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HBO Max Airs Highly-Anticipated ‘Friends’ Reunion

After so many years — and episode re-watches — could there BE anything left to learn about “Friends”?As the highly-anticipated, almost two-hour reunion special for HBO Max shows (and with apologies to Matthew Perry for continuing to borrow his lines), “Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes.”One thing that we didn’t need to learn (because we already knew it) was just how truly there these six characters were for the audience.In the 1990s and early-aughts, the cast of “Friends” provided hours of joy — first just on Thursday nights when new episodes aired, but soon enough five nights a week in syndication. Within the past decade, diehard and casual fans alike could spend any time of any day with Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Perry and David Schwimmer, as the show became available on streaming services. This sextet has helped their audience get through so much, now including the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only did “Friends” see a spike in viewership in the earliest lockdown days according to Nielsen, but also, just before the world fully reopens, they gathered together to shoot “Friends: The Reunion.””It was life-changing, not only for us but for whoever watched it, and that’s just such a great feeling,” Cox said of her experience on “Friends.”Within the special, they reminisced over their time working together while walking around recreated versions of Joey and Chandler’s apartment, Monica and Rachel’s (turned Monica and Chandler’s) apartment and the Central Perk coffeehouse, as well as while sitting down on the ironic orange couch for an outdoors interview with “The Late Late Show’s” James Corden.They performed scene readings from “The One Where Ross Finds Out,” “The One Where Everybody Finds Out” and the Season 4 premiere, “The One With The Jellyfish.” They also took part in a trivia game, designed and shot identically to the one in “The One With The Embryos.”In doing all of these things, they revealed behind-the-scenes tidbits and showed off special relationship dynamics that expanded even the biggest fan’s knowledge of their favorite show. The one thing they did NOT do was dance in a fountain.Here are 18 things learned from “Friends: The Reunion.”The one where Ross and Rachel were on a break!
Corden asked the six stars to reveal whose side of that infamous argument they fell on, and they all agreed that Ross and Rachel were on a break when he slept with Chloe (Angela Featherstone). Admittedly, they all had different levels of enthusiasm about that belief, but the authorities have spoken, so debate no more!The one with the crush
Borrowing a question that Janice (Maggie Wheeler) once posed to the six characters, Corden asked the six actors who became romantically involved with each other while filming. “The first season I had a major crush on Jen,” Schwimmer admitted. “It was reciprocal,” she shared. But, he went on, “It was like two ships passing because one of us was always in a relationship and we never crossed that boundary. We respected that.” LeBlanc piped up with a fake cough and a “Bullshit,” which sent the audience into wild applause. But he was joking, and Aniston clarified that she once told Schwimmer, “It’s going to be such a bummer if the first time you and I kiss is on national television.” But, “sure enough, the first time we kissed was in that coffee shop. So we just channeled all of our adoration and love for each other into Ross and Rachel.”The one where Ross and Rachel almost didn’t end up together
“Friends” co-creator David Crane, who was sitting in the COVID-safe audience during Corden’s interview and gave in an off-site interview for the special, shared that in working on the final season, the writers’ room did consider more ambivalent endings about the status of Ross and Rachel. But ultimately love won out definitively because, “People have been waiting 10 years to see this couple get together, we’ve got to give them what they want, we just have to find a way to do it so the journey is unexpected.”The one without a movie
For anyone holding out hope that the experience these actors had coming together for only the second time since “Friends” wrapped in 2004 would spark interest in more, we’re sorry to burst your bubble, but that is not going to happen. “That’s all up to Marta and David,” Kudrow said. “I once heard them say, and I completely agree, that they ended the show very nicely, everyone’s lives are very nice, and they would have to unravel all of those good things in order for there to be stories. And I don’t want anyone’s lives to be unraveled.” Kudrow also added, “At my age, saying like, ‘Floopy’ — stop. You have to grow up.” Aniston took things farther and said they probably wouldn’t even do another reunion like this.The one with where they are now
Kudrow may have crushed many people’s dreams about actually seeing where the characters would be at this place in time, but she said she imagines Phoebe is still married to Mike (Paul Rudd), with kids, living in Connecticut. “I think she was probably the advocate for her kids…and all of the other kids who were a little different, creating the arts program,” she said. Aniston said Ross and Rachel got married and had some kids, and Ross still “played with bones.” Cox said she believed that because Monica is so competitive, she would still be “in charge of the bake sale in elementary school,” even though her and Chandler’s kids would be out of school by now. “She’s just got to keep things going, PTA. And you are still making me laugh every day,” she said to Perry. “Just wanted to make sure I factored in somewhere,” he replied. And Joey? “I think he probably opened a sandwich shop on Venice Beach,” LeBlanc said.The one where the audience inspired Monica and Chandler’s relationship
