“The number of children who are hungry, isolated, abused, anxious, living in poverty and forced into marriage has increased. At the same time, their access to education, socialization and essential services including health, nutrition and protection has decreased”, Henrietta Fore, UNICEF Executive Director, said.
“The signs that children will bear the scars of the pandemic for years to come are unmistakable.”
According to the latest data from UNICEF, children in developing countries have been particularly affected, with rates of child poverty there feared to rise by around 15 per cent and an additional 140 million children in these countries also projected to be in households living below the poverty line.
168 million schoolchildren globally missed out on almost a year of classes, and more than 1 in 3 of the schoolchildren were unable to access remote learning, while schools were closed.
A sharp rise is also feared in child marriages, with about 10 million additional girls at risk of being married before they turn 18, unravelling years of progress in reducing the horrendous practice, and robbing young girls of their childhood and threatening their lives and health.
Health indicators, including mental health, for children also suffered major setbacks, and hunger and malnutrition rose sharply. As of March, children accounted for 13 per cent of global COVID-19 infections in 107 countries surveyed (data under 20 years of age). Nearly 100 million children were at risk of missing vaccines due to paused measles campaigns in 26 countries (data as of November 2020).
Furthermore, over two-thirds of mental health services for children were disrupted globally, and at least 1 in 7 children and young people lived under stay-at-home policies for most the year, leading to feelings of anxiety, depression and isolation.
Refugees and asylum seekers, in some 59 countries with available data, faced additional challenges, unable to access COVID-19-related social protection support due to border closures and rising xenophobia and exclusion (data as of November 2020).
Keep children at ‘heart’ of recovery
UNICEF Executive Director Fore called on all countries and stakeholders to ensure children are “at the heart of recovery efforts”.
“This means prioritizing schools in reopening plans. It means providing social protection including cash transfers for families. And it means reaching the most vulnerable children with critical services”, she urged.
“Only then can we protect this generation from becoming a lost generation.”
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Come with us, children, back to the magical, mystical land of the 1980s. Where for a brief but shining span of time the hair was high, the riffs were righteous, the lead singers preening, the flashpots fiery, the colors popping, and the party never stopped on Sunset Strip—or at the strip club.
Whether its called Hair Metal, Glam Metal, or Pop Metal (and how you feel about those terms), it filled the charts and screen time on MTV with bands like Guns n’ Roses, Mötley Crüe, Bon Jovi, Poison, Def Leppard, Twisted Sister, Warrant, Winger, L.A. Guns, Skid Row, Tesla, W.A.S.P., Dokken, Vixen, Quiet Riot, Stryper, Ratt,, Cinderella, Whitesnake and Great White.
Some have survived and continued to rock and fill large arenas or clubs, while others faded into obscurity. And the entire story is told in the new book Nöthin’ But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the ‘80s Hard Rock Explosion (560 pp., $29.99, St. Martin’s Press).
Noted music journos Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock (who met while writing for Guitar World magazine) included more than 200 mostly-original interviews with musicians, producers, engineers, managers, promoters, journalists, fans, DJs & VJs. The result is a highly entertaining and definitely no-holds barred tome.
“This is the music that has never left us. We’ve always discussed doing a book because it would be fun and cool, but an enormous task” Beaujour says in a dual Zoom interview with Bienstock. “But it’s the music that captured our imaginations when we were young. And you only get that relationship with music a couple of times in your life. You can’t bond with a genre as strongly in, say, your thirties.”
The 1980s time period and Los Angeles/Hollywood locale seemed to make a perfect breeding ground for the hard and fast sound with an unapologetic party vibe. “You had all these clubs in walking distance of each other on the Strip, and all around Hollywood, so all these bands and audiences were very concentrated,” Bienstock says.
In those pre-internet, pre-smartphone days, there were basically two ways outside of word of mouth for a band to promote their gigs: cheap ads in local rock publications, or be a soldier in the Great Flyer Wars. How many trees gave their lives for bright paper being plastered to area telephone poles – only to be covered up by a competing group’s notice, sometimes within hours – we will never know. Sabotage and skullduggery for placement ensued. It makes for one of the book’s more entertaining chapters.
