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Broadcaster Apologizes for ‘Inappropriate’ Photos Aired Throughout Olympic Parade

For television broadcasters worldwide, the Parade of Nations during the opening of the Olympics can be an exercise in diplomacy and global awareness, with the media resorting to trivia nuggets, athlete profiles, and geopolitical considerations to fill airtime.

However, a South Korean broadcaster has apologized for its selection of “inappropriate” images that appeared alongside the names of several countries during its coverage of the opening ceremony on Friday.

The images were criticized by viewers who said they were offensive or perpetuated stereotypes.

When the contingent of Olympic athletes from Italy entered the Tokyo Olympic Stadium for the Parade of Nations, the broadcaster MBC broadcast a photo of a pizza.

For Norway? A piece of salmon.

Then there was Ukraine, which the station reminded viewers of where the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred, complete with a photo of the doomed power plant.

“The pictures and captions should make it easier for viewers to quickly understand the countries of entry during the opening ceremony,” said MBC in a statement published on Twitter on Saturday. “However, we admit that there has been a lack of consideration for the affected countries and the inspection has not been thorough enough. It is an unforgivable mistake. “

Raphael Rashid, a freelance journalist from Seoul, shared the pictures on Twitter.

“When Haitian athletes entered the stadium, the screen said, ‘The political situation is obscured by the assassination of the president,'” Rashid wrote. “When Syrian athletes walked in, it was said, ‘Rich underground resources; a civil war that has been going on for 10 years. ‘”

For Romania, the station used a picture of Count Dracula. And for the Marshall Islands, it found that it had once been a nuclear test site for the United States.

When it was Malaysia’s turn in the Parade of Nations, MBC showed a graph showing that country’s coronavirus vaccination rate along with its gross domestic product.

In its statement, MBC said it would look into the process of how the images and their accompanying captions were selected and verified.

“We will also thoroughly review the production system of sports programs in order to avoid similar accidents in the future,” said the broadcaster.

The Korea Herald reported that this was not the first time MBC went wrong during the Olympics.

In 2008, according to the news website, the station was fined by the Korea Communications Commission for using its captions to belittle countries participating in the Beijing Olympics. The station described Sudan as an unstable country with a long civil war and Zimbabwe as a country with deadly inflation.

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Business

Satellite tv for pc photos of ship Ever Given in Suez Canal exhibits work underway

Satellite imagery offers a unique perspective of the stalled ship Ever Given as the crews work to free the mega container ship that has been blocking the Suez Canal for four days.

Maxar Technologies’ WorldView-2 satellite captured high-resolution images on Friday morning and viewed the dredging work to free the ship up close. Ever Given, which is operated by the Taiwanese shipping company Evergreen Marine, has been stuck since Tuesday when the ship ran aground in strong winds and poor visibility of a sand storm.

Shipping companies warn that it may take weeks for the Ever Given to be released. The enormous carrier is over 1,300 feet long and approximately 193 feet wide. It weighs more than 200,000 tons. One end of the ship is wedged into one side of the canal and the other extends almost to the other bank.

The ship blocks the Suez Canal completely, through which, according to the Suez Canal Authority, an average of 52 ships per day pass.

The channel handles around 12% of the world’s ocean trade, with each day of the blockade disrupting more than $ 9 billion in goods – meaning every hour of delay an estimated $ 400 million in trade, according to data company Lloyd’s List. Dollar complies.

Images captured by the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite showed that shipping traffic in the Gulf of Suez was declining. According to estimates by the research company StoneX, more than 150 ships are currently waiting for the Ever Given to be released.

The images captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite on March 21st and 25th offer a direct comparison of shipping traffic in the Gulf of Suez.

European space agency

The ships continue to wait as the diversion around the southern tip of Africa significantly extends a journey. For example, sailing from the Suez Canal to Amsterdam takes about 13 days when traveling at 12 knots compared to 41 days when traveling around the African Cape of Good Hope.

The satellite images from Planet Labs gave another view of the transportation building in the Gulf.

Planet Labs satellite image showing that shipping has stopped because the container ship Ever Given ran aground in the canal (top left).

Source: Planet Labs

A synthetic aperture radar image captured by a Capella satellite on the evening of March 25 shows the Ever Given ship surrounded by auxiliary boats in the Suez Canal.

Capella Space

An image from an Airbus Pleiades satellite gives a different angle of the ship as the “off nadir” view provides a more three-dimensional perspective of the Ever Given situation.

A satellite image shows the stranded container ship Ever Given after it ran aground in the Suez Canal in Egypt on March 25, 2021.

CNES Airbus DS | Reuters

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Business

6 Dr. Seuss Books Will No Longer Be Printed Over Offensive Pictures

Six Dr. Seuss books are no longer published due to their use of offensive imagery, according to the company overseeing the children’s author and illustrator’s estate.

In a statement on Tuesday, Dr. Seuss Enterprises that it decided last year to end the publication and licensing of the books by Theodor Seuss Geisel. Titles include his first book, published under the pseudonym Dr. Seuss was written, “And to think I saw it on Mulberry Street” (1937) and “If I Ran the Zoo” (1950).

“These books point people in hurtful and wrong ways,” said Dr. Seuss Enterprises in the statement. The company said the decision was made after working with a group of experts, including educators, and reviewing the catalog of titles.

Mr. Geisel, whose bizarre stories have entertained millions of children and adults worldwide, died in 1991. The other books that are no longer published are “McElligot’s Pool”, “On Beyond Zebra!” “Scrambled eggs great!” and “The Cat’s Quizzer”.

Mr. Geisel’s stories are loved by fans for their rhymes and fantastic characters, but also for their positive values, such as taking responsibility for the planet. However, in recent years, critics have said some of his work is racist and presented harmful depictions of certain groups.

In “And Thinking I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” a character described as “a Chinese” has lines for his eyes, wears a pointy hat, and carries chopsticks and a bowl of rice. (Issues published in the 1970s changed the reference from “a Chinese” to “a Chinese”.) In “When I Run the Zoo”, two characters from the “African island of Yerka” are portrayed as shirtless, shoeless and ape-like.

A school district in Virginia said over the weekend that it had advised schools to contact Dr. Seuss books on “Read Across America Day”, a national literacy program that takes place every year on March 2nd, the anniversary of the birth of Mr. Geisel, no longer needs to be emphasized.

“Research over the past few years has found strong racist overtones in many of the books written / illustrated by Dr. Seuss,” said Loudoun County Public Schools.

The decision to publish some Dr. Discontinuing Seuss books is helping to reinvigorate a debate about classic children’s titles that do not positively represent minority groups. In France, the latest in a series of beloved comics, Lucky Luke features a black hero and narrative that reinterprets the role of the cowboy and criticizes the book for indulging in an America-inspired obsession with the breed.

Before becoming a giant in children’s literature, Mr. Geisel drew political cartoons for a New York-based newspaper, PM, from 1941 to 1943, including some that used harmful stereotypes to caricature Japanese and Japanese-Americans. Decades later, he said he was embarrassed by the cartoons, which were “full of the hasty judgments any political cartoonist must make”.

Random House Children’s Books, which the Dr. Seuss books, stated in a statement that it was Dr. Respect Seuss Enterprises and the work of the body that reviewed the books.