Month: October 2021

Kenya’s Benson Kipruto won the pandemic-delayed Boston Marathon on Monday when the race returned from a 30-month absence with a smaller, socially distanced feel and moved from the spring for the first time in its 125-year history.

Diana Kipyogei won the women’s race to complete the eighth Kenyan sweep since 2000.

Although organizers put runners through COVID-19 protocols and asked spectators to keep their distance, large crowds lined the 26.2-mile course from Hopkinton to Boston as an early drizzle cleared and temperatures rose to the low 60s for a beautiful fall day. 

They watched Kipruto run away from the lead pack as it turned onto Beacon Street with about three miles to go and break the tape in 2 hours, 9 minutes, 51 seconds.

A winner in Prague and Athens who finished 10th in Boston in 2019, Kipruto waited out an early breakaway by American CJ Albertson, who led by as many as two minutes at the halfway point. Kipruto took the lead at Cleveland Circle and finished 46 seconds ahead of 2016 winner Lemi Berhanu; Albertson, who turned 28 on Monday, was 10th, 1:53 back.

Kipyogei ran ahead for much of the race and finished in 2:24:45, 23 seconds ahead of 2017 winner Edna Kiplagat.

Marcel Hug of Switzerland won the men’s wheelchair race earlier despite making a wrong term in the final mile, finishing the slightly detoured route just seven seconds off his course record in 1:08:11.

Manuela Schär, also from Switzerland, won the women’s wheelchair race in 1:35:21.

Hug, who has raced Boston eight times and has five victories here, cost himself a $50,000 course record bonus when he missed the second-to-last turn, following the lead vehicle instead of turning from Commonwealth Avenue onto Hereford Street.

“The car went straight and I followed the car,” said Hug, who finished second in the Chicago Marathon by 1 second on Sunday. “But it’s my fault. I should go right, but I followed the car.”

With fall foliage replacing the spring daffodils and more masks than mylar blankets, the 125th Boston Marathon at last left Hopkinton for its long-awaited long run to Copley Square. 

A rolling start and shrunken field allowed for social distancing on the course, as organizers tried to manage amid a changing COVID-19 pandemic that forced them to cancel the race last year for the first time since the event began in 1897.

“It’s a great feeling to be out on the road,” race director Dave McGillivray said. “Everyone is excited. We’re looking forward to a good day.”

A light rain greeted participants at the Hopkinton Green, where about 30 uniformed members of the Massachusetts National Guard left at 6 a.m. The men’s and women’s wheelchair racers — some of whom completed the 26.2-mile (42.2 km) distance in Chicago a day earlier — left shortly after 8 a.m., followed by the men’s and women’s professional fields. 

“We took things for granted before COVID-19. It’s great to get back to the community and it puts things in perspective,” said National Guard Capt. Greg Davis, 39, who was walking with the military group for the fourth time. “This is a historic race, but today is a historic day.”

Kenya’s Lawrence Cherono and Worknesh Degefa of Ethiopia did not return to defend their 2019 titles, but 13 past champions and five Tokyo Paralympic gold medal winners were in the professional fields.

Held annually since a group of Bostonians returned from the 1896 Athens Olympics and decided to stage a marathon of their own, the race has occurred during World Wars and even the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. But it was first postponed, then canceled last year, then postponed from the spring in 2021.

It’s the first time the event hasn’t been held in April as part of the Patriots’ Day holiday that commemorates the start of the Revolutionary War. To recognize Indigenous Peoples Day, race organizers honored 1936 and ’39 winner Ellison “Tarzan” Brown and three-time runner-up Patti Catalano Dillon, a member of the Mi’kmaq tribe.

To manage the spread of the coronavirus, runners had to show proof that they’re vaccinated or test negative for COVID-19. Organizers also re-engineered the start so runners in the recreational field of more than 18,000 weren’t waiting around in crowded corrals for their wave to begin; instead, once they get off the bus in Hopkinton they can go.

“I love that we’re back to races across the country and the world,” said Doug Flannery, a 56-year-old Illinois resident who was waiting to start his sixth Boston Marathon. “It gives people hope that things are starting to come back.”

