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From Our Own Correspondent: Coronavirus halts LA again

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Coronavirus halts LA again

18/07/2020 GMT

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Coronavirus halts LA again

California is shut down a second time, plus stories from Srebrenica, Ghana and Italy

California’s second lockdown, Srebrenica struggles to put the past behind it, the African Americans relocating to Ghana and Italy’s first holiday season since coronavirus.

California is under lockdown again. The state governor this week ordered the recently opened bars, cinemas, gyms and the rest, to shut their doors again after a spike in coronavirus infections. Hospitals are running dangerously short of beds and there are fears about the capacity of the state’s health system to cope with another rise in cases. California is the most populous state in the US and Los Angeles is the second biggest city in the country. David Willis reports from the place where they’re accustomed to making movies, not feeling like they’re in one.

It is 19 years since the end of war in the Balkans - the series of interlinked ethnic conflicts which led to the breakup of Yugoslavia - and 25 years since the massacre of Srebrenica. Yet, as the anniversary of Srebrenica showed this week, the lack of local recognition about what happened, suggests that the region has not put its past behind it, and is not safe from it. What happened was nothing short of genocide, according to the United Nations. But who benefits from continuing to deny it? Guy Delauney investigates.

Ghana was one of the main centres from which enslaved people were transported to the United States from the 1600s onwards. In 2000, Ghana passed a law offering citizenship to African Americans of Ghanaian ancestry. To mark the 400th anniversary of the first ship carrying enslaved African people to America, Ghana’s president Akufo-Addo declared 2019 the "Year of Return".  Many African Americans heeded the call to visit Ghana. Some decided to make a new life there.  Thomas Naadi has met some of the returnees. 

Italy’s first holiday season since coronavirus hit is now underway. This week there have been reports of tempers rising on Italian beaches as people have jostled for space to set down their towels, with social distancing proving tricky. The resort of Rimini, on the Adriatic coast, had hoped this would be their year to shine the spotlight on their local and world-renowned filmmaker Federico Fellini. However, many of those celebrations will now have to proceed with face masks securely on. Not all seems to be lost for Rimini’s Fellini year though – as Juliet Rix has found.

Presenter: Pascale Harter
Producer: Bethan Head

(Image: A woman walks past the closed El Capitan Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. Credit: Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images)

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