Category: Life Style

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Level : Intermediate

By COLLEEN BARRY Associated Press

MILAN (AP) — The Uffizi Gallery in Florence used the winter COVID shutdown to push ahead with renovations, discovering lost frescoes that will greet visitors when the leading repository of Italian Renaissance art reopens on May 4.

Uffizi director Eike Schmidt said the six months of closure were put to good use: renovating 14 new rooms that will open to the public next month, and discovering frescoes that would otherwise have remained hidden.

But he hopes that the most recent reopening — the third during the pandemic — will be the last.

“We very much hope that now we will be able to open stably and without further closures. We hope so for the museum, but we hope it also for the world and for human society,” Schmidt said.
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Level : Advanced

By YURAS KARMANAU Associated Press

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The vast and empty Chernobyl Exclusion Zone around the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident is a baleful monument to human mistakes. Yet 35 years after a power plant reactor exploded, Ukrainians also look to it for inspiration, solace and income.

Reactor No. 4 at the power plant 110 kilometers (65 miles) north of the capital Kyiv exploded and caught fire deep in the night on April 26, 1986, shattering the building and spewing radioactive material high into the sky.

Soviet authorities made the catastrophe even worse by failing to tell the public what had happened — although the nearby plant workers’ town of Pripyat was evacuated the next day, the 2 million residents of Kyiv weren’t informed despite the fallout danger. The world learned of the disaster only after heightened radiation was detected in Sweden.
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By NICK PERRY Associated Press

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — As the passengers walked a little dazed through the airport gates, they were embraced one after another by family members who rushed forward and dissolved into tears.

Elation and relief marked the opening of a long-anticipated travel bubble between Australia and New Zealand at the Wellington Airport on Monday. Children held balloons and banners and Indigenous Maori performers welcomed the arrivals home with songs.

The start of quarantine-free travel was a long time coming for families who have been separated by the coronavirus pandemic as well as to struggling tourist operators. It marked the first, tentative steps toward what both countries hope will become a gradual reopening to the rest of the world.
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By MIKE CORDER Associated Press

LISSE, Netherlands (AP) — Finally, after bleak winter months of a coronavirus lockdown, springtime shoots of hope emerged Friday as restrictions were relaxed at a Dutch flower garden and other public venues.

Under a government-approved pilot scheme, the world-famous Keukenhof garden opened its gates to let a few thousand people tiptoe through the 7 million tulips, hyacinths, daffodils and myriad other flowers meticulously hand-planted throughout its manicured lawns by a small army of gardeners.
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By LUIS ANDRES HENAO and EMILY LESHNER Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — When Erin Shields belted out “Being Alive” — the showstopper from the Broadway classic “Company” — the title had extra levels of meaning.

This virtual concert, broadcast from Shields’ living room, helped fund the food pantry at Mosaic West Queens Church, which is feeding hungry residents of the Sunnyside neighborhood. It also gave Shields and her husband, David Shenton, an opportunity to resume their artistic lives.
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By DAVID KEYTON Associated Press

STOCKHOLM (AP) — The coronavirus brought a year of fear and anxiety, loneliness and lockdown, and illness and death, but an annual report on happiness around the world released Friday suggests the pandemic has not crushed people’s spirits.

The editors of the 2021 World Happiness Report found that while emotions changed as the pandemic set in, longer-term satisfaction with life was less affected.

“What we have found is that when people take the long view, they’ve shown a lot of resilience in this past year,” Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, one of the report’s co-author, said from New York.
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By JOCELYN NOVECK AP National Writer

In the opening moments of a Golden Globes night even more chaotic and confounding than usual, co-host Tina Fey raised a theoretical question: “Could this whole night have been an email?” Only the next three hours would tell.

Well, sure, it could have been an email. But then you wouldn’t have had Chadwick Boseman’s eloquent widow, bringing many to tears as she explained how she could never be as eloquent as her late husband. Or Jane Fonda, sharply calling out Hollywood for its lack of diversity on a night when her very hosts were under fire for exactly that. Or Chloé Zhao, making history as the first woman of Asian descent to win best director (and the first woman since 1984.)

Or 99-year-old Norman Lear, giving the simplest explanation for his longevity: never living or laughing alone. Or Jodie Foster kissing her wife joyfully, eight years after very tentatively coming out on the same telecast.
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By MARCELO SILVA DE SOUSA and DIARLEI RODRIGUES Associated Press

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Supergirl came out of the dressing room ready for action as usual.

She took her place alongside Freddy Krueger, Poison Ivy and Captain America and they kicked off, into song.

That idiosyncratic lineup is a typical sort of lineup for the Carnival street band Desliga da Justica, but this year they were facing cameras in a studio and the fans were scattered across the internet instead of dancing in the streets during one of the world’s most iconic celebrations.

“Everybody at home, move the furniture out of the way to dance and drink cold beer,” called out the woman dressed as Poison Ivy, who began the show with a traditional Carnival song.
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By DAVID McHUGH, CASEY SMITH and JOE McDONALD AP Business Writers

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — They are the annual journeys of late winter and early spring: Factory workers in China heading home for the Lunar New Year; American college students going on road trips and hitting the beach over spring break; Germans and Britons fleeing drab skies for some Mediterranean sun over Easter.

All of it canceled, in doubt or under pressure because of the coronavirus.

Amid fears of new variants of the virus, new restrictions on movement have hit just as people start to look ahead to what is usually a busy time of year for travel.
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VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has established an annual date to honor grandparents and other elders, lamenting that they are often forgotten despite the wisdom they have to offer society.

Francis on Sunday announced that every year, on the fourth Sunday of July, the Roman Catholic Church will pay tribute to older adults who have “thoughts and words of wisdom” to offer.

This year, Francis will celebrate a special Mass in honor of them on the evening of July 25, pandemic restrictions permitting, the Vatican said.
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