Police were visible all along the course as authorities vowed to remain vigilant eight years after the bombings that killed three spectators and maimed hundreds of others on Boylston Street near the Back Bay finish line.

The race started about an hour earlier than usual, leading to smaller crowds in the first few towns. Wellesley College students had been told not to kiss the runners as they pass the school’s iconic “scream tunnel” near the halfway mark.
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It has been described as a “crash course in football club ownership” and the two Hollywood stars who bought a beleaguered team in English soccer’s fifth tier with the lofty aim of transforming it into a global force are certainly learning on the job. 

“I’m watching our PLAYERS MOP THE FIELD to continue the game,” read a tweet last week from Rob McElhenney, an American actor and director who was the creator of TV show “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and now makes up one half of the new ownership of Wrexham AFC. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” 

The residents of Wrexham have been rubbing their eyes in disbelief for a while. 

It’s nearly a year since McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds, the Canadian-born actor best known for starring in the “Deadpool” movies, completed their out-of-nowhere $2.5 million takeover of Wrexham, a 157-year-old club from Wales that has fallen on such hard times since the turn of the century that its supporters’ trust twice had to save the team from going out of business. 

Once the seed was planted by friends about buying a European soccer team, they sought out advisors to recommend a club that had history, was in a false position, and played a big role in the local community. Wrexham fitted the bill. 

After all, it’s the world’s third oldest professional club that used to attract attendances of 20,000 in the 1970s — and had some big wins in the FA Cup in the 1990s, including over then-English champion Arsenal — but has been languishing at non-league level, where some teams are semi-professional, since 2008. Located in an industrial town of about 65,000 people near the northwest English border, it is not too far from the soccer hotbeds of Liverpool and Manchester. 

To the amazement of everyone involved in English and Welsh soccer, the purchase went through and McElhenney and Reynolds immediately made some big promises: improvements to the stadium, playing squad and leadership structure; a major investment in the women’s team; and to “introduce the club to the world.” They’ve stayed true to their word, making Wrexham stand out at a time when many clubs below the lucrative English Premier League have plunged into financial turmoil because of the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. 

“I remember when it all first broke on the news, it seemed a bit surreal,” Wrexham manager Phil Parkinson told The Associated Press. “But since I’ve spoken to them, you understand how serious they are in terms of making a success of this club and leaving a legacy.” 

Walking through the tunnel and onto the field at the Racecourse Ground, it’s impossible to not notice the giant stand — known as “The Kop” — to the left that is being renovated and currently is covered in a huge red banner. On it are Wrexham’s new sponsors, TikTok, Aviation Gin and Expedia, globally recognized brands that typically have no place at this level of the game. 

Season-ticket sales have nearly trebled, from 2,000 to around 5,800, and attendances have been more than 8,000 for home games, better than many clubs get in the third and fourth tiers and a figure virtually unheard of at non-league level. 

For the first full season under Reynolds and McElhenney, the men’s squad has been enhanced — one player was signed for 200,000 pounds ($270,000), nearly a club record — and there’s a new coach and chief executive with decades of experience working in the English Football League, the three divisions below the Premier League. 

Behind the scenes, there are advisors acting as conduits between the board and the new owners who have held important leadership roles in British soccer: former Liverpool CEO Peter Moore, former Football Association technical director Les Reed and former English Football League CEO Shaun Harvey. 

Meanwhile, the push to put Wrexham “on the map” in world soccer is ongoing. 

It recently became the first non-league team to be included on the popular video game, FIFA. Reynolds (18 million) and McElhenney (700,000) use their large Twitter following to promote the club — and even to comment on the team’s games as an incredulous McElhenney did on Saturday when Wrexham’s match was abandoned because of a waterlogged pitch. 

And in what could perhaps be the biggest game-changer, Wrexham is the subject of an access-all-areas TV documentary charting its transformation under the new ownership. A two-season order of “Welcome to Wrexham” has been placed by American channel FX, with Reynolds and McElhenney the executive directors of what could prove to be something like a real-life version of Emmy Award-winning U.S. comedy “Ted Lasso.” 

FX has said the documentary will explore “the club, the town, and Rob and Ryan’s crash course in football club ownership.” Camera crews have been at the club for much of the past year. 

