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Gandemic: Vice Ganda’s first digital comedy concert Posted: 31 May 2021 06:34 AM PDT IT HAS been over a year since comedian superstar Vice Ganda hit the concert stage. The pandemic has paused some of his shows but nothing can stop the "unkabogable" star to bring entertainment in the concert scene. Vice was inspired by Regine Velasquez and Sarah Geronimo who both successfully conducted a concert in a new normal setup. Vice Ganda will be calling her digital comedy concert Gandemic VG-tal Concert. "Gutom and kating-kati na ako makapagperform and entertain ulit ng tao through concerts. I want to serve my audience. The pandemic cannot stop me from performing," Vice shared in a recent virtual press conference. The comedian shared the concert will be more on comedy and making people laugh as this is his strength as an artist. He, however, assured that sing and dance numbers will still be a part of the concert. "My concert is more like a musical. There will be dance and singing performances but 90 percent of it will be comedy. That's what is unique about this concert. There is a comic relief," the phenomenal artist shared in Filipino. The reported guests in the 2-hour show include Ice Seguerra, Jake Zyrus, Moira and Anne Curtis but the official list is yet to be released. Asked how he has been doing a year after the pandemic, Vice Ganda was quick to add that he still considered himself and his family blessed despite what has happened in his home network and the country as a whole due to the pandemic. "Sobrang blessed pa rin. Hindi naman ako naghirap. Yes, malaking kita ang nawala sa akin kasi cancelled mga concerts, corporate events, movies, mall shows, at iba pang raket, but marami pa rin akong work and I'm grateful," he shared. The "Gandemic VG-tal Concert" will have a world premiere on July 17, 2021 at 9 p.m. (Manila time) through KTX.PH, iWantTFC and SkyPPV. It will also have a worldwide screening on July 18 at 11 a.m. Tickets are now available at http://bit.ly/Gandemic This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Upstream PH inks deal with Universal Pictures Posted: 31 May 2021 06:30 AM PDT STREAMING platform upstream.ph is bringing the biggest and latest Hollywood movies to every Filipino home, as it inked partnership with Hollywood giant Universal Pictures. Upstream executive Dondon Monteverde said in a virtual press briefing on Saturday, May 29, that this partnership is a first of its kind in the Philippines. With the groundbreaking deal, upstream.ph will now be home to global blockbuster movie franchises such as "Jurassic Park," "Fast and the Furious," "Despicable Me," "Candyman," "Minions," "Halloween" and "Boss Baby," among many others. What's even more exciting is the latest titles from Universal Pictures can also be accessed in the app like the most anticipated films like "F9," starring Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Nathalie Emmanuel; and "The Croods: A New Age," starring Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds. "We are truly honored to be the first and only Filipino portal to be trusted by Universal Pictures to stream old and new titles from their catalogue of blockbuster films. This is timely because the pandemic has certainly imposed limitations on our activities and most of us find ourselves cooped up in our homes as a safety precaution," Monteverde said. He added that since they launched the streaming app last year, they are currently growing with more users. "We keep on introducing more quality content to entice more people to watch via upstream.ph, all new and interesting content, we bring it here," Monteverde shared. The partnership, he said, will continue within the year. "We hope to do more partnerships with them in the coming future and also we are not closing our doors to partner for more organizations and parties, anything that will help us in our goal to bring quality content to Filipinos here and abroad as an alternative to watching movies in the cinemas during this time of the pandemic," he said. Some of upstream.ph's upcoming releases from Universal are "Let Him Go," starring Diane Lane, Kevin Costner; "Bios," starring Tom Hanks; "The Bad Guys," starring Awkwafina, Sam Rockwell, Craig Robinson; "Last Night in Soho," starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Thomasin McKenzie, Matt Smith, and directed by Edgar Wright; "Crisis," starring Gary Oldman, Armie Hammer, Evangeline Lilly; "Minions: The Rise of Gru," starring Steve Carell, Lucy Lawless, Julie Andrews; and"The Forever Purge," starring Ana dela Reguera, Will Patton, Josh Lucas; among others. Meanwhile, Monteverde also emphasized that aside from Hollywood blockbuster highlights from Universal Pictures and a vast array of genres from several local and international film productions, upstream.ph also makes it a point to showcase the best and brightest Filipino filmmakers through their original works under Upstream Originals. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

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Today's WorldView: China's 'three-child' policy and the new age of demographic anxiety

And Netanyahu fights an effort to displace him from Israel's top political job ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

