Robbins slams Trump's immigration policies, Muslim travel ban
Los Angeles, July 1: Actor-director Tim Robbins has expressed outrage at US immigration policies and the Supreme Courts new ruling allowing President Donald Trump’s travel ban on some predominantly Muslim countries to stand.
"That Supreme Court decision will be remembered as a disgrace," Robbins said at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival on Saturday, reports variety.com.
Robbins, who is getting the Crystal Globe for Outstanding Contribution to World Cinema honour at the gala, recently staged with The Actors' Gang theater ensemble in a play called "The New Colossus". The play, inspired by hundreds of immigrants' stories, was staged by the plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty, professing to welcome the world's teeming masses.
At the Karlovy Vary film fest, he is screening a film he wrote and directed that celebrates working class artists, "Cradle Will Rock", and another that sends up dishonest, populist political candidates, "Bob Roberts".
He said he is still surprised at how accurate "Bob Roberts" turned out to be.
Asked whether his outspoken beliefs on progressive causes have harmed his career, the actor-director said he wasn't sure. But, he added, if he didn't speak up when he encountered injustice, "I don't know that I would like myself very much. To know something and to not say anything, to me, is a betrayal of what a democracy is."
Robbins is currently developing an original script that explores "faith versus hypocrisy".
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Pakistan reports two more polio cases; Total tally now 52
ISLAMABAD: At least two more cases of poliovirus were reported in Pakistan, taking the number of infections to 52 so far this year, a report said on Friday.
“The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health has confirmed the detection of two more wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) cases in Pakistan," an official statement said.
The fresh infections — a boy and a girl — were reported from the Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.
“Genetic sequencing of the samples collected from the children is underway," the statement read. Dera Ismail Khan, one of the seven polio-endemic districts of southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has reported five polio cases so far this year.
Of the 52 cases in the country this year, 24 are from Balochistan, 13 from Sindh, 13 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and one each from Punjab and Islamabad.
There is no cure for polio. Only multiple doses of the oral polio vaccine and completion of the routine vaccination schedule for all children under the age of five can keep them protected.
