AP, LOS ANGELESIn a milestone win that instantly expanded the Oscars’ horizons, Bong Joon-ho’s masterfully devious class satire Parasite became the first non-English language film to win best picture in the 92-year history of the Academy Awards. Parasite took Hollywood’s top prize on Sunday night, along with awards for best director, best international film and best screenplay. True to its name, Parasite simply got under the skin of Oscar voters, attaching itself to the awards season and, ultimately, to history. Netflix’s American Factory, the first release from former US president Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Production, won best documentary. Carol Dysinger’s Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl) about Afghan girls skateboarding took home the Oscar for best documentary short.

Xi has largely kept out of the spotlight during the outbreak, except for meetings with visiting officials, with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) taking the lead in efforts to end the crisis. Xi inspected efforts by community workers in Beijing to contain the outbreak, visited a hospital that offers treatment to 2019-nCoV patients and video-chatted with frontline medical staff in Wuhan. His visit came just hours after Beijing authorities announced stricter measures to control movement in and around the capital. CCTV reported Xi as saying that China would strive to meet its economic and social targets for the year, and make adjustments to minimize the economic impact of the outbreak, including preventing large-scale layoffs. Non-essential public spaces within Beijing communities are to be closed, and government agencies and companies would be required to strictly implement body temperature monitoring.

BloombergSamsung Electronics Co on Sunday gave the world its first official look at the company’s upcoming, more compact foldable smartphone in a commercial that aired during the Academy Awards ceremony. Scheduled for a glitzy launch event today in San Francisco, the phone represents Samsung’s effort to “define a new era,” in the words of its new mobile chief, Taemoon Roh. Smaller and more compact than Samsung’s original foldable — the book-like Galaxy Fold — this squarer device harkens back to the familiar form of flip phones, albeit at a larger size. Samsung’s commercial shows some camera interface optimizations for using only half the screen, with the semi-folded device acting as its own stand. The phone will come in at least black and purple, according to the advertisement.

“Due to the outbreak and continued concerns about the new coronavirus, Amazon will withdraw from exhibiting and participating in Mobile World Congress 2020,” the company said in a statement on Sunday. Amazon had planned a significant presence through its cloud computing arm AWS, which was due to host a full-day conference track on the first day of the event. The Feb. 24 to 27 event will go ahead as planned, organizer the GSMA telecoms industry association said in a statement on Sunday before Amazon said it was pulling out, adding that it would tighten health precautions to guard against the 2019-nCoV outbreak. About 5,000 to 6,000 visitors typically come from China to the world’s premier telecoms gathering, where companies spend millions on stands and hospitality to fill their order books for the year ahead. The death toll from the outbreak in China rose to 908 as of the end of Sunday, the National Health Commission said yesterday.

The ship is expected to stay in quarantine until Wednesday next week, 14 days after the isolation period began. The WHO confirmed in a tweet that newly diagnosed cases on the ship should not extend the length of the quarantine. “The quarantine period of the #DiamondPrincess will come to an end on 19 February,” the WHO said in a tweet. “The period will be extended beyond the 19 Feb as appropriate only for close contacts of newly confirmed cases. Only one Taiwanese passenger has been confirmed to have the virus, and the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) would continue to communicate with Japan about bringing that passenger home, he said.

Late last year it attracted major press attention with word that this year it would only purchase works by women, drawing both praise and skepticism. It also gave the museum pause to do some soul-searching: of its 95,000 works, only four percent are by women artists, says Bedford. CENTURIES OF DISCRIMINATIONSo the museum will spend US$2.5 million this year on works by women. It will also reorganize several of its rooms to showcase the work of women and offer 20-odd exhibits of works by female artists. “I have observed that organizations and institutions use the word ‘radical’ as a sort of buzzword without actually implementing any programming or effort that is truly radical,” Henderson said.

AFP, WASHINGTONUS Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday urged US governors to resist Chinese pressure to shun Taiwan, as he warned that Beijing was increasingly taking its diplomatic battle to the local level. “Don’t make separate individual deals and agreements with China that undermine our national policy,” Pompeo said. “It’s one thing to pressure the secretary of state of the United States of America. It shows intent.”“While these might seem like local matters to some, the cumulative effect is of enormous national importance and international significance,” he said. “It’s happening in your states, with consequences for our foreign policy and for citizens that reside in your states ... and affects our capacity to perform America’s vital national security functions,” he said.

This is why we play, moments like these, and these moments we can remember forever.”Kenin and Mattek-Sands teamed up for a 6-4, 6-0 doubles victory over Jelena Ostapenko and Anastasija Sevastova to give the US a 3-2 win over Latvia in their Fed Cup qualifying match. Kenin took the place of Alison Riske in the doubles, her third match in barely 24 hours. “The last match of the day, you don’t know if it’s going to count for something or if it’s all coming down to it,” Mattek-Sands said. Spain swept Japan aside 3-1, while Switzerland beat Canada, Belgium beat Kazakhstan and Slovakia beat Britain, all 3-1. They join already-qualified Australia, France, the Czech Republic and Hungary in the 12-team finals in Budapest in April.