Sign up for this newsletter Read online     By Ishaan Tharoor with Claire Parker  Email China's 'three-child' policy and the new age of demographic anxiety A health worker feeds a newborn baby in a hospital in Fuyang in China's eastern Anhui province in April. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images) On Monday, China announced what seemed to many analysts as an inevitability — a further unwinding of its once-draconian regime of population control. According to a new policy unveiled at a meeting of the Politburo chaired by Chinese President Xi Jinping, married couples are now allowed to have up to three children. The move comes on the heels of China's once-in-a-decade census, which found that the country's population grew at its slowest rate since the 1950s. The narrative of China's success often hinges on its particular 20th-century demographic advantage: The country's Communist rulers were able to mobilize a huge pool of impoverished workers to fuel an unprecedented transformation that made the world's most populous nation into a global manufacturing powerhouse. But after years of rapid industrialization and urbanization, China is experiencing a demographic slump on par with countries in the developed world, with declining birthrates, an aging population and a growing gender gap. China's birthrate dropped 15 percent last year — a reflection of the intense toll of the pandemic, but also broader trends of rising costs of housing and education in China's teeming cities. Nearly 20 percent of the Chinese population is now aged 60 or above, according to the latest census data. By the start of the next decade, according to research by Morgan Stanley, close to 124 million more people will have entered the age category of 55 and above, the largest demographic increase among age categories and a sign of a rapidly graying population. This is all largely thanks to the legacy of Beijing's heavy-handed "one-child" policy, which was brought into effect four decades ago to tamp down a surging population. For years, authorities implemented the policy unevenly and often brutally, with millions of forced abortions and sterilizations likely carried out. In 2016, in a tacit recognition of the damage done, China relaxed its protocols to allow married couples to have two children. But the country's birthrate still dropped the next four consecutive years. The latest edict smacks of a mounting sense of panic within the halls of power. "As new data exposed the vulnerabilities in China's growth model, calls among the public — from demographers to central bank officials and entrepreneurs — for scrapping restrictions on family size have gained urgency," wrote my colleague Lily Kuo. "Yet China's leaders stopped short of completely dropping the deeply unpopular family-planning regime in place since 1980 — often brutally enforced, through forced abortions, sterilizations and steep fines. Keeping the limits in place, researchers say, is a way to maintain control." That control took various forms in the preceding decades. Human rights activists and journalists documented myriad cases of forced sterilizations, as well as an opaque and often cruel system of punishments and fines for those found to be violating the one-child rule. "Local officials had wide discretion in determining how much to fine violators. Sums could range from a multiple of two to 10 times annual household income," wrote Mei Fong in "One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment." "People had no way of figuring out ahead of time what they were liable for, and two sets of violators, under similar circumstances, might pay vastly different penalties. In 2010, a family-planning official apparently imposed a fine of 5 million yuan, or over $800,000, on a violator." "What can be said is that China's policy produced a lot of one-child families — today the country has about 150 million of them — and perhaps tens of millions of abortions and sterilizations, many of them involuntary," noted the Economist in 2019. "Corrupt and brutal family-planning officials demolished the homes of some who resisted. Women had their menstrual cycles recorded on blackboards, for all to see. As birth quotas bit, gender ratios became more skewed by infanticide and sex-selective abortions of girls." Few experts believe the new rules will be able to redress the harm inflicted over multiple generations. "The three-child policy is a step forward, but the question is: If the two-child policy did not mean people had more children, will that happen under a three-child policy?" Sun Xiaomei, a professor at China Women's University, told Kuo. "A comprehensive policy package ranging from tax incentives, education and housing subsidies, more generous maternity leave, universal provision of child care" is needed for the three-child policy to be effective, Liu Li-Gang, managing director and chief China economist at Citigroup, told Bloomberg News. China's Politburo indicated it will prioritize addressing some of these mounting social needs, though it offered few specifics on its plans. As Kuo reported, myriad commenters on Chinese social media speculated over the shift in official policy and whether the central government would move toward punishing those not procreating. One Weibo user wrote on the microblog site, "Whether you change the policy to five children or eight children, housing prices are still the best sterilization tool." China's demographic turn is perhaps the most acute illustration of a global trend. The world's population surged in the 20th century, growing from 1.6 billion in 1900 to around 6 billion in 2000. Now, forecasters predict that the majority of the world's countries with the exception of some nations in sub-Saharan Africa will see a population decline by the end of the century. The United States, like China, also experienced its slowest population growth in almost a century over the last decade. According to research published last year in the Lancet, a British medical journal, 23 nations, including Japan and Italy, will have their populations halved by 2100. This has radical implications for the future of global politics. "The strain of longer lives and low fertility, leading to fewer workers and more retirees, threatens to upend how societies are organized — around the notion that a surplus of young people will drive economies and help pay for the old," noted the New York Times in May. "It may also require a reconceptualization of family and nation. Imagine entire regions where everyone is 70 or older," the Times wrote. "Imagine governments laying out huge bonuses for immigrants and mothers with lots of children. Imagine a gig economy filled with grandparents and Super Bowl ads promoting procreation."   