New Yorkers turned out in force on Wednesday for a parade to honour the essential workers who helped a city that was once the global epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic turn the tide on Covid-19.
The ticker-tape celebration kicked off at 11am, with marching bands and 2,500 people taking part in an event to celebrate the everyday heroes who risked their lives during the worst public health crisis in more than a century.
“Our son is marching in the parade. He's a healthcare worker, he’s one of the heroes,” said Eleanor Rahim, who was in the city centre with her family to cheer on 51-year-old Murad, who helped set up Covid-19 vaccination centres.
New York City was an early epicentre of the pandemic in the US and has recorded almost 100,000 cases and 33,500 deaths, but lockdowns and an effective vaccination campaign have returned a sense of normality to the metropolis that is home to 8.4 million people.
Two thirds of adults statewide are now fully vaccinated against Covid-19 and many of the city’s restaurants, cinemas and sport arenas have reopened despite concerns about the pathogen’s more virulent Delta variant.
“You get a feeling that things are opening up and coming alive again,” Ms Rahim told The National.
The parade started in Battery Park and travelled up Broadway in lower Manhattan, the famous stretch known as the Canyon of Heroes, which has hosted parades honouring leaders, celebrities and winning sport teams for more than a century.
The last parade before the pandemic paid tribute to the US women’s football team after their 2019 World Cup win.
City officials said the parade’s grand marshal was Sandra Lindsay, a healthcare worker who was the first person in the country to receive a Covid-19 vaccine shot in December.
Other workers being honoured included transport workers, first responders, education and childcare providers, and utility workers.
“We’ve got a lot to appreciate because we’re well under way in our recovery. We’ve got a lot to celebrate and we’ve got a lot of people to celebrate,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“They deserve a march down the Canyon of Heroes because it’s something that is reserved for the greatest folks in history. Well, here are some of the folks who made history in New York City’s toughest hour,” he said.
The parade took place amid high summer temperatures, which scaled back the celebrations, and against the backdrop of the grim milestone of the global death toll from the virus reaching four million.
Still, Jamie Rahim, 44, Eleanor's daughter-in-law, said Covid was no longer the main threat to a city that has this past year also been affected by racial justice protests and calls to cut police funding despite a rise in gun crime.
“We love the city and we hope that it comes back to where it was before,” she said.
“Now that we’re vaccinated, we’re not so worried about the virus. But the city is not the same as it used to be because of issues regarding police and race issues.”
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
THE CLOWN OF GAZA
Director: Abdulrahman Sabbah
Starring: Alaa Meqdad
Rating: 4/5
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Earth under attack: Cosmic impacts throughout history
- 4.5 billion years ago: Mars-sized object smashes into the newly-formed Earth, creating debris that coalesces to form the Moon
- 66 million years ago: 10km-wide asteroid crashes into the Gulf of Mexico, wiping out over 70 per cent of living species – including the dinosaurs.
- 50,000 years ago: 50m-wide iron meteor crashes in Arizona with the violence of 10 megatonne hydrogen bomb, creating the famous 1.2km-wide Barringer Crater
- 1490: Meteor storm over Shansi Province, north-east China when large stones “fell like rain”, reportedly leading to thousands of deaths.
- 1908: 100-metre meteor from the Taurid Complex explodes near the Tunguska river in Siberia with the force of 1,000 Hiroshima-type bombs, devastating 2,000 square kilometres of forest.
- 1998: Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 breaks apart and crashes into Jupiter in series of impacts that would have annihilated life on Earth.
-2013: 10,000-tonne meteor burns up over the southern Urals region of Russia, releasing a pressure blast and flash that left over 1600 people injured.
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What can victims do?
Always use only regulated platforms
Stop all transactions and communication on suspicion
Save all evidence (screenshots, chat logs, transaction IDs)
Report to local authorities
Warn others to prevent further harm
Courtesy: Crystal Intelligence
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French Touch
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