“It was a full scale Marines-like operation!” Bienstock laughs. “These bands would print and put up thousands of flyers, but you also had to know what glue to use and where to place them and when to go out. You had to get people in the clubs, otherwise you wouldn’t get another gig. But [city workers] had to clean this up! It was like full-on vandalism in the name of show promotion.”
There’s also an anecdote from members of Warrant how Guns n’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan left a very threatening voice mail that the Gunners would come kick their asses if Warrant stuck their own flyers over a GNRs one again, something the authors got McKagan to corroborate. The book also notes how Poison had something of an advantage, as guitarist C.C. Deville’s mom owned a copy shop.
In fact, Poison’s story and history is one of the book’s more interesting. Hailing originally from Pennsylvania and nakedly ambitious, their early visual formula seemed odd: They dressed in effeminate clothing and wore heavy makeup. This somehow attracted a huge female ban base just as eager to have sex with the members as get grooming tips. This in turn attracted males to ensure sold-out shows.
The band still does incredible live business today, touring with the classic lineup for large crowds eager to hear “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” “Talk Dirty to Me” and the song from which the book takes its title.
“It helps to have all four guys, and each one of them had a personality. We [learned] a lot about their story that hadn’t really been reported on before,” Bienstock says. Beaujour adds that Poison’s commercial success plays a part in their longevity. “They had more Top 10 hits than Mötley Crüe, which surprised us. They reached more people that transcended the core fans of this music. Bret [Michaels, singer] is a serious hit writer.”
Another band’s story the book digs deep into is that of Skid Row. A group that could do power ballads, rock anthems, and harder music, they seemed to be set for longer success. But the combustibility of lead singer Sebastian Bach and some of his over-the-top antics and controversial behavior alienated the rest of the band.
“They were a bit at loggerheads from day one. Literally the first night Sebastian joins the band, he gets into a bar fight. But he’s this kid who’s just 20 years old with this insane voice who is literally beautiful,” Bienstock says. “If you created sort of an ‘80s rock god in a lab, it would be Sebastian Bach. The other guys knew what they were getting, and it took [Sebastian] to put them over the top. He was ‘rock’s bad boy’ and acted like he thought he was supposed to act, then didn’t [understand] why people were shocked.”
The book also discusses the prime importance of MTV in the career of these bands and their record sales, especially given they were so visual with the costumes and hair and explosions and scantily-clad women doing things that would not fly at all today. But in conversation, both authors feel that the music video channel was just as crucial for bands well outside Hair Metal.
“You can’t separate the history of pop music from MTV,” Beaujour says. “The song that really blew open the doors for this genre was Quiet Riot’s ‘Cum On Feel the Noize’ in 1983. That album [Metal Health] blew the Police’s Synchronicity out of the top spot on the charts. And that was [largely] because of the video. Without that, probably none of this would have happened.”
Bienstock adds “A lot of these bands also played every show, even if it was a club, like they were playing Madison Square Garden. So a lot of times you just had to put a camera on then and let them do what they normally would onstage.”
But, like many other genres, the heyday couldn’t last forever. In the early ‘90s, bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam came in with a different look and sound that caught the pop culture zeitgiest. Hair Metal genre’s fall was as fast and sudden as its rise, even though as the book posits, the “Grunge killed Hair Metal” theory is overly simplistic.
Of course, nothing ever really goes away. The 1970s saw a resurgence of interest in the music of the 1950s, and Gen Xers of the late ‘80s all wanted to be at Woodstock or a Doors concert. Today, Hair Metal has seen a resurgence from Broadway (Rock of Ages) to a dedicated channel on SiriusXM (Hair Nation), “tribute” acts (Steel Panther), movies (the Mötley Crüe biopic The Dirt). It’s even part of the playlists on terrestrial “classic rock” stations.