Talking Points • The arrest of Roman Protasevich sent a chilling message to dissidents in exile: They cannot consider themselves safe anywhere. The detention of the Belarusian opposition journalist after his Ryanair plane was forced to land in Minsk last week has revealed the long arm of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.  • Malaysia has overtaken India in the number of new coronavirus infections per million people. For much of last year, the Southeast Asian country handled the pandemic relatively well. Now, officials are warning that doctors in crowded hospitals may soon have to decide who lives. Malaysia's prime minister has announced a two-week "total lockdown" starting Tuesday. • In other covid news from Asia: Vietnam plans to test all 9 million residents of its largest city and is imposing a fresh round of restrictions following the discovery of a new, highly transmissible coronavirus variant. The variant, which has fueled recent outbreaks across the country, appears to be a mix of two others first identified in Britain and India, Vietnam's Health Ministry said.   Top of The Post In Tulsa, solemn remembrances of a century-old race massacre by survivors and descendants By DeNeen L. Brown ●  Read more »   Macron says wiretapping 'not acceptable between allies' after report adds details about old NSA program By Rick Noack and Ellen Nakashima ●  Read more »   Biden set for G-7 boost in bid for all nations to impose minimum global corporate tax By David J. Lynch ●  Read more »     Viewpoints My whole family was infected in India's devastating coronavirus surge. Not all survived. By Niha Masih | The Washington Post ●  Read more »   We're not the good guys: Osaka shows up problems of press conferences By Jonathan Liew | The Guardian ●  Read more »   Prayer for a just war: Finding meaning in the climate fight By Greg Jackson | Harper's Magazine ●  Read more »     Netanyahu's last stand? Yamina party leader Naftali Bennett arrives to speaks to the Israeli Parliament in Jerusalem on Sunday. (Yonatan Sindel/Pool via AP) JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies on Monday worked furiously to keep opposition parties from forming a government that would displace him from Israel's top political job for the first time in more than 12 years. Netanyahu supporters slammed right-wing parties planning to join the broad-based coalition as "traitors," picketed their homes and in some cases issued threats that led police to provide additional security to targeted politicians. The attacks came as members of the coalition finalized their agreement to form a power-sharing government that would include former Netanyahu allies, centrists and liberals, and even the indirect support of an Arab-Islamist party. The arrangement, which could come up for a vote within the week, would potentially end more than two years of political stalemate. Under the agreement, former defense minister and Netanyahu ally Naftali Bennett will become Israel's prime minister for a set number of years before former TV news anchor and centrist politician Yair Lapid takes over, according to Israeli media reports.  Political differences mean that the new government would likely stick to consensus issues, like healing Israel's post-covid economy, analysts said. Lawmakers will likely avoid major policy shifts on hot-button issues such as the expansion of West Bank settlements or the renewal of negotiations with the Palestinians. So far, Netanyahu's efforts to turn out mass resistance have failed to produce big crowds. But several complications could still cause the new coalition to collapse. "Knowing Netanyahu, he won't give up until the fat lady sings," said Aviv Bushinsky, a political commentator and former Netanyahu aide. — Steve Hendrix and Shira Rubin Read on: Israel's Netanyahu fights to block opposition parties from taking power   1,000 Words Marlon Mendoza, a certified Cartagena tour guide, used to be a proud member of Colombia's middle class. But in the 15 months since Colombia's first confirmed coronavirus case, he'd been evicted from his office and pulled his 7-year-old, pictured above, out of private school. He'd moved his family out of the city and back to the dirt-road village of his birth. Mendoza is one of millions worldwide whom the pandemic has pushed from the middle class to poverty. And if history is any guide, for a Black man in one of the world's most unequal regions, climbing back up the economic ladder will not be easy. (Photo by Fernanda Pineda for the Washington Post)   Afterword That's what I call sticking the landing.   We think you'll like this newsletter Check out Coronavirus Updates for news to help you stay safe and informed during the pandemic. Access to all stories in the newsletter is free. Sign up »

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Asian Voices

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• Naomi Osaka Withdraws From French Open, Citing Mental Health Struggles
• Billie Jean King Delicately Reminds Naomi Osaka Of 'Responsibility' To Press
• China Eases Birth Limits To Cope With Aging Society

Naomi Osaka Withdraws From French Open, Citing Mental Health Struggles Posted: 31 May 2021 11:35 AM PDT The four-time Grand Slam champion was fined a day earlier for her decision to boycott the media during the major tennis tournament. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Billie Jean King Delicately Reminds Naomi Osaka Of 'Responsibility' To Press Posted: 31 May 2021 09:52 AM PDT "The media still play an important role in the telling of our story," the former tennis great tweeted of the superstar's decision to refuse interviews. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

China Eases Birth Limits To Cope With Aging Society Posted: 31 May 2021 05:07 AM PDT The country's ruling Communist Party said it will now allow all couples to have three children instead of two. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

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