The audience reaction was so loud — and long — at the reveal that Chandler and Monica slept together in “The One With Ross’ Wedding Part 2,” it made the writers re-think plans for that storyline. Originally, Crane said, it was going to be a “brief thing where we had fun with it afterward, ‘What did we do?'” Since that episode was the fourth season finale, the writers and producers had time to reflect on the reaction, and ultimately expanded it from being “just one night in London,” as Crane said it was originally meant to be. This opened up a wealth of stories, from dating in secret, to having multiple characters find out about the relationship at different times, to eventually getting engaged, married and adopting twins.The one with the grudge against MarcelWhen asked what part of the show the cast members did not enjoy, poor Marcel came to mind immediately. Cox clarified that this was because “the monkey scared me,” but Schwimmer had some serious complaints. “The monkey didn’t do its job right,” he said. Marcel (real name: Katie) was a trained working capuchin, of course, but Schwimmer noted there would be choreographed bits the human actors worked out that didn’t perfectly align with the monkey’s own timing to hit his mark, “so we’d have to reset, we’d have to go again, because the monkey didn’t get it right. This kept happening over and over.” But he didn’t stop there: Schwimmer also remembered how Marcel would be fed live grubs while sitting on his shoulder. “I’d have monkey grubby hands all over. It was just time for Marcel to [expletive] off.” (The irony is that the producers shared a story about how Schwimmer had such a bad time doing a previous TV show he had quit this side of the biz to only focus on theater and in order to get him to agree to do “Friends,” they had to swear up and down it would be different. And it was different, but not always better for him, judging by his still-palpable anger about the monkey all these decades later.)The one with missing set pieces
As detail-oriented as the production design team and art department were in rebuilding the sets for this special reunion, they could not replace every item exactly. Cox pointed out that the cookie jar in Monica’s kitchen was different because the “original cookie jar is at Lisa Kudrow’s house.” Additionally, Aniston shared she took a mug from the original set and LeBlanc took the foosball from that iconic table. While those items are small enough that the casual viewer would never know, “Friends” fans have been re-watching the old episodes for years in anticipation of a reunion like this and certainly would have freeze-framed moments in the kitchen to call out that cookie jar, if nothing else, had Cox not said something.The one with the beam
The beam should have been the seventh billed in the “Friends” reunion, as almost every cast member called it out when stepping onto the set of Monica’s apartment. In early episodes (and others that James Burrows directed), there was a wooden archway that separated the kitchen and living room sets on that part of the soundstage. It provided a convenient piece of story in Season 3’s “The One with the Giant Poking Device” when Monica banged her nephew’s head into it, but it limited camera angles and interfered with lighting, so it was usually absent, wreaking havoc with continuity and raising questions about just how much work a renter could do on a New York City apartment. It was restored in all of its nostalgic glory for the reunion special, truly bringing the experience full-circle.The one with Courteney Cox’s cheat sheets
As LeBlanc walked through Monica’s meticulously-recreated kitchen during the special, he paused at the table and pondered aloud whether Cox’s line would still be written on it. Although he sounded like he was kidding at first, he revealed to Aniston, Kudrow and Schwimmer that he caught her doing it once and asked her what it was. “Mind your business,” he recalls her telling him. While he didn’t name what episode this happened during, it would not be a surprise if she did it often. The writers used to rework jokes during the live tapings so much that the show became notorious for its tapings running extremely late. Their bar for quality was so high, they would finesse as much as they could based on the live audience’s reaction on Stage 24 on the Warner Bros. lot, which required the cast members to be quick on their feet to absorb the new material immediately. Cox ended up joining the group as they were reminiscing over her keeping scripts in the sink and she added, “I had so much of my dialog within these apples,” while messing with the bowl on the table.The one where they gambled on Jennifer Aniston
Don’t let Rachel herself know, but Crane referred to the character as “incredibly selfish, self-involved, spoiled.” He noted that, “In the wrong hands, you don’t like Rachel.” This is partially why she was the last character cast. When they found Aniston, they felt she was perfect but she was already committed to a show called “Muddling Through.” They hired her anyway and shot the pilot, as well as a few subsequent episodes, figuring they’d see what show won later. “If CBS would have picked [‘Muddling Through’] up,” Crane recalled, “we would have had to reshoot the first three episodes of ‘Friends.'” Aniston added that she loved “Friends” so much she actually went to her other producers and asked to be released from it. The response? “That show’s not going to make you a star,” she remembered being told.The one with Janice’s laugh