To meet rising demand, the Executive Yuan has instructed the two state-run manufacturers to increase production lines for 75 percent alcohol, on top of their existing production lines for 95 percent alcohol. For every 10 bottles of 95 percent alcohol produced, 13 to 15 bottles of 75 percent alcohol could be made, which would rid customers of the need to dilute, said a TTL manager who asked to remain anonymous. It would consider outsourcing the production of 75 percent alcohol and is planning later this month to ship 200,000 to 300,000 350ml bottles, the Taisugar manager said. The Executive Yuan on Jan. 31 also approved a plan to build 60 production lines to make an additional 6 million masks per day to meet demand. Adding the projected capacity of 4.6 million masks per day, that would eventually bring total production to more than 10 million masks per day, hopefully by early next month, Shen said.

AP, WASHINGTONThe debut of the new XFL on Saturday had a punt blocked for a touchdown and a juiced-up crowd roaring for big plays. “This is for the love of football,” Jones said. “Enjoy.”Jones’ DC Defenders beat the Seattle Dragons 31-19 in the opener of the new XFL, which provided plenty of entertainment in person and on TV. It is not the star power of the NFL, but billionaire Vince McMahon’s latest venture is an attempt to capture the attention of hardcore football fans in the aftermath of the Super Bowl. “Our expectation for this first season is for football fans to simply give us a look, give us a chance, sample us,” Pollack said.

AP, NAKHON RATCHASIMA, ThailandA soldier with a grudge gunned down 26 people and wounded 57 in Thailand’s worst mass shooting before he was fatally shot inside a mall in the country’s northeast yesterday, officials said. Much of the shooting took place at Terminal 21 Korat, an airport-themed mall filled with colorful Lego sculptures, a merry-go-round and huge replicas of landmarks from around the world. Video taken outside the mall showed people diving for cover as shots rang out on Saturday afternoon. “First I saw a woman run out from the mall hysterically,” said Nattaya, who shot video of the scene on her cellphone. He said the gunman had fired at others at his base and took guns and ammunition before fleeing in an army Humvee.

By Lin Liang-sheng / Staff reporterChinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) yesterday called for the policy regarding the purchase of masks at contracted pharmacies to be modified to give priority to people with a chronic disease. Hung said that he has received many complaints from people with chronic diseases who have to visit hospitals frequently, but have been unable to purchase masks. He also urged the Executive Yuan to consider how to give priority to people with chronic diseases. Hung acknowledged the efforts of frontline disease prevention workers, but said he hopes that policymakers will understand people’s needs and attend to them. Hung urged people to take precautionary measures against the virus and be aware of the possibility of clustered infections among school children after school starts in two weeks.

By Wu Po-hsuan / Staff reporterNational Yang-Ming University president Steve Kuo (郭旭崧), former head of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), called on the government to establish an “Asia-Pacific epidemic prevention center” that would enable it to contribute to global epidemic prevention efforts. Through the US Department of State, the US gathered its Southeast Asian allies in Taiwan to attend epidemic prevention training with experts who had experience in Africa, and gradually created a model for international epidemic prevention cooperation, Kuo said. However, public health and epidemic prevention cannot only rely on the government, he said, adding that “industry-academic” connections are important. He came up with the concept of establishing an alliance between epidemic prevention and industry later in his tenure as CDC director-general, Kuo said. The Ministry of the Interior is planning an international healthcare section inside the Taoyuan Aerotropolis and hopes to invite the healthcare industry to participate in a build-operate-transfer model, he said.

Staff writer, with CNAGoogle on Friday launched a major update to Google Maps with a fresh look and new features on iOS and Android platforms for the service’s 15th anniversary. Google said it also introduced Live View mode, which provides real-time augmented reality assistance to show the exact distance and direction of a destination. In addition, the mapping service icon also received a makeover as part of the update. The new version is based on the pin which has been a key part of Google Maps since it was first launched on Feb. 8, 2005. The California-based tech firm said Google Maps is now used by more than 1 billion people around the world every month.

Ireland were impressive in their 24-14 bonus-point victory over Wales in Dublin on Saturday as they dominated territory, the breakdown and set-piece play, and scored four tries to two. “We said it wasn’t a brilliant performance, but we had a good preparation this week with an improved performance,” Farrell told reporters. England captain Owen Farrell was repeatedly jeered by home supporters when taking his time over goal-kicks at the rainswept ground. We had a bump in the road last week and people were saying we were not good enough. “We go away and win in Scotland in the rain and they are full of praise again.