“Everywhere you go, there’s a camera,” Wrexham captain Luke Young said. “However, many times the crew say, ‘Be yourself and do what’s natural,’ you do to an extent but you then think, ‘Should I say this?’ But they’ve said they’re not going to hang you out to dry.” 

So, is Wrexham simply being used as a vehicle to produce a reality TV show, as some skeptics will say? The scale of the transformation and the money being spent by the new owners on all areas of the club suggests otherwise. 

How long Reynolds and McElhenney stick around is up for debate. But, for now, Wrexham — both the soccer team and the local area — has been given a lift by the presence of famous new owners and the exposure that is providing. Fleur Robinson, the recently appointed CEO, said the club has new members “from Los Angeles to New York” and especially from Philadelphia, the city where McElhenney is from and the inspiration for Wrexham’s new green away uniform. 

The owners have been on chat shows in the U.S., talking about their new project. 

“There hasn’t been a day gone by when the football club hasn’t been mentioned in some way on a national or global scale,” Robinson said. 

Reynolds and McElhenney have promised to come to Wrexham once pandemic-related travel restrictions are lifted and watch the team, which is currently halfway down the National League standings after nine games. 

That visit could be anytime now, and they could be in for quite the reception. 

“There is a such a buzz about town, so this is what everyone is waiting for, to see them,” Robinson said. “They’ve bought a club and not seen it for themselves. I’m sure they are just as excited as the people in Wrexham to come here.” 
…

Paul McCartney has revisited the breakup of The Beatles, flatly disputing the suggestion that he was responsible for the group’s demise.

Speaking on an episode of BBC Radio 4’s “This Cultural Life” that is scheduled to air on Oct. 23, McCartney said it was John Lennon who wanted to disband The Beatles.

“I didn’t instigate the split,” McCartney said. “That was our Johnny.”

The band’s fans have long debated who was responsible for the breakup, with many blaming McCartney. But McCartney said Lennon’s desire to “break loose” was the main driver behind the split.

Confusion about the breakup was allowed to fester because their manager asked the band members to keep quiet until he concluded a number of business deals, McCartney said. 

The interview comes ahead of Peter Jackson’s six-hour documentary chronicling the final months of the band. “The Beatles: Get Back,” set for release in November on Disney+, is certain to revisit the breakup of the legendary band. McCartney’s comments were first reported by The Observer.

When asked by interviewer John Wilson about the decision to strike out on his own, McCartney retorted: “Stop right there. I am not the person who instigated the split. Oh no, no, no. John walked into a room one day and said, ‘I am leaving The Beatles.’ Is that instigating the split, or not?”

McCartney expressed sadness over the breakup, saying the group was still making “pretty good stuff.” 

“This was my band, this was my job, this was my life. So, I wanted it to continue,” McCartney said.
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Ethiopia’s Seifu Tura Abdiwak won the Chicago men’s marathon on Sunday and Kenya’s Ruth Chepngetich the women’s race.

The 24-year-old Tura completed the 42-kilometer course in 2:06:12, beating out American Galen Rupp, who finished close behind with an official time of 02:06:35.

Chepngetich, 27, finished her race in 02:22:31, with Emma Bates of the United States coming in second at 02:24:20.

One of the best-known long-distance races, the Boston Marathon, is set for Monday in the northeastern U.S. city. The coronavirus pandemic caused the race, normally run in April, to be moved to Monday’s date.
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One player took off from the airport, while another jumped out of the window of his hotel room. In all, of the 24 members of Cuba’s national baseball team who arrived in Mexico for the under-23 World Cup, only about half came home.

This year, a record number of players have defected from the communist-run island nation, which is enduring its worst economic crisis in 30 years.

The mass defection is “unprecedented in the history of baseball,” Francys Romero, a sports journalist who has written a book on the phenomenon, told AFP.

The player who jumped from his hotel room window? He told Romero that he shimmied down a palm tree to get to a waiting getaway car.

Cuban baseball players leaving their homeland is not new. When professional sports were upended in the wake of the revolution led by Fidel Castro, many sought better opportunities abroad.