Maggie Wheeler, who played Chandler’s on-again-off-again girlfriend Janice, shared that she created Janice’s iconic laugh (second only to her delivery of, “Oh my god”) because she was acting opposite Perry, who was so funny she knew she would end up laughing in the scene and potentially ruining the take. So she worked a unique laugh into the scene as Janice’s response to Chandler, and the rest is history.The one with Matthew Perry’s confession
Perry revealed to his former cast mates that he often “felt like I was going to die if [the audience] didn’t laugh” at his jokes on tape night. “It’s not healthy, for sure, but I would sometimes say a line and they wouldn’t laugh and I would sweat and just go into convulsions. … I would freak out.” It was something he kept to himself while working on the show, but he said he felt like that “every single night.”The one with technology
Schwimmer, who directed 10 episodes of “Friends” (and two of its spinoff “Joey!”) marveled at the sitcom cameras on the stage today, compared to what they used on “Friends.” These, he noted, could be operated by one person, but back then, each one required three. “It was a huge crew,” he said. ” four cameras, the choreography was incredible.”The one with memory lapses
Much fun was to be had with the fading memories of cast members — but to be fair, they don’t binge their own show. In fact, a few of whom shared they never watch the show at all. “There are seasons I’ve never seen,” said Kudrow, which Perry seconded. Schwimmer said he only recently looked back at some episodes because his daughter has started watching the show. LeBlanc seemed to have the most details teed up and ready to be talked about (somehow he magically even correctly identified Joey’s hand twin just by looking at hands), but even he didn’t remember that the length of Rachel’s letter to Ross was 18 pages… front and back. Perry didn’t remember that by the end of the series, the foosball table had been destroyed; Aniston still thought Chandler’s job was a transponster; Schwimmer didn’t remember the titular plot in “The One With The Ball” (Season 5) even though his character started the challenge of not dropping the ball in the story. Nobody remembered Mr. Heckles’ name — though Kudrow knew the actor who played him was Larry Hankin (who made a surprise guest appearance, in costume) and no one could finish the lyrics to the barbershop quartet’s message from Ross in the third season episode, “The One With All The Jealousy.” Behind-the-scenes details fared better, though: Aniston even remembered what some of her fellow actors were wearing during the first table read.The one with real-life friends as character inspirations
Co-creators Marta Kauffman and Crane have always talked about being inspired by their own lives in New York City in their 20s when creating the show, but here Kauffman revealed that the character of Chandler was even named after one of her friends. (We hope he didn’t take offense when, in the fourth season, Joey listed multiple reasons Chandler is a terrible name when he was trying to get Phoebe to name one of the triplets Joey instead of Chandler.) In this same interview package, Crane shared the one-line pitch for the show as being “about that time in your life when your friends are your family,” which seems both like a perfectly universal show any network would want and also way too broad to be sold on that alone today.The one with the rough audition
The night before LeBlanc was set to audition for “Friends,” he told Corden, he was running lines with a friend who said that because the show was about a group of friends hanging out, they should go out drinking. They did, and LeBlanc crashed at his place after, where, after he “got up [to go to the bathroom] too fast, I kind of blacked out, as you do, and fell face-first into the toilet,” he said. “A huge chunk of meat came off my nose.” When he went in the next day, Kauffman asked what happened. “I told the truth and got the job,” he said. What made this story even more special was that executive producer Kevin Bright revealed in an interview package that the role of Joey, in the end, came down to LeBlanc and Louis Mandylor — who went on to play Carl, the guy Joey hired to pretend to be his twin brother to get into a medical science study in the sixth season.The one with an on set injury
Not to make this all about LeBlanc, but the reunion special also revealed how he dislocated his shoulder during the third season of “Friends,” which resulted in him wearing a sling for a few episodes. In “The One Where No One’s Ready,” he had to dive for the chair after Chandler came back into Monica’s apartment fully dressed and vying for the vacated seat. During one take, which the cast watched raw footage of together, LeBlanc landed wrong on his left arm, resulting in production being paused so he could go to the hospital. Although they wrote the sling into a few episodes so everybody could go back to work, they didn’t finish filming this particular episode until LeBlanc’s arm was healed. “What started out the simplest ‘Friends’ episode,” Bright said, “ended up taking the longest amount of time to shoot.” If you’re superstitious, you might say the reason this episode went so wrong was because the cast didn’t do their usual pre-show huddle that night. “It was sort of early on, but then after that we’d say, ‘Do we need to do the huddle?’ And he’d say, ‘Yeah,'” Kudrow said of LeBlanc. 

