for sure. But my hope is, for this time next year, we're going to be back to normal, ”Mr. Biden told reporters at the White House.
But a lot is yet to be done, he said.
“But again, it depends upon if people continue to be smart and understand that we still can have significant losses. There's a lot we have to do yet, ”Mr. Biden said.
The United States has lost 5,11,839 lives so far due to COVID-19.
Mr. Biden on Tuesday announced measures to increase the production of COVID-19 vaccines and accelerate process of vaccinating Americans.
Also read: Biden vows enough vaccine for all U.S. adults by end of May
"We're increasing the places where people can get vaccinated. We've sent millions of vaccines to over 7,000 pharmacies to make it easier for folks to get their COVID-19 vaccine shot like they would their flu shot," he said.
“The federal government is also working with states to set up hundreds of mass vaccination centers in places like stadiums, community centers, parking lots that vaccinate thousands of people per day. My wife Jill and I just visited one in Houston last week. It's incredible, "Mr. Biden said.
So far three vaccines have received emergency use authorization.
"With this increased production of three safe and effective vaccines, we have an opportunity to help address the urgent national need more quickly and getting our schools back open safely.
"We should all be encouraged by this news of a third safe and highly effective COVID-19 vaccine. The more people who get vaccinated, the faster we're going to overcome this virus and get back to our loved ones, get our economy back on track, and start to move back to normal, "he said.
"One of my first goals when I got into office was to say that there will be 100 million vaccination shots administered in my first 100 days in office. We've got halfway to that goal in 37 days, and I feel confident we'll make it all the way, "he said.
"We have a long way to go, but, we're going to use every resource of the federal government to make it happen," he added.
Mr. Biden said this is a national imperative that they get the kids back into the classroom safely and as soon as possible.
GUSAU, Nigeria (AP) - Hundreds of Nigerian girls abducted last week from a boarding school in the country’s northwest have been released, a state governor said Tuesday, as the West African nation faces a spate of school kidnappings.
Nigerian governor says 279 kidnapped schoolgirls are freed
The girls, ages 10 and up, dressed in light blue hijabs and barefoot, packed into Zamfara state’s Government House conference room. They appeared calm, chatting to one another as they sat in long rows while journalists photographed them. They will receive a medical checkup before being returned to their parents.
Zamfara Gov. Bello Matawalle said that 279 girls had been freed after being abducted from the Government Girls Junior Secondary School in Jangebe town on Friday. The government last week said 317 had been kidnapped. It was not clear if the higher number was an error or if some girls were still missing.
“Alhamdulillah! (God be praised!) It gladdens my heart to announce the release of the abducted students, ”Matawalle said in a post on Twitter early Tuesday. “I enjoin all well-meaning Nigerians to rejoice with us as our daughters are now safe.”
Officials said “bandits” were behind the abduction, referring to the groups of armed men who operate in Zamfara state and kidnap for money or to push for the release of their members from jail.
At the time of the attack, one resident told The Associated Press that the gunmen also attacked a nearby military camp and checkpoint, preventing soldiers from responding to the school.
One of the girls recounted the night of their abduction to the AP.
“We were sleeping at night when suddenly we started hearing gunshots. They were shooting endlessly. We got out of our beds and people said we should run, that they are thieves, ”she said. Officials ended the interview before the girl could give her name.
The attackers eventually found her and some classmates and held guns to their heads, she said.
“I was really afraid of being shot,” she said, adding that they asked for directions to the staff quarters and the principal. "We said we don’t know who she is."
Nigeria has seen several such attacks and kidnappings in recent years, the most notorious in 2014, when 276 girls were abducted by the jihadist rebels of Boko Haram from the secondary school in Chibok in Borno state. More than 100 of those girls are still missing.
Boko Haram is opposed to western education and its fighters often target schools. But most attacks in the northwest are perpetrated by armed criminal groups with no such ideology.
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Police and the military have been trying to rescue the girls from the Zamfara abduction, which caused international outrage. Officials did not say if a ransom had been paid for their release.
“We have been in discussion since Friday with the abductors and reached agreement on Monday,” the governor said, adding that he would ensure additional security at all schools in the state.
President Muhammadu Buhari expressed “overwhelming joy” over the release of the girls.
“I join the families and people of Zamfara state in welcoming and celebrating the release of these traumatized female students,” he said in a statement. “Being held in captivity is an agonizing experience not only for the victims, but also their families and all of us.”
The president called for greater vigilance to prevent bandits from carrying out such attacks - but warned that paying money for the release of victims would only result in more assaults.
Ernest Ereke, of the University of Abuja, agreed that ransoms are allowing criminal groups to buy more arms and expand their power.
And the Nigerian state increasingly looks too weak to respond, he said.
“It is a lucrative venture in a country where a lot of young people are impoverished, jobless and hungry," he said. ”The state, which should confront these criminals, is enabling them by always pandering to their dictates. It should be the other way round, that is, the criminals should be scared of the state, but, in this case, it is the state that is scared of criminals. ”
“If the state is not able to crush them,” he added, "it means something is wrong with the Nigerian state.”
On Saturday, 24 students, six staff and eight relatives were released after being abducted on February 17 from the Government Science College Kagara in Niger state. In December, more than 300 schoolboys from a secondary school in Kankara, in northwestern Nigeria, were taken and later released. The government has said no ransom was paid for the students ’release.
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Olukoya reported from Lagos, Nigeria. AP writer Carley Petesch in Dakar, Senegal contributed