In Houston, a look at Warehouse Live’s upcoming concert calendar lists shows by L.A. Guns, Winger, Slaughter, Kix, Lita Ford, Bulletboys, Warrant, Sebastian Bach, and Mike Tramp (White Lion). Audiences include Millennials and Gen Z new fans among the original Gen Xers, with parents bringing along their children to shows. “It’s definitely nostalgic for people our age, and there’s a distance from the original [time period],” Bienstock sums up. “When Poison does ‘Nothin’ But a Good Time’ in concert, everybody knows all the words, and everybody’s having fun. It makes you happy, and you want to turn it up. It’s just fun in a way that a lot of music today is not.”
“I spend more time on YouTube watching these videos than you’d think having just written this book!” Beaujour laughs. “But the numbers of views are huge. Young people can just consume and investigate anything they want, and they do. To be able to look at bands who looked like superheroes. It’s like ‘I wanna be that dude. He’s having fun, he’s running across the stage, he’s jumping, people love him, and there’s fire!’”
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Paris, March 10, 2021 (AFP) – – French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Wednesday that the “forced sterilizations” and “massive detentions” of Uighurs in Chinese camps were “certified,” which Beijing denies.
“Forced sterilizations, sexual abuse in camps, disappearances, mass detentions, forced labour, destruction of cultural heritage, starting with places of worship, the supervision of the population, all this is attested,” he told the Senate.
According to studies by American and Australian institutes, at least one million Uighurs, a Turk-speaking and predominantly Muslim minority, have been interned in “camps” in Xinjiang (northwest).
Chinese authorities say they have built “professional training centres” to help people and keep them away from extremism in the region under heavy surveillance after Islamist attacks.
The head of French diplomacy once again called for “an impartial, independent and transparent mission of international experts to visit Xinjiang as soon as possible under the responsibility of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet”.
He also called for “greater vigilance” for French companies in the face of the risks of “serious violations of the fundamental rights” of Uighurs in the Chinese factories that employ them.
France “intends to uphold” China’s commitment to the International Labour Organization (ILO) convention against forced labour when the controversial investment agreement with the EU was concluded in December, Jean-Yves Le Drian insisted.
On 24 February, the French minister denounced China’s “institutionalized system of repression” against Uighur Muslims during an address to the UN Human Rights Coucil.
The application, available on several websites and platforms, was streaming videos and TV channels
Europol supported the Spanish National Police (Policía Nacional) to dismantle a criminal group distributing illegal video streams. The investigation also involved law enforcement authorities from Andorra and Portugal.
The investigation started in October 2018 when the Spanish National Police received complaint reports from the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, Football Association Pretoria, the Premier League and the Spanish Football League (La Liga Espanola de Fútbol) about a mobile application illegally distributing video streams. The application, downloaded by more than 100 million users via different websites, illegally offered the streaming of videos and TV channels.
The investigation identified a number of connected websites and platforms located in Spain and Portugal with connections to servers in Czechia. The Spanish company behind the illegal activity earned its profits through advertisements. Through the computer infrastructure and power, they were able to sell user information to a company related to botnet and DDoS attacks. Investigators estimate the overall illegal profits at more than €5 million.
Results
3 house searches (2 in Spain and 1 in Andorra)
4 court orders to take down domains
20 web domains and servers blocked
4 arrests (3 in Spain and 1 in Andorra)
Bank accounts frozen
1 server taken down in Portugal and another one under investigation in Czechia
Europol supported the investigation with operational coordination and analysis. Europol supported the action day with the deployment of a virtual command post. This enabled operational coordination, also supported by Eurojust. During the action day, Europol’s experts cross-checked operational information in real-time and provide support to the investigators in the field. Europol’s IPC3 (Intellectual Property Crime Coordinated Coalition) which supported the investigation is a project co-funded by the EUIPO to combat intellectual property crime.
On-board cameras (CCTV) to be compulsory for vessels that are likely to not comply
Recreational fishermen who do not respect EU conservation measures or fisheries rules should be penalised
New measures to address loss of fishing gear
Fish should be traced throughout the whole food chain, including processed and imported products
Parliament adopted today its negotiating position on the new Fisheries Control system, which will reform the rules that have governed EU fishing activities since 2010.
By 401 votes in favour, 247 against and 47 abstentions, MEPs agreed to use new technologies to better enforce fishing rules and improve security and transparency. They also insist that consumers must know when, where and how the products they buy are caught.