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Uganda Sees Sharp Rise in COVID-19 Cases 

Uganda is seeing a sharp increase in COVID-19 cases, forcing its health officials to take stern emergency measures. From 200 cases per day in April, the East African country is now recording over 1,000 cases per day amid a looming vaccine shortage.At the Ministry of Health, hundreds of people line up standing, others sitting, as the line snakes its way to the vaccination tent.   Uganda’s COVID-19 cases stand at 44,594, with 361 deaths. Dr. Yonas Tegegn Woldemariam, the country’s representative at the World Health Organization, spells out the rate at which the coronavirus is spreading in Uganda.   “On the week starting from 25 April, Uganda reported 256 cases. The week starting 2nd May, that number went up to 411. The week of the 9th of May, the number went to 475.  And the week of the 16 May, the number has already reached 1,060,” he said.  Kampala is among 10 districts that have recorded a high number of cases.   Odoi Paul, 39, is among the many who thronged to the Ministry of Health on Thursday to get their first jab. “To make sure that I’m free from COVID-19. Like in India, people are dying, in USA. Like, that is why I say, let me also go and save my life before such a thing happens in our country,” said Paul.   Dr. Henry Mwebesa, the director of health services, notes that it has taken the country less than 10 days to get to a full-blown pandemic.   The most affected group is people between the ages of 20 and 39, and the number of severely and critically ill COVID-19 patients is higher than it was in the first wave.   Dr. Mwebesa says officials are making tough decisions to ensure that people in densely populated areas such as Kampala get the vaccine. “To also note with concern that some districts, especially in the Eastern and Northern regions, have not performed as well. So, the strategic committee meeting of the Ministry of Health resolved that vaccines be withdrawn from the poorly performing districts, and that the exercise should commence 27th May, which is today,” he said.  In March, Uganda received 964,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine from the COVAX facility, with 100,000 doses coming from India. Since March 10, about 550,000 people have been vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine.   A second batch of vaccines was expected starting this month. But Dr. Woldemariam says that is not guaranteed.   “The supply we were expecting in May hasn’t come, and it’s unlikely to come in June. So, we are working towards seeing where we can get an alternative supplier other than India. Globally, now there is a big effort for big countries which have excess to vaccines to donate, so, we are looking into whether we will benefit from that,” he said.  To show the full extent of the second wave, tonight the three major local television stations in Uganda will anchor a joint news bulletin under the theme, Act or Perish. 

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Cameroon Clears Abandoned Mental Health Patients from Streets