After a smattering of defections during the Cold War, the exodus picked up pace after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

Since Rene Arocha left the national team at the airport in Miami in 1991 for a career in the United States, about two or three players a year have deserted their country. Nine jumped ship in 1996. Those players are consistently regarded as traitors.

Some have left legally, an option that became possible with immigration reform in 2013, but which was starkly curtailed when flights were reduced because of the coronavirus pandemic.

A who’s who of players who became Major League Baseball stars have made the leap, including Orlando and Livan Hernandez, Jose Abreu, Aroldis Chapman, Yasiel Puig and current Tampa Bay Rays standout Randy Arozarena.

Younger, not always stars

Not only has the number of players seeking careers abroad exploded, but their profiles are different: they are younger and not always destined for major league stardom, according to Romero.

So why are they risking it?

“To change their lives. Sports comes after that,” he said.

Those who have left have faced criticism on social media, but many Cubans have simply wished them well; they are all too aware of how difficult life is in Cuba at the moment, with major shortages of food and medicine.

Earlier this year, when Cuba’s national team came to the United States to play Olympic qualifying games, top talent Cesar Prieto, two other players and the team psychologist defected.

Cuba, a three-time Olympic champion and 25-time Baseball World Cup winner, failed for the first time to qualify for the Summer Games in Tokyo.

For Luis Daniel del Risco, currently the highest-ranking official in the Cuban baseball federation, there is “a war” under way to “destroy Cuban baseball.”

He slammed what he called “a harassment campaign” by foreign recruiters, who attend most games that Cuba plays abroad.

‘Very complicated decision’

“I’ve often heard it said that the state of baseball in Cuba reflects the state of the country,” said Cuban novelist Leonardo Padura, a huge baseball fan who has dedicated a book to interviews with players.

“I think that what happened is a representation of what’s happening in the country, this mass exodus” that has also been seen in an uptick in the number of Cubans trying to reach the United States on rickety boats to Florida.

“It’s really a very complicated decision to make, as they are giving up a lot,” he added.

They leave “without their passports, which are held by the delegation,” Romero said. And all are barred from coming home to Cuba for eight years.

Del Risco says the players “did not fulfill their commitments to their teammates and to the country,” but admits it’s a “personal decision for each of them.”

Major League Baseball and the Cuban baseball federation had reached a deal in late 2018 that would have allowed Cubans to play in the United States without having to first defect, but former President Donald Trump scrapped it in 2019.
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French President Emmanuel Macron said Friday that his country will return 26 African artworks — royal thrones, ceremonial altars, revered statues — to Benin later this month, part of France’s long-promised plans to give back artwork taken from Africa during the colonial era.

Discussions have been under way for years on returning the artworks from the 19th century Dahomey Kingdom. Called the “Abomey Treasures,” they currently are held in the Quai Branly Museum in Paris. The museum, near the Eiffel Tower, holds thousands of works from former French colonies.

Macron said the 26 pieces will be given back at the end of October, “because to restitute these works to Africa is to give African young people access to their culture.” It remains unclear when exactly they will arrive in Benin.

“We need to be honest with ourselves. There was colonial pillage, it’s absolutely true,” Macron told a group of African cultural figures at an Africa-France gathering in the southern city of Montpellier. He noted other works already were returned to Senegal and Benin, and the restitution of art to Ivory Coast is planned.

Cameroon-born art curator Koyo Kouoh pressed Macron for more efforts to right past wrongs.

“Our imagination was violated,” she said.

“Africa has been married to France in a forced marriage for at least 500 years,” Kouoh said. “The work (on mending relations) that should have been done for decades wasn’t done…It’s not possible that we find ourselves here in 2021.”

A sweeping 2018 report commissioned by Macron recommended that French museums give back works that were taken without consent, estimating that up to 90% of African art is located outside the continent. Some other European countries are making similar efforts.

Three years later, few artworks have been returned. To facilitate the repatriation of the Abomey Treasures, France’s parliament passed a law in December 2020 allowing the state to hand the works over and giving it up to one year to do so.

The Africa-France meeting Friday was frank and occasionally heated. Macron, who is trying to craft a new French strategy for Africa. met with hundreds of African entrepreneurs, cultural leaders and young people. 

