President Donald Trump didn’t hear a supporter use the words “white power” in a video he retweeted, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Monday. “He did not hear that particular phrase when he tweeted out the video,” she said in response to a reporter’s question. The video, which the president said in his Sunday tweet was of supporters at Florida retirement community The Villages, shows a man driving the cart adorned with Trump posters. The tweet has since disappeared from the president’s timeline. The incident comes as the nation reels from widespread protests over police treatment of black citizens…
Author: zenger.news
A swarm of desert locusts following a poor harvest season has added to fears about a lack of food for millions in Kenya, as the country grapples with the effects of COVID-19. The desert locusts—in the worst invasion in Kenya in 70 years, according to the United Nations—have destroyed huge swaths of crops and pasture in the region, said farmer Joyce Mutinda, but the extent of the damage cannot yet be determined since new swarms are spreading. “We mainly farm millet, sorghum, maize, green grams and peas, and in a good harvest we do about 20 bags of each crop,…
A swarm of desert locusts following a poor harvest season has added to fears about a lack of food for millions in Kenya, as the country grapples with the effects of COVID-19. The desert locusts—in the worst invasion in Kenya in 70 years, according to the United Nations—have destroyed huge swaths of crops and pasture in the region, said farmer Joyce Mutinda, but the extent of the damage cannot yet be determined since new swarms are spreading. “We mainly farm millet, sorghum, maize, green grams and peas, and in a good harvest we do about 20 bags of each crop,…
Mara basks in the sun, both happy and exhausted, the memories of a COVID-19 quarantine and a thousand-mile journey fresh in her mind. She never forgets. There are signs that the 3.6-ton elephant, thought to be 55, remembers her decades as a circus performer and years as a zoo curiosity. Now, after a border crossing from Argentina that was nearly scrubbed over coronavirus fears, she has the run of an animal sanctuary in Brazil’s midwestern Mato Grosso state. Argentine whale researcher Cesar Gribaudo remembers when the South American Circus popped up in his Buenos Aires suburb. He met Mara there…
More than a million Brazilians have been diagnosed with COVID-19, many of them indigenous people in the Amazon rainforest. And to help them, a group of musicians and celebrities from around the world will come together for an online music festival. SOS Rainforest Live, organized by Rainforest Foundation Norway and Rainforest Foundation USA, will broadcast live on YouTube and TikTok starting at 3 p.m. EDT. Lars Lovold, former director of Rainforest Foundation Norway, said the pandemic caused by the new coronavirus will affect an already precarious region. “We have been concerned for decades about the forest and indigenous people. They…
After weeks of media coverage about rioters and looters who hijacked protests following George Floyd’s death, Washington D.C. held its breath as Juneteenth marches wound up their springs on Friday. No one needed to worry. It was festive, not angry. People sold T-shirts. One woman led hundreds down Pennsylvania Avenue while belting Beyoncé’s “Freedom” anthem at the top of her lungs through a bullhorn. This was a victory parade. A woman holds her phone up to record an event in Washington D.C. during a Juneteenth Black Lives Matter march on June 19, 2020. (Kaitlin Newman/Zenger)A black lives matter sign hangs…
“Let me tell you ‘bout Wayne and his deals of cocaine. A little more every day,” the Clash sang in 1978. “Holding for a friend till the band do well. Then the DEA locked him away.” The song, “Jail Guitar Doors,” was about guitarist Wayne Kramer—who at the time was wrapping up a prison sentence in Lexington, Kentucky for selling cocaine to an undercover federal agent. Kramer played Sunday sets in chapel there with trumpeter Robert “Red Rodney” Chudnick, who was famous for being the only white member of Charlie Parker’s bebop quintet. Kramer is now back in prison 42…
Internet domain registrar GoDaddy recently launched an initiative to support small businesses forced to close their physical spaces because of COVID-19. Called #OpenWeStand, the collaboration also involves Silicon Valley heavyweights PayPal, GoFundMe and Salesforce — which have been thriving despite the coronavirus, reaping profits from helping their customers focus on digitization. #OpenWeStand.org provides tools, widgets, resources and blogs for small businesses to use during the lockdown phases of COVID-19. The underlying goal of the initiative, its backers say, is helping small businesses keep their digital doors open while their physical ones are closed. For example, GoDaddy’s revenue was up 11.5%…
Fire doesn’t occur naturally as part of the deforestation process in the ultra-humid Amazon rainforest. But vegetation is cut down, put in the sun to dry and then burned to clear the area. With the area “cleaned,” the land is used for soy and other monocultures and for cattle grazing. The Amazon Rainforest near Sao Paulo, Brazil is pictured from a plane on October 3, 2019. (Dennis Jarvis on CC 2.0 License)Between January and November 2019, though, data from the National Institute for Space Research shows 43,929 miles of forest turned to ashes, an increase of nearly 80% over the…
Kenyans in rural areas and a port city region who expected to get electricity next year might be disappointed. The African Development Bank Group suspended the China-based Sinotec company for three years for fraud — a move that will likely delay the second phase of a $150 million electricity project, which was targeted for completion in 2021. Logo of the African Development Bank. (AFD)The action by the bank, which helps countries finance large-scale development and infrastructure projects, also halts Sinotec’s involvement in two other major East Africa projects. “An investigation conducted by the Bank’s Office of Integrity and Anti-Corruption established…