Authorities in Cameroon are clearing the streets in the capital, Yaounde, of more than 300 psychiatric patients whom officials say have been abandoned by family members. The central African state says stress from Boko Haram terrorism, a separatist crisis in its English-speaking western regions and the increase in consumption of hard drugs are responsible for  growing numbers of such patients.Laure Mengueme is the director of mental health at Cameroon’s Ministry of Health. She speaks to a group of about 70 people at the central market in Yaounde on why psychiatric patients should not be left on the streets.Mengueme says she is making it clear that mentally ill patients should not be removed from the streets as refuse. She says local councils in Cameroon have social affairs services that will assist in the treatment of all abandoned mental health patients in the company of family members.Among those listening to Mengueme is 49-year-old secondary school teacher Theresia Mbiteh. Mbiteh says her 19-year-old son became violent in the English-speaking northwestern town of Bamenda in 2017. She says his son began taking illegal drugs when separatist fighters prohibited children from going to school.”I have done a lot, many people can testify. He escaped from here (Cameroon} and trekked to Nigeria,” said Mbiteh. “A person picked (found) him in Nigeria, called me one day after six weeks of his stay there and then told me. I had to borrow money to go collect him from Nigeria. When I brought him back here I thought things were going to be better, but nothing changed.”Mbiteh said she travelled from Bamenda to Yaounde when Cameroon state radio reported that the government was helping families take their loved ones off the streets.The health ministry reported that the number of abandoned psychiatric patients increased from 50 to more than 300 in Yaounde within two years. At least 2,700  patients are on the streets all over Cameroon with more than 400 in the commercial capital city Douala. Cameroon counted 1,300 such patients in its territory in 2019.Frankline Ngwen is supervisor of the mental health department of the Cameroon Baptist Convention Health Services. He says abuse and trauma from the various crises Cameroon faces has led to an increase in the number of psychiatric patients.”There are several reasons why people who are developing mental illnesses are increasing,” said Ngwen. “Some of them are very eminent including the sociopolitical crisis in the northwest region, the southwest region and the Boko Haram crisis in the north. This has given an opportunity for a lot of abuses, violence and trauma and these traumas can result to the development of mental illnesses. We also have schools where teenagers are using a lot of drugs and all these drugs are contributing to the development of mental illnesses.”Traditionally, many Cameroonians believe that mental health crises are divine punishment for wrongdoing. Some say witchcraft or spiritual possession are responsible for mental illness.Fonbe Hedwick runs Living Vine Mental Health Center in the English-speaking northwestern town of Bamenda. He is part of the campaign to remove mental patients from the streets. Fonbe says some patients are escaping from the homes of African traditional healers and Pentecostal pastors who abuse them, claiming that they are chasing evil spirits.”They should not be beaten. Patients with psychiatric conditions should not be tied up. Some kind of brutal force should not be meted on them,” said Fonbe. “We encourage families to avoid taking them to places where they think that they {pastors} will just pray for these patients and they get miracle healing or to traditional healers who will think that they will do some concoctions and these patients will get well. This is our message to all the families and all the communities.”Fonbe said with the arrival of the coronavirus in Cameroon in March 2020, many families have lacked the resources to care for psychiatric patients at home, putting them on the streets.The health ministry is asking family members to take relatives with mental health problems to hospitals for treatment.

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Actor John Cena Faces Backlash in China over Taiwan Comment

Actor and professional wrestler John Cena has apologized to fans in China after he called Taiwan a country in a promotional interview for his upcoming film and became the latest celebrity to face the fury of Chinese nationalists.
In a short video posted Tuesday on Chinese social media site Weibo, Cena did not refer to Taiwan or go into much detail about the incident, which occurred earlier this month when he was doing a promotion for “Fast & Furious 9” with Taiwanese media.
“In one interview, I made a mistake,” he said in heavily accented Mandarin Chinese. “I need to say now that this is very, very, very, very, very important. I love and respect China and the Chinese people. I’m very, very sorry. As for my mistake, I really apologize for it.”FILE – Actor John Cena attends the Road to “Fast & Furious 9” Concert at Maurice A. Ferre Park in Miami Beach, Fla.In his interview with TVBS, a Taiwanese cable channel, Cena was also speaking in Mandarin when he said Taiwan would be the first “country” to be able to see the film. That led to an uproar in China, which considers the self-governing democracy its own territory to be taken back by force if necessary.
It was unclear if Cena’s apology worked, as many comments on Chinese social media in response to his video were negative. Likewise, Cena was also facing scorn back in the United States, where Sen. Tom Cotton called the apology “pathetic” and others lashed out at him on social media as a “coward.”
Global companies and celebrities seeking to maintain access to the lucrative Chinese market have to tread a fine line on many issues as online nationalistic outrage can spark boycotts.  
China has increasingly pressured foreign firms over their statements on Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet, the South China Sea and other issues Beijing considers sensitive.  
Airlines and other multinational companies have been pushed to refer to Taiwan as a part of China on their websites or risk damage to their business in China.  
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV cut ties with the NBA for a year in response to a tweet by Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey backing pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, even though the post was quickly deleted.  
News about Chloe Zhao, a Chinese director, winning an Oscar was censored in April after old interviews surfaced where she said that she grew up in a place where there were “lies” everywhere.
Brands including Swedish retailer H&M, Adidas and Nike have been targeted for consumer boycotts after state media criticized them for expressing concern about reports of forced labor in China’s western region of Xinjiang.
Meanwhile, “Fast & Furious 9” — the latest in the Hollywood franchise — appeared to be doing well in China despite the uproar. The film has taken in $155 million at the box office in China since it opened on May 21, according to local media reports.