Speakers from Nigeria, Chad, Guinea and beyond had a long list of demands for France: reparations for colonial crimes, withdrawal of French troops, investment that bypasses corrupt governments and a tougher stance toward African dictatorships.

Macron defended France’s military presence in Mali and other countries in the Sahel region as necessary to keep terrorists at bay, and he refused to apologize for the past.

But he acknowledged that France has a “responsibility and duty” to Africa because of its role in the slave trade and other colonial-era wrongs. Noting that more than 7 million French people have a family link to Africa, Macron said France cannot build its future unless it “assumes its Africanness.”
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Jenny Chan strode through central London on a late summer Saturday afternoon, heading for the South Bank Lion statue opposite Big Ben.

There, by the River Thames, the 57-year-old mother and her two children joined a group of fellow Hong Kong expats who had gathered to sign a banner for Anson Lo, a 26-year-old singer with Hong Kong boy band Mirror.

About 200 people, most wearing clothes in Lo’s signature pink, wrote messages on the giant scroll. The banner had been hauled to the United Kingdom by Mirror fans, and its London stop on Sept. 25 was just one of many scheduled for outposts of the global Hong Kong diaspora. Its final destination is Hong Kong, where it will be presented to Lo himself.

The 12-member Hong Kong boy group Mirror originated in 2018 on the first season of King Maker, an elimination-style talent contest produced by Hong Kong’s ViuTV. The producers hand-picked contestants to form a boy band around the winner, Keung To. Mirror’s first release, roughly translated as One Moment in Time, debuted in November of that year.

Mirror’s trajectory — from its emergence before Hong Kong’s massive pro-democracy protests of 2019 to its superstar status in the Cantonese-speaking world — has made listening to the band “a type of resistance,” wrote Mary Hui on Quartz, as China cracks down almost daily on Hong Kong’s civil society.

Inspirational lyrics

Mirror members are identified more by their signature colors — Keung To’s is peach — than their politics. But it was widely reported via Facebook that former journalist and activist Gwyneth Ho, detained on a national security charge and facing the possibility of life imprisonment, cried upon hearing their song Warrior, which includes a line that translates to “I’d rather die / And I won’t retreat.”

 

Such lyrics help explain why Mirror is now a common thread among those fleeing China’s repression in the once freewheeling former British colony. Today, wherever Hong Kongers gather, Mirror provides the soundtrack, with hits such as Ignited and Boss.

 

Howard Chan, 23, and his sister Maggie Chan, 16, were studying in the United Kingdom when Maggie discovered Mirror late in 2018 on a show streaming online. She was drawn by the Cantonese, the language spoken in Hong Kong. VOA is using pseudonyms to ensure the safety of Chan family members as China tracks people overseas under Hong Kong’s national security law.

Through the band, the younger Chans told VOA Cantonese, they have connected with old friends in Hong Kong and friends who had moved to Australia.

Maggie Chan, a high school student, said she persuaded her brother, a Ph.D. candidate in engineering at a U.K. university, to join her in binge-watching Mirror’s ViuTV shows.

Howard Chan became a Mirror fan.

Their mother, Jenny Chan, moved to London in August 2019 to take care of her children. She continued watching a daily sitcom on TVB, a Hong Kong station often labeled pro-China.

Her children pushed her to quit TVB, but she resisted until the COVID-19 lockdown, when she started watching ViuTV.

Jenny Chan became a Mirror fan in part because “they’re handsome.”

The U.K. Chans rely on Thomas Chan, a 60-year-old patriarch and an executive with an international company in Hong Kong, to collect Mirror-related material and send it to them.

When he visited in July, he pushed through jet lag by binge-watching Ossan’s Love HK, which features Mirror’s Edan Lui and Lo.

The 15-episode series is a remake of a Japanese “boys love” drama. ViuTV’s Cantonese version is the first of the genre to air in Hong Kong.

Thomas Chan became a Mirror fan.

 

Mom worries about band

Despite Mirror’s popularity, Jenny Chan worries about the band’s fate given China’s targeting of effeminate male celebrities.

Her favorite, Lo, is known for his androgynous style.

Described by her son as politically liberal and open to new ideas, she also worries that the band’s influence may upset authorities.

