Djokovic’s beliefs and behavior have made headlines throughout the pandemic. In April 2020, he said he was opposed to vaccines and that he wouldn’t want to be required to receive a shot in order to travel. Just months later, he and his wife tested positive for COVID after he organized and played in exhibition matches that fluted social distancing recommendations. In October 2021, he said that questions about his vaccination status were “inappropriate.”
The tournament’s defending champion had surprised many Tuesday when he posted on social media that he had been granted an “exemption permission” to travel to Australia. But, as Melbourne’s Age newspaper first reported, it was not clear whether Djokovic had brought sufficient evidence to prove his exemption reason.
Under Australian law, foreigners traveling into the country must have a visa and be fully vaccinated. Tennis Australia and officials in Victoria, where Melbourne is located, made similar requirements for players who wanted to participate in the Open without first undertaking a mandatory 14-day quarantine.
But Australian immunization officials had outlined some temporary vaccine exemptions for its citizens, which include people who have had a PCR-confirmed case of COVID in the last six months. It is not clear if these apply to foreigners seeking to enter Australia, but tennis officials had pointed to these exemptions in their decision to allow Djokovic to participate.
That Djokovic was granted an exemption to play in Melbourne, which endured one of the longest lockdowns in the world as Australia sought to keep COVID
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A brief reprieve came in the early afternoon, when the Ukrainians went on the offensive.
“We’re hitting them because they’ve run out of artillery shells,” Anatoli, a 19-year-old Ukrainian soldier, told BuzzFeed News. “We can say that Irpin is theirs. But we will cut them off now that the people are out.”
Kyiv has tried to agree with Moscow on safe evacuation routes out of cities encircled by Russian forces where shelling is heaviest. But the agreements largely haven’t stuck, and civilians have been deliberately targeted by the Russian military as they try to flee.
There has been no agreement between the warring sides for a safe corridor out of Irpin, which is in northern Ukraine near the capital of Kyiv.
Until Sunday, residents were able to leave the town by train. But then the Russians bombed the tracks, destroying the safest and easiest escape route. On Tuesday, the only way out was through the rubble of a bridge blown up by the Ukrainian army to stop Russian forces from advancing with tanks and armored vehicles into Kyiv just 15 miles to the east.
Ukrainian soldiers were told BuzzFeed News that thousands of residents were being urged to leave immediately because Russian forces were not only pulverizing Irpin but were also moving in — stealing food, gas, and other supplies — and occupying whatever is left of it.
Anna, a woman in her 60s, told BuzzFeed News that if it weren’t for enemy soldiers breaking into her family’s home, “we
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Hugo Boss has quietly removed subsidiaries of a Chinese textile giant from its supplier list days after BuzzFeed News raised questions about the Chinese company’s deep ties to the Xinjiang region, where forced labor is rampant.
Last month BuzzFeed News reported that Hugo Boss and several other major clothing brands were continuing to ship clothes made by Esquel Group, a company that gins and spins cotton at facilities in Xinjiang, where the Chinese government is carrying out a campaign of mass imprisonment and forced labor targeting Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Muslim minorities.
Forced labor is so widespread in the region and supply chain audits are so difficult to carry out that it is almost impossible to establish whether forced labor is being used there, experts say. The US placed trade restrictions on one of Esquel’s Xinjiang-based subsidiaries in July 2020, and in January 2021 banned all cotton from Xinjiang, both times citing concerns about forced labor.
But Hugo Boss and other apparel brands kept sourcing clothes from other Esquel companies based in Guangdong, southern China, and importing them to the United States to sell. Procurement records and company statements reviewed by BuzzFeed News show that Esquel’s Guangdong branch works together with its Xinjiang-based cotton spinning factories, and Esquel’s own public statements make clear that its Xinjiang cotton production is deeply intertwined with its worldwide clothing operation.
Since the ban against all cotton began, at least 17 Esquel shipments have arrived in the US for Hugo Boss, according to Panjiva shipping
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