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Howard University Names College of Fine Arts for Chadwick Boseman

While studying at Howard University, young Chadwick Boseman helped lead a student protest against plans to merge his beloved College of Fine Arts into the College of Arts and Sciences.  
He failed in that goal, but 20 years later, the acclaimed actor is being posthumously honored as the namesake of Howard’s newly re-established Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts.  
Boseman, who graduated in 2000 with a bachelor’s degree in directing, died in August at 43 of colon cancer. He rose to prominence playing a succession of Black icons in biographical films: Jackie Robinson, singer James Brown and Thurgood Marshall.
The South Carolina native’s portrayal of African superhero Black Panther spawned a thousand memes and its cultural impact launched him to broader stardom. At the time of his death, Boseman’s character was poised to become an anchor of the Marvel Comics movie machine, with multiple sequels planned.  
Howard University President Wayne Frederick said he and Boseman discussed ways of reviving the College of Fine Arts multiple times.  
“It was always important to him,” Frederick told The Associated Press. “His commitment was very strong.”
The announcement comes a few weeks after fellow Howard alum Phylicia Rashad was announced as the fine arts college’s new dean. Boseman and Rashad met during his undergrad years, and Boseman publicly cited her as a mentor.  
Boseman declared his love for the school in a 2018 commencement speech, praising, “the magic of this place. Almost anything can happen here.”  
Boseman’s family said his student protest proved his passion for his alma mater.  
“Chad fought to preserve the College of Fine Arts during his matriculation at Howard and remained dedicated to the fight throughout his career, and he would be overjoyed by this development,” the Boseman family said in a statement.  
Boseman’s widow, Simone Ledward-Boseman, called him “a very proud Bison” and said the naming of the school “brings this part of his story full-circle and ensures that his legacy will continue to inspire young storytellers for years to come.”
Howard Fine Arts alumni include actors Taraji P. Henson, Oscar-nominated cinematographer Bradford Young, and singers Roberta Flack and Jessye Norman, as well as Rashad and her sister, Kennedy Center Honors recipient Debbie Allen.

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Oil Giants Face Pressure to Act on Climate Change

Some of the world’s biggest oil companies are under pressure to take more action to address climate change.ExxonMobil shareholders Wednesday elected at least two members proposed by hedge fund Engine No. 1 to serve on the company’s 12-member board of directors.The fund said in a statement earlier this week that the board needed “directors with experience in successful and profitable energy industry transformations who can help turn aspirations of addressing the risks of climate change into a long-term business plan, not talking points.”ExxonMobil shareholders also voted in favor of a proposal requiring the company to report on its climate change lobbying activities.”We’ve heard from shareholders about their desire to catalyze further progress at ExxonMobil and we are well prepared to deliver,” chief executive Darren Woods said Wednesday.Also Wednesday, Chevron shareholders approved a proposal to cut Scope 3 emissions, which are those generated by the use of a company’s products.The proposal did not set specific targets for how much to cut emissions or any deadline.Wednesday also brought a ruling from a Dutch court ordering Royal Dutch Shell to cut its carbon emissions by a net 45% by 2030 compared to 2019 levels.Seven environmental groups filed the lawsuit against Royal Dutch Shell arguing the company was in breach of its obligation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.In her decision, Hague District Court Judge Larissa Alwin ruled that since Royal Dutch Shell currently has a plan to reduce emissions and was still developing it, it is not currently in breach of its obligation, as the groups argued.But the judge said a violation of that obligation is imminent, as the company’s policy “is not concrete, has many caveats and is based on monitoring social developments rather than the company’s own responsibility for achieving a carbon dioxide reduction.”