When hundreds of fans attended a Hong Kong birthday event for Lo in July, they ignored police orders to disperse, instead waiting for a pink double-decker bus proclaiming “Happy Birthday Anson Lo” on its side.

“I believe China would feel afraid, as a group of people gathered, and they were not scared (of the police). We were worried (about Mirror),” she told VOA Cantonese.

She is relieved the semiofficial Hong Kong Tourism Board recently invited Lo and fellow Mirror member Ian Chan to appear in a promotional advertisement.

The U.K. Chans attend fan-hosted events in the London area, the most recent on Oct. 3. Howard Chan told VOA Cantonese that the events help maintain a Hong Kong identity.

“We live in London and often see many Hong Kongers. But for some who live quite far away, there is barely any chance to speak Cantonese. These events are something where we can get together,” he said.

Howard Chan recalled attending London marches supporting Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement with his sister before the pandemic. Those felt similar to Mirror fan events, he said, in that both attracted Cantonese-speaking people to a common activity.

“When I see someone with an Asian face, I don’t even have to think or ask in English whether they are Hong Kongers. I can just speak Cantonese,” he said of the marches and Mirror events.

Jenny Chan, who said she could tell her son felt heavy-hearted at the protests, likes seeing him relaxed at Mirror events. “It was like going to therapists, helping him to release his emotions and get happier.”
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Nearly all Americans agree that the rampant spread of misinformation is a problem.

Most also think social media companies, and the people that use them, bear a good deal of blame for the situation. But few are very concerned that they themselves might be responsible, according to a new poll from The Pearson Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Ninety-five percent of Americans identified misinformation as a problem when they’re trying to access important information. About half put a great deal of blame on the U.S. government, and about three-quarters point to social media users and tech companies. Yet only 2 in 10 Americans say they’re very concerned that they have personally spread misinformation.

 

More — about 6 in 10 — are at least somewhat concerned that their friends or family members have been part of the problem.

For Carmen Speller, a 33-year-old graduate student in Lexington, Kentucky, the divisions are evident when she’s discussing the coronavirus pandemic with close family members. Speller trusts COVID-19 vaccines; her family does not. She believes the misinformation her family has seen on TV or read on questionable news sites has swayed them in their decision to stay unvaccinated against COVID-19.

In fact, some of her family members think she’s crazy for trusting the government for information about COVID-19.

“I do feel like they believe I’m misinformed. I’m the one that’s blindly following what the government is saying, that’s something I hear a lot,” Speller said. “It’s come to the point where it does create a lot of tension with my family and some of my friends as well.”

Speller isn’t the only one who may be having those disagreements with her family.

The survey found that 61% of Republicans say the U.S. government has a lot of responsibility for spreading misinformation, compared to just 38% of Democrats.

There’s more bipartisan agreement, however, about the role that social media companies, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, play in the spread of misinformation.

According to the poll, 79% of Republicans and 73% of Democrats said social media companies have a great deal or quite a bit of responsibility for misinformation.

And that type of rare partisan agreement among Americans could spell trouble for tech giants like Facebook, the largest and most profitable of the social media platforms, which is under fire from Republican and Democrat lawmakers alike.

“The AP-NORC poll is bad news for Facebook,” said Konstantin Sonin, a professor of public policy at the University of Chicago who is affiliated with the Pearson Institute. “It makes clear that assaulting Facebook is popular by a large margin — even when Congress is split 50-50, and each side has its own reasons.”

 

During a congressional hearing Tuesday, senators vowed to hit Facebook with new regulations after a whistleblower testified that the company’s own research shows its algorithms amplify misinformation and content that harms children.

“It has profited off spreading misinformation and disinformation and sowing hate,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said during a meeting of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection. Democrats and Republicans ended the hearing with acknowledgement that regulations must be introduced to change the way Facebook amplifies its content and targets users.

The poll also revealed that Americans are willing to blame just about everybody but themselves for spreading misinformation, with 53% of them saying they’re not concerned that they’ve spread misinformation.

“We see this a lot of times where people are very worried about misinformation but they think it’s something that happens to other people — other people get fooled by it, other people spread it,” said Lisa Fazio, a Vanderbilt University psychology professor who studies how false claims spread. “Most people don’t recognize their own role in it.”

