Day: December 5, 2021

The Kennedy Center Honors is returning to tradition this year.

The lifetime achievement awards for artistic excellence will be presented Sunday night in a gala at the Kennedy Center’s main opera house after the coronavirus pandemic forced delays and major changes to last year’s plans.

Honorees include Motown Records creator Berry Gordy, “Saturday Night Live” mastermind Lorne Michaels, actress-singer Bette Midler, opera singer Justino Diaz and folk music legend Joni Mitchell.

This year’s event also represents a return to political normalcy, with President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden planning to attend. The Democrat will be the first president to be at the Kennedy Center Honors since 2016.

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump skipped the show the first three years he was in office after several of the artists honored in 2017, his first year in office, threatened to boycott a White House reception if the Republican participated.

The Trumps also scrapped a traditional White House ceremony for the honorees, which Biden is resuming. Presidents usually host a lighthearted gathering with the honorees at the White House before the awards ceremony.

Last year, the pandemic forced organizers to bump the annual December ceremony back to May 2021. Performance tributes to the artists were filmed over several nights and at multiple locations on campus.

This year’s main COVID-related modification was shifting the annual Saturday ceremony, where honorees receive their medallions on rainbow-colored ribbons, to the Library of Congress instead of the State Department.

Sunday’s ceremony, which will be broadcast Dec. 22 by CBS, is the centerpiece of the Kennedy Center’s 50th anniversary of cultural programming. The center opened in 1971.

Source: Voice of America

Two explosions rocked U.N. camps in the northern Mali city of Gao on Sunday, causing damage but no casualties, AFP journalists at the scene said.

The early morning blasts shook the barracks of the U.N. mission in Mali, called MINUSMA, forcing the occupants to take refuge in shelters for two hours.

The French army reported only material damage, but had no information on the possible perpetrators of the blasts.

MINUSMA spokeswoman Myriam Dessables told AFP that two other camps in the north had been targeted with mortar fire on Saturday, causing no damage.

The latest violence in the West African country comes after 31 people were killed in an attack on Friday by suspected jihadists near the central town of Bandiagara.

Mali has been struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency that first erupted in the north in 2012 and has since claimed thousands of military and civilian lives.

Despite the presence of thousands of French and U.N. troops, the conflict has engulfed central Mali and spread to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger.

France, the former colonial power in Mali, has said it will reduce its troop numbers in the Sahel.

It also said it is planning to transfer troops from Kidal, Tessalit and Timbuktu to Gao and Menaka, closer to the turbulent “three-borders” zone near Burkina Faso and Niger.

Source: Voice of America