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Kenya’s Gender-Based Violence Cases Quintuple During Pandemic

Kenya’s Department of Gender says reported cases of gender-based violence have nearly quintupled during the COVID-19 pandemic. But campaigners note that stigma and fear of reporting abuse means the number of cases that go unreported is many times higher. Victoria Amunga reports from Nairobi. 
Camera: Robert Lutta

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Economy & business/Silicon Valley & Technology
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Russia, Iran Leading Disinformation Charge on Facebook

Russia and Iran are leading the way when it comes to pushing bad information on one of the world’s most popular social media platforms, and new analysis finds they are getting savvier at evading detection. Facebook issued a report Wednesday looking at so-called coordinated inauthentic behavior over the past four years, warning that despite ongoing efforts to identify and remove disinformation networks, there is no let-up in attempts to exploit or weaponize conflict and crisis. “Threat actors have adapted their behavior and sought cover in the gray spaces between authentic and inauthentic engagement and political activity,” according to the Facebook report, which looked at the more than 150 networks from more than 50 countries that its security teams took down from 2017 to 2020. “We know they will continue to look for new ways to circumvent our defenses,” the report added, noting disinformation efforts were evenly split between foreign and domestic efforts. “Domestic IO also continues to push the boundaries of acceptable online behavior worldwide” per @Facebook “About half of the influence operations we’ve removed since 2017–including in #Moldova, #Honduras, #Romania, #UK, US, #Brazil & #India–were conducted by locals…” pic.twitter.com/e2pLpgLNaJ— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) May 26, 2021 Russia, Iran influence efforts Overall, Russia was the biggest purveyor of disinformation, according to the analysis, with 27 identified influence operations during the four-year timeframe. Of those, 15 were connected to the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) or other entities linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. US Hits Back at Russian Election Disinformation Ring New sanctions target the ‘inner circle’ of Ukrainian politician Andrii Derkach, previously outed by U.S. officials as a long-time Russian agent Another four Russian networks were traced to the Kremlin’s intelligence services and two more originated with Russian media sites. Iran was second on the list, with 23 inauthentic networks, nine of which were connected to the government or Iranian state broadcasters. Myanmar ranked third, with nine disinformation networks, followed by the United States and Ukraine. NEW: #Russia, #Iran#Myanmar top @Facebook’s list of sources for influence ops/ Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior in new report covering 2017-2020US is 4th, #Ukraine is 5th pic.twitter.com/X2Z45AqUO2— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) May 26, 2021Facebook said the culprits in the United States and Ukraine included public relations firms, fringe political actors, and in the case of Ukraine, two political parties. China’s ‘strategic communication’ China, accused by U.S. intelligence officials for running multiple, intensive influence operations, did not make Facebook’s list of illicit disinformation networks, but not because Beijing was not active. Outgoing US Intel Chief Warns China Seeking Global Domination Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe has repeatedly sounded alarms about Beijing’s efforts, but now says China is prepared for an ‘open-ended period of confrontation’ with US “The China-origin activity on our platform manifested very differently than IO [influence operations] from other foreign actors, and the vast majority of it did not constitute CIB [Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior],” the Facebook report said. “Much of it was strategic communication using overt state-affiliated channels [e.g. state-controlled media, official diplomatic accounts] or large-scale spam activity that included primarily lifestyle or celebrity clickbait and also some news and political content.” #Election2020: “In the year leading up to the US 2020 election, we exposed over a dozen CIB operations targeting US audiences, including an equal number of networks originating from #Russia, #Iran, & the #UnitedStates itself” per @Facebookpic.twitter.com/MISQHnJigc— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) May 26, 2021The Facebook report warned, however, that catching sophisticated disinformation actors like China and Russia is getting more difficult. “They are showing more discipline to avoid careless mistakes,” the report said. “Some are also getting better at avoiding language discrepancies.” Amplifying, outsourcing disinformation Facebook further warned that countries like Russia and China “are getting better at blurring the lines between foreign and domestic activity by co-opting unwitting [but sympathetic] domestic groups to amplify their narratives.” Another concerning trend identified in the Facebook report: outsourcing. “Over the past four years, we have investigated and removed influence operations conducted by commercial actors—media, marketing and public relations companies, including in Myanmar, the U.S., the Philippines, Ukraine, the UAE [United Arab Emirates] & Egypt,” according to the report. The report said despite a growing number of influence operations and their growing sophistication, many of them are being identified and taken down more quickly than in the past. But Nathaniel Gleicher, the head of Facebook security policy, said the social media platform can only do so much by itself. “Countering IO is a whole-of-society challenge. Defenders are most effective when gov’ts, industry, and civil society work together,” Gleicher wrote on Twitter. “We know threat actors are continuing to innovate, so we can’t take our foot off the gas now,” he added. “We have to keep pressing to stay ahead of adversarial innovation in 2021 and beyond.” 
 

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