Younger adults tend to be more concerned that they’ve shared falsehoods, with 25% of those ages 18 to 29 very or extremely worried that they have spread misinformation, compared to just 14% of adults ages 60 and older. Sixty-three percent of older adults are not concerned, compared with roughly half of other Americans.

Yet it’s older adults who should be more worried about spreading misinformation, given that research shows they’re more likely to share an article from a false news website, Fazio said.

Before she shares things with family or her friends on Facebook, Speller tries her best to make sure the information she’s passing on about important topics like COVID-19 has been peer-reviewed or comes from a credible medical institution. Still, Speller acknowledges there has to have been a time or two that she “liked” or hit “share” on a post that didn’t get all the facts quite right.

“I’m sure it has happened,” Speller said. “I tend to not share things on social media that I didn’t find on verified sites. I’m open to that if someone were to point out, ‘Hey this isn’t right,’ I would think, OK, let me check this.”

The AP-NORC poll of 1,071 adults was conducted Sept. 9-13 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.
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The Norwegian Nobel Committee Friday awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to journalists Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.”

At a ceremony in Oslo, Norwegian Nobel Committee Chair Berit Reiss-Andersen announced the winners, saying, “Ms. Ressa and Mr. Muratov are receiving the Peace Prize for their courageous fight for freedom of expression in the Philippines and in Russia.”

In a statement, the committee said Philippine journalist Maria Ressa is being recognized for her fearless use of freedom of expression to expose abuse of power, use of violence and growing authoritarianism in her native country. As an in investigative journalist and co-founder of the digital media company Rappler, Ressa focused critical attention on President Rodrigo Duterte’s controversial anti-drug campaign. 

Ms Ressa and Rappler have also documented how social media is being used to spread fake news, harass opponents, and manipulate public discourse.

 

The committee honored Russian journalist Dmitry Andreyevich Muratov for his decades-long defense of freedom of speech in Russia under increasingly challenging conditions. In 1993, he co-founded the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta and has been its editor in chief since 1995. It is considered to be the most independent newspaper in Russia today, with a fundamentally critical attitude towards power. 

The committee said the newspaper’s fact-based journalism and professional integrity have made it an important source of information on censurable aspects of Russian society. It has published critical articles on subjects including corruption, police violence, unlawful arrests, electoral fraud and the use of Russian military forces both within and outside Russia.

The two journalists will share a $1.1 million cash prize.

The Nobel Prizes for medicine, physics, chemistry, and literature have also been awarded this week. The prize for economics will be awarded Monday.

The awards will all be formally presented in December. Because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the academy announced this year’s ceremony will be a mixture of digital and physical events. Laureates will receive their Nobel Prize medals and diplomas in their home countries.

Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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This year’s Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah for his body of work detailing the refugee experience and how colonialism shaped African culture.

At a news conference at the Swedish Academy’s headquarters in Stockholm, Permanent Secretary Mats Helm said Gurnah received the award for “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.”

Gurnah, born in 1948 and raised on the island of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean, arrived in England as a refugee himself in the late 1960’s. He has published ten novels and a number of short stories.

In its statement, the academy said, “In Gurnah’s literary universe, everything is shifting – memories, names, identities. An unending exploration driven by intellectual passion is present in all his books.” The statement said that quality is as evident in his latest novel, 2020’s “Afterlives,” which he began writing as a 21-year-old refugee.

The academy went on to say Gurnah’s writing is “striking” for its dedication to truth and “his aversion to simplification. His novels recoil from stereotypical descriptions and open our gaze to a culturally diversified East Africa unfamiliar to many in other parts of the world.”

Gurnah will receive a $1.1 million cash prize, but for writers, the prize also adds prestige and publicity by exposing their work to much wider audience. 

The Nobel Prizes for medicine, physics and chemistry were awarded earlier this week, with the Peace Prize to be awarded Friday, and economics on Monday.

The awards will all be formally presented in December. Because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the academy announced this year’s ceremony will be a mixture of digital and physical events. Laureates will receive their Nobel Prize medals and diplomas in their home countries.

Some information in this report comes from Reuters. 
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