Friday, February 12 top stories

Hello, I’m Renca. I will take Alex’s place for today’s top stories. It is Friday, February 12. Ready for the news?

Here are some updated numbers with Covid-19 pandemic in the U.S. The amount of new cases have been falling over the past several weeks. There were about 100,000 new cases reported yesterday. That’s a much lower number than the beginning of the year, when there were over 200,000 new cases almost daily. But the number of daily deaths is still high, yesterday there were over 3,800 new deaths. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 475,000 people in the U.S. have died from the coronavirus.

Here are updates with the terrible pileup at Fort Worth. 133 cars and semi-trucks were involved. The roads were icy on early Thursday morning. The death toll has increased to six people. Many of the injured were health care workers, wearing scrubs and hospital badges, who were on their way to hospitals. It was very difficult for first responders because of icy conditions and many cars were crushed on top of the other. Four police officers were injured during rescue efforts. Now there are news reports that say the road was not salted or sanded.

A scientist from Boston Children’s Hospital told ABC News that he predicts that Covid-19 will never be eradicated from the world but will here to stay like the seasonal flu. However, because we have new vaccines and are developing new medicine to fight the virus, Covid-19 will become less of a threat to humans. Other scientists say Covid-19 could become “endemic,” which means it is constantly circulating around us. Most will be exposed to the virus in childhood and develop some immunity and protect them later in life.

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Yoshiro Mori (83), president of the Tokyo Olympics, resigned last Friday after making sexist comments. He said “board meetings with lots of women take longer” implying that women talk too much. He apologized and said that his inappropriate comments have caused a lot of chaos. He said that this was a “private opinion” that ended up becoming public and he has no intention of neglecting women.

The CEO of the Olympics committee said that Mori’s comment was indeed inappropriate, but also wanted to acknowledge that Mori has really done a lot for the Olympics and has made many changes.

There has been no announcement who will take Mori’s place. The summer Olympics was supposed to happen last year, but got postponed due to the pandemic. It will be happening this summer from July 23rd to August 8th in Tokyo, Japan.

The Oscars ceremony was rescheduled from February 28th to April 25th because of the pandemic. They just announced that they will host an in-person ceremony following the safety guidelines, but also will be broadcasting live from multiple locations.

The Oscars ceremony has always been hosted in the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. That theatre can seat 3,400 people. Obviously that will change for this year’s ceremony, but the theatre will still be one of the locations for the ceremony.

The Oscars announced their shortlist for 9 categories. For the “music (original song)” category, a song named “Green” from the Sound of Metal movie is on the list. For the “live action short film” category, “Feeling Through” - Marlee Matlin is the Executive Producer of that short film, is on the list. The nominations for the 2021 Oscars will be officially announced on March 15th.

That’s all for today. Have a great weekend and don’t forget to stay with the light!

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/covid-19-seasonal-illness-flu-experts/story?id=75830451&cid=clicksource_4380645_9_heads_posts_card_hed

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html

https://www.foxnews.com/us/fort-worth-accident-133-vehicle-pileup-interstate-ice-storm

https://abcnews.go.com/US/tokyo-olympics-president-yoshiro-mori-resigns-sexist-comments/story?id=75845979

https://www.espn.com/olympics/story/_/id/30884582/tokyo-olympics-president-yoshiro-mori-announces-resigning

https://oscar.go.com/news/nominations/oscars-2021-shortlists-in-nine-award-categories-announced

https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2021-02-10/academy-awards-in-april-to-be-live-in-person-and-from-multiple-locations