The use of on-board cameras (CCTV) to carry out checks on landing obligations should be compulsory for a “minimum percentage” of vessels longer than 12 meters and which have been identified as “posing a serious risk of non-compliance”. The equipment will also be imposed as an accompanying sanction for all vessels that commit two or more serious infringements. Vessels that are willing to adopt CCTV on a voluntary basis should be offered incentives such as additional allocation of quotas or having their infringement points removed.
MEPs back the proposal to harmonise sanctions and demand that a “European Union Register” of infringements be set up to centralise information from all member states. They also call for an “appropriate system of sanctions” for infringements committed by recreational fishermen.
Reduce waste, increase security and transparency
In line with the EU’s Farm-to-Fork Strategy, Parliament demands that the origin of fishery and aquaculture products must be traceable throughout the whole food chain, including processed and imported products. Data on the species of fish, the location, date and time it was caught, and the type of gear used should be made available.
In an effort to reduce marine litter, MEPs agree that all vessels should be obliged to notify national authorities when they lose fishing gear and to carry on board the necessary equipment to retrieve it.
All vessels should also be equipped with a geolocation device allowing them to be automatically located and identified, a measure deemed necessary to improve security at sea, according to the adopted text.
Parliament also proposes to increase the margin of error accepted on the weight of some species estimated by fishermen on board (margin of tolerance).
Quote
Clara AGUILERA (S&D, ES), rapporteur, stated: “We took important steps towards having common rules. Inspections on fisheries in Spain must not differ from those in Denmark, Poland or Italy. They must be harmonised and more efficient, without resulting in more red tape for the sector.”
Next Steps
With today’s vote, Parliament is now ready to start negotiations with Council. According to the current proposal, operators would have four years following the entry into force of the rules to equip vessels with the new technologies required.
Background
On 5 February, the Committee on Fisheries adopted its position regarding the EU’s Fisheries Control system. The proposal updates five existing regulations and harmonise control and inspection systems, as well as sanctions, across EU countries.
Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, is pictured in a 2019 file photo. Cardinal Tagle virtually delivered the annual Trócaire/St. Patrick’s College Lent lecture March 9, 2021. (CNS photo/Eloisa Lopez, Reuters)
March 10, 2021
Sarah Mac Donald
Catholic News Service
DUBLIN — Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, head of the Vatican’s evangelization congregation, has expressed concern over the “hijacking” of religion by populist leaders who sow division and exploit the anger of those who feel excluded.
Speaking after he delivered the 2021 Trócaire/St. Patrick’s College Maynooth annual Lenten lecture March 9 on “Caring for the Human Family and our Common Home,” the Filipino prelate warned, “There is a growing sense in the world today of divisiveness, and unfortunately religion is being used to further division; sometimes even within the same religious affiliation you have divisions.”
Referring to the recent rise of populist leaders, Cardinal Tagle described the phenomenon as “the return of the powerful big-boss-type of people,” some of whom “hijack religion.”
These so-called populist leaders know where the pockets of disgruntled people are, and they present themselves as messiahs, he said. They use religion as a “convenient way” of getting followers, he added.
The president of Caritas Internationalis noted that in the encyclical “Fratelli Tutti,” Pope Francis devoted several paragraphs to the matter of populist leaders who claim that they are defending the people, when in fact they are defending a certain group.
Speaking via Zoom from Rome, the cardinal stressed, “We need to study carefully why these leaders get followers; why do they become popular?”
He suggested that the pandemic could make the exclusion of people such as the poor and migrants worse, and that was why Caritas Internationalis had issued two documents calling for greater access to COVID-19 vaccines for the Global South.
“I hope this pandemic will teach us the lesson that we are really connected with one another and to the earth, and that what happens in one part of the world can have a universal impact. I hope we will grow in responsibility to others,” he said.
A close collaborator of Pope Francis, Cardinal Tagle said that although the pandemic may be restricting some exercise of the faith, it might also “lead to pastoral creativity, especially within families.”
Speaking to Catholic News Service, the Filipino prelate recognized that the pandemic has brought “a lot of suffering.”
The prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples admitted, “for us in the church, part of the suffering is that we want to provide pastoral help and pastoral guidance, but we cannot do it the way we were used to.”
However, he set the pandemic-related restrictions on worship in the context of the suffering of Christians banned from the practice of their faith. He said he had been inspired by Japan’s “hidden Christians.”
Recalling how they had kept their faith alive for 200 years, Cardinal Tagle highlighted how Japan banned Christianity in the 17th century, and when it reopened its doors to Christianity in the 19th century, the French missionaries who went to Nagasaki were surprised to discover Christians who had survived all those years without church structures.
“In the midst of restrictions, it’s the families, the laypeople, especially the mothers and the grandmothers, who passed on the faith. They were creative,” the cardinal said.
Acknowledging that the pandemic had disrupted parish life and the church’s usual way of delivering services and catechetical formation because of the restriction on movements, he said this offered an opportunity to identify those aspects of Christian life and church life that “we have not paid attention to sufficiently,” including “the role of the family in the transmission of the faith and the formation of families in the social teachings of the church.”
“In the past, the transmission of the faith, the teaching of prayers and the catechism happened in homes. It was the parents or the grandparents who did it.” But with the development of specialized ministries such as religious education and catechists, this had declined.
“With the lockdown, children could not be brought to Sunday school, and catechists and teachers could not do their usual work. Are parents equipped to form their families, their children, their grandchildren and each other in faith and mission?” he asked.
“I think that the pandemic has opened up possibilities for us, but it has also become a mirror showing us where have we been weak in terms of Christian formation.”
“This pandemic has led many churches and dioceses to reassess our usual ways of conducting mission and pastoral engagement. Even here in the Vatican, we are invited to reflect on what we call the ‘normal’ customary ways, to see how we can respond more adequately to the changing situation.” The mission does not stop, he said, and the question is “How do we do it in a changed situation?”
Cardinal Tagle said his Trócaire Lenten reflection was an attempt to bring together the themes of Pope Francis’s encyclicals, “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home,” and “Fratelli Tutti,” the call for universal social friendship.
“We see an intimate connection between the two encyclicals,” the cardinal said and noted Pope Francis’ warning that “the degradation of the ecology of our common home happens side by side with the degradation of human relationships. The disregard of human beings is manifested also in our disregard for our common home, which is God’s gift for all of us.”
He pointed out that many economic or political choices today are detrimental to the survival of the earth. “The irresponsible use of creation now prevents not only the transmission of a livable, habitable world to future generations, but it also violates a key element of the church’s social teaching, which is that the goods of the earth are for all and must be shared by all.”
A haredi mob stones two medical vehicles caught in their protest against government coronavirus restrictions, causing the driver of the first vehicle, an Arab Israeli medical worker, to lose control and crash into the crowd, killing a pedestrian. Fearing his life would be taken by a lynch mob, he tries to flee, but fortunately is saved by a cop before he could be torn to shreds by the mob. Welcome to Jerusalem, 2021, the second year of the plague.
Every time I read another horror story about a woman being denied her freedom to divorce, or another horror story about a religious new immigrant being denied immediate citizenship under the Law of Return for two years, or hundreds of thousands of new immigrants, or millions of veteran Israelis, who cannot get married in the Jewish state – I cringe in embarrassment, and shrug in resignation, and move on in apathy, like most Israelis.
The sad monthly appeals by the forever betrayed non-Orthodox Jews, such as the members of that congregation so despised and assaulted by the Jewish theocracy, Rodfei Hakotel. All of the heartfelt cries, the oys, after every civil rights atrocity, the endless moaning about the growing gap between Israel and the Diaspora, the numb acceptance of the absurdity of a fourth election and the assumedly inevitable result of yet another pseudo government whose tail still wags the dog: Who says repeating history again has to be so inevitable?
All the bitching about non-representative elective government by party members chosen in back rooms, all the wistful what-if discussions around family Shabbat tables – when we had them – about how democratic it would be to elect a Knesset member from southern Jerusalem or Tel Aviv’s Hatikvah quarter, to whom you could complain or hold accountable.
Who was it that said you can will something, then actually do it? One relatively recent prophet, who traditionally was unappreciated in his own city, was Israel’s foremost influence on rural development, Raanan Weitz. Known popularly as “Mr. Development,” Weitz rose to head the Jewish Agency’s Rural Settlement Department for 21 years after joining the Jewish Agency in 1937, working for four decades to establish communities while blooming the desert.
As might be expected, he was a member of the workers party. He also came back to Palestine in 1937 after earning a doctorate in his profession in Italy and devoted the next 47 years to building the country. As with most pioneers in the old days, he had an idea of what the new state’s system of government should be. By the time I interviewed him for the World Zionist Organization Press Service in 1975, he had crystallized his vision of a representative Israeli democracy.
It would have a legislature whose members are elected by the votes of their constituents in parliamentary districts. The prime minister would be elected by popular vote, the winner of which would pick his or her cabinet (no more coalitions!). He called the federalization plan “Jerusalem, DC” – for David’s Capital.
We have a long way to go to achieve such a noble goal, but the journey has finally begun with one small and overdue High Court decision. This past week the seed of democracy was planted in the Knesset, but it cannot grow and blossom in a Jewish state that pretends to be the “only democracy in the Middle East,” when it is at best, or worst, the most liberal theocracy in a region where the basic human right of freedom of religion is commonly denied.
There are battles to be fought in the Knesset, and it will be a long campaign to pass a Basic Law implementing the promise of equality of the Declaration of Independence. This will become possible only when there is clear separation of religion and state. In a very short time, we will have another opportunity not to miss this opportunity. First we take Givat Ram, then we take Bnei Brak.
The writer is a former chief copy editor and editorial writer of The Jerusalem Post. His novel, The Flying Blue Meanies, is available on Amazon.
Anglican bishops across the world have signed a petition calling for an immediate halt to oil drilling in the Kavango Basin, in northern Namibia, in an area where elephants roam, by the Canadian Company ReConAfrica.
The drive for the petition began when Bishop Luke Pato alerted the Anglican Church that exploratory drilling for oil had commenced.
“The process has not been an open one, with Namibians waking up to a mining venture that has already been signed and settled. There are many questions to be answered,” said Pato, the World Council of Churches reported.
The search for oil and gas in the watershed of the world-famous, wildlife-rich Okavango Delta moved a step closer when a multimillion-dollar drilling rig from Houston, Texas, broke ground on the first test well in Namibia on Jan. 11, National Geographic reported.
Thirty-four Anglican bishops and three archbishops from around the world have signed the petition, which was delivered to the Namibian government at the Namibian Consulate in Cape Town, and at the headquarters of ReconAfrica in Vancouver, Canada.
ReconAfrica bought rights to drill for oil in more than 35,000 square kilometers of the Kavango Basin, an environmentally sensitive, protected area that supplies water to the Okavango Delta.
WORLD HERITAGE SITE
The basin is a World Heritage and Ramsar Wetland Site, a key biodiversity area and one of the seven natural wonders of Africa.
The region is home to the largest remaining population of African elephants, 400 species of birds and is a sanctuary for many other animals. It is protected under the protocol of the Permanent Okavango River Basin Water Commission.
“This exploration violates San rights under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous people,” reads the petition. “Water is a scarce and precious commodity in Namibia, the driest country south of the Sahara.”
“ReconAfrica holds a 100 percent interest in petroleum exploration rights in NW Botswana over the entire Kavango sedimentary basin in Botswana. This covers an area of 8,990 km2 (2.2 million acres) and entitles ReconAfrica to a 25-year production license over any commercial discovery,” the company says on its website.
The ReconAfrica website, says, “It is estimated that the oil generated in the basin could be billions of barrels.”
VULNERABLE TO CLIMATE CHANGE
Namibia is one of the countries’ most vulnerable to climate change, the petition notes.
“With almost unrivalled solar energy potential, extracting ‘billions of barrels of oil,’ makes no sense,” the petition notes. “Reducing carbon emissions is a global responsibility.”
The petition also cites an inadequate public participation process. “Concerns raised by local activists have been belittled and The Namibian, the national newspaper which broke the story, is being threatened with legal action,” the petition reads.
I notes that there has also been inadequate environmental impact assessment.
“Drilling in the Kavango Basin will fracture its geological structure and destroy the water system that supports this unique ecosystem and wildlife sanctuary,” reads the petition.
WCC acting general secretary Rev. Ioan Sauca expressed solidarity with the people of Namibia and with the Anglican community as they protest against damaging oil drilling in the Kavango Basin.
“We cannot sacrifice the rights of indigenous communities and destroy God’s gift of creation for oil,” said Sauca.
“If we are to meet the international goal of halving emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 , we must end our dependence on fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy systems now.”
National Geographic reported that the rig that arrived at the Namibian port of Walvis Bay in Janunary, is retrofitted for drilling in the desert, had arrived in December on the 600-foot-long transport ship Yellowstone, also laden with at least 23 massive trucks for pulling loads, bundles of drill pipe, and seismic testing systems on trucks with off-road tractor tires.
Africa’s largest remaining herd of savanna elephants moves through ReconAfrica’s license area.
The company plans to conduct a seismic survey, which biologists say could disrupt the sensitive animals.
A couple of previously announced books tying into The Mandalorian have officially been canceled. As announced by publishers DK Books and Del Rey, both an original novel set in the world of the live-action Star Wars series, as well as the The Mandalorian Ultimate Visual Guide, will no longer be published. The reasoning, as of this writing, has been left somewhat vague.
Both publishers made the announcement on social media. DK Books initially shared the news about the Ultimate Visual Guide on Twitter, with Del Rey following suit almost immediately in regards to the untitled original novel. Both books had previously been announced by Lucasfilm as part of a large publishing initiative tied to the Disney+ series. DK Books said the following. RELATED: Disney CEO Won’t Pick Sides While Addressing Gina Carano’s Star Wars Firing
We love working with author Adam Christopher (@ghostfinder) and are already working with him on a different book. We’re excited to share details with you in the future.
“Due to the ever-expanding world of The Mandalorian, we will no longer be publishing The Mandalorian Ultimate Visual Guide at this time, as the story continues to unfold on screen.”
Lucasfilm Story Group head Pablo Hidalgo had been set to write the Ultimate Visual Guide. As for The Mandalorian original novel, Adam Christopher had been tapped for that project. Del Rey, on Twitter, made a similar statement, while explaining that they are already working with Christopher on another book. That means the book’s cancelation had nothing to do with the author. Del Rey’s statement reads as follows.
Due to the ever-expanding world of The Mandalorian, we will no longer be publishing The Mandalorian Ultimate Visual Guide at this time, as the story continues to unfold on screen.
“Due to the ever-expanding world of The Mandalorian, we will no longer be publishing The Mandalorian Original Novel at this time, as the story continues to unfold on screen. We love working with author Adam Christopher and are already working with him on a different book. We’re excited to share details with you in the future.”
There is a lot of room for speculation here given some recent happenings in the Star Wars galaxy. Namely, the firing of Gina Carano as Cara Dune. The actor had been set to reprise her role in various future projects within the franchise, such as the spin-off Rangers of the New Republic. But Carano was fired over controversial statements made on social media. Officially, the cancelation of these books has nothing to do with Carano’s firing. And since little had been revealed about either title, there is no evidence to suggest that’s the case. Be that as it may, it is easy to see where onlookers might begin connecting dots.
Both statements do, however, mention the “ever-expanding world of The Mandalorian.” Disney and Lucasfilm have several shows, including The Book of Boba Fett, Rangers of the New Republic and Ahsoka, as well as The Mandalorian season 3, on the way. All of these shows take place in the same timeline and it means this corner of the Star Wars galaxy is only going to get bigger. It seems these projects somehow conflicted with Lucasfilm’s larger plans.
Other books connected to the show are on the way. Lucasfilm previously stated that both Marvel and IDW are set to publish comics taking place in that universe, among other yet-to-be-revealed titles. You can check out the statements from the DK Books and Star Wars Books Twitter accounts.
Topics: The Mandalorian, Star Wars, Disney